richardsorge

For metrics, the usual set of textbooks is: Casella-Berger (for statistical background), Hayashi (for OLS-GMM), Wooldridge (Panel Data and Cross Section), Hamilton (time series) You will need some basic topology and continuity-limit knowledge as well, which can be remedied using Rudin's Math Analysis.

Honestly math courses you have already taken are more than enough for admission to PhD in econ, master's in math will not have that much marginal contribution to your profile. You should take more graduate level economics courses and see whether you really want to do PhD in economics. In your senior year you may also try to catch a pre-doctoral RA position at some credible institution, that will be considerably better for your admission prospects than a further master's in math. Given that you are already at a top-10 US college, chances that you'll get admitted to top10 are already higher, but you should be confident that economics is what you want to do :)

I'm assuming that your graduate school is on par with (or one of) Bonn, UPF, PSE, Tilburg and so on. The fact that you already got in a good European school will reduce your stress during the application season. In the worst case scenario, you can continue with your current program. You have a bad grade in real analysis ii though a bad grade in a single course shouldn't harm your application much. Your crucial weakness is, in my opinion, the lack of credible research experience. If you could have done some kind of research assistantship during your undergraduate or graduate studies, at least a couple of US top20 places would be guaranteed for you. This doesn't mean of course that with these specifications you have no chances. Admission to top20 is remarkably random.

Both Oxford MPhil and Bocconi ESS have better placements than the BGSE advanced track. Even a brief Linkedin search would prove that. Yeah some top of the top students end up getting admitted to top schools, I know. But hey, almost all top schools place a couple of its students to top5 every year. Since the introduction of this advanced track thing, placements of BGSE have been constantly falling down. This is not a coincidence, advanced track is ridiculously hard and badly designed. BGSE is not LSE in terms of reputation, so getting a mediocre grade (7/10) at LSE EME would almost guarantee you a top20 placement while at BGSE 7/10 would give you only a seat in the phd program of UPF itself. You really need excellent letters to recompense the mediocre advanced track gpa, which is another impossibility given the short duration of quarters at bgse (not enough time to get interacted with profs). Hence if you can compensate the costs, go for Oxford or Bocconi and avoid BGSE.

No serious professor would add a pre-phd RA as coauthor to his/her paper. Pushing professor for this favor would even hurt your relationship with professor. RAing is good as long as you end up getting stellar letters from your advisor, but aside from that you can signal your research potential through some different channels as well like writing a good master's thesis. Good grades from math/econ courses are also a must unless you are coming from a top institution around the world. And yes, grades are a good signal for your future research; almost all top5 professors graduated from top places and obtained their phd's again from top institutions. There is an obvious positive correlation between your transcript and your future accomplishments in research.

I think your biggest issue is the 5 years gap between your undergrad and grad studies. Adcoms may think that your math skills have become blunt especially if your master's program is not known rigorous enough. But still your chances for top20 is high, I believe.

Of course ucl. Advanced track at BGSE is really brutal. Almost whole cohort is screwed up in the advanced econometrics sequence. At BGSE you will be required to study tons of materials only within a couple of weeks. It is just ridiculous, don't take this risk. Go to UCL, your chances will be much better.

168Q, sorry I forgot it to write.

Hello, My target schools are generally middle ranked schools like UVA, US Davis-Irvine-SB, Michigan State, Wisconsin-Madison and maybe a couple of upper frontier schools such as Duke, UCLA and UCSD. I would be very happy if you evaluate my chances for getting admitted into phd program of one of these schools. Profile: Undergraduate education: top research university in an Eastern European country Undergraduate Degree: Economics Undergraduate GPA: 3.82 Math Classes: Calculus I-II (A,A), Linear Algebra (A), Differential Equations (A), Mathematical Programming (graduate level course and I'm currently taking it, probably will pass with B or B+), Models and Methods in Linear Optimization I-II (A, B), Advanced Calculus (currently taking, textbook is baby rudin, will pass with probably with B+,A- or A), Math for Econ (A), Discrete and Combinatorial Mathematics (A) Statistics Courses: Probability and Statistics I-II (A, A), Stochastic Models (A-), Applied Data Analysis (A) Economics Courses: Macroeconomic Theory I-II (A,A), Microeconomic Theory I-II (A,A), Econometrics I (A-), Theories of Growth and Development I-II (A,A), Game Theory (B+), Institutions and Development (A) Other Courses: Algorithms and Programming (java) (A-), Some European and world history courses (A's mostly) Research Experience: unfortunately I have no credible research experience. Although in econometrics and growth courses I have written 2 research papers as assignment, I guess they are far from being enough. I will take a seminar in macroeconomics in which we will prepare an honors thesis in spring 2018, but it will not show up in my transcript at the time of admission. I have also completed my summer internship in a leading think-tank in my country as a research intern. Letters of Recommendation: one is from one of my professors who holds a phd from Oxford, she has published in top journals of her field recently. She was also a visiting scholar in Princeton during the previous year. Second letter can be written by a professor whose field is applied microeconomics and got the phd from Northwestern, he is also active in research. Third one is from a professor working on institutional economics and has world wide reputation in that area (her phd is from Marryland). Work experience: As I mentioned above, I have done my summer internship in one of the leading think-tanks focusing on economical policy-making in my country. I have no industry experience. My Toefl score has come 97 which is a little bit low unfortunately, but in these schools I listed above the minimum requirement is usually below my score. My GRE verbal is 155 and aw is 4. Thanks in advance.

I don't exactly know the difference between lac and university in US system in terms of their difficulty levels, but your math seems ok to me. Maybe you can take a differential equations course instead of the math stat this fall. Considering your preferred fields which don't require too much theoretical math, your profile is probably enough for top20, i.e. if I were you I would definitely shoot for top20.

Your profile seems perfect to me except gre. It is interesting to see too many US graduates who have excellent grades in upper level math courses like algebra and ra, but still they struggle with gre quant which is not above even the middle school math.

Hello, I'm going to apply graduate school at fall 2017; my ultimate intention is to make phd in political economy. Although a traditional phd in econ would also suit me, current phd programs in economics looks me too much isolated from the other social disciplines like political science, philosophy, sociology etc so I wish an environment in graduate school which combines other social sciences as well. I'm currently a 4th year undergraduate student and I would be very happy if you evaluate my chances for getting admitted into a decent political econ phd program. Profile: Undergraduate education: top research university in an Eastern European country Undergraduate Degree: Economics Undergraduate GPA: 3.82 Math Classes: Calculus I-II (A,A), Linear Algebra (A), Differential Equations (A), Partial Differential Equations (currently taking, probably will pass with B or B+), Models and Methods in Linear Optimization I-II (A, B), Advanced Calculus (currently taking, textbook is baby rudin, will pass with probably with B or B+), Math for Econ (A), Discrete and Combinatorial Mathematics (A) Statistics Courses: Probability and Statistics I-II (A, A), Stochastic Models (A-), Applied Data Analysis (A) Economics Courses: Macroeconomic Theory I-II (A,A), Microeconomic Theory I-II (A,A), Econometrics I (A-), Theories of Growth and Development I-II (A,A), Game Theory (B+), Institutions and Development (A) Other Courses: Algorithms and Programming (java) (A-), Some European and world history courses (A's mostly) Research Experience: unfortunately I have no credible research experience. Although in econometrics and growth courses I have written 2 research papers as assignment, I guess they are far from being enough. I will take a seminar in macroeconomics in which we will prepare an honors thesis in spring 2018, but it will not show up in my transcript at the time of admission. Teaching Experience: Also no teaching experience Letters of Recommendation: one is from a macroeconomist who holds a phd from Princeton, he has relatively strong ties with some reputable macroeconomists (has a joint paper with Stiglitz). Second letter can be written by a professor whose field is applied microeconomics and got the phd from Oxford, she was recently a visiting scholar in Princeton. Third one is from a professor working on institutional economics and has world wide reputation in that area (her phd is from Marryland). An auxiliary letter can be got from a macroeconomist who is working on growth and general equilibrium (phd from Minnesota) Work experience: I have done my summer internship in one of the leading think-tanks focusing on economical policy-making in my country. I have no industry experience. I haven't taken GRE yet but I don't think that its quant section would be problematic for me. As you can see my main weaknesses are the relatively low grades in partial diff equations and advanced calculus (this is called advanced calculus in my university, but it can be seen as real analysis I in the most US schools), as well as the absence of research experience. Probably top 3 political econ programs (Harvard KSG, Stanford GSB, Princeton) would reject me, and I couldn't find any other decent program specifically designed for political economy. Another way is to enter a middle-to-low ranked (around top 20-30) econ phd program and to choose political economy as the primary field, but this makes me a little bit sad:upset:. Thanks in advance.