kayl

That is probably enough preparation. I had the same classes going into it and was fine. In the two weeks before the class try to read through the first couple chapters of Rudin or whatever book you are using just to familiarize yourself with the language and notation. Find a study group asap to work on problem sets with. Good luck!

Yup, I heard from the graduate school of arts and sciences. Although I think it was an automated email as its from a do not reply email address. You might try reaching the department directly though, I found this on the website: Andrew Campolieto, PhD Program Administrator, at 617-353-4454 or acamp@bu.edu

Might not hurt to reach out to them! I am surprised the rejection emails weren't sent in a batch and that there are no other posts on grad cafe besides the one. The email was short and not personalized and it came from the graduate school rather than the department itself.

I got rejected from BU today. Not the person who posted on grad cafe but I can confirm some rejections have been sent out!

The math classes with question marks, are you currently enrolled in them? Planning to take? You will want A's in all of them, those classes will be vital. As is a GRE score >165 in quant. Also, how is your math GPA a 4.0 when you have a B in Calc 2? To be honest, I don't think you're competitive for applying this next cycle. You don't have enough research experience right now. You have a lot of potential though if you finish strong in your undergrad and spend the next couple years RAing. An RAship will be super useful for you, it will help you solidify your research interests, expose you to the day to day life of an academic, and teach some important skills you may not have picked up or fully developed in undergrad (data cleaning, working with big data, STATA and SAS skills). It will also put you in a good position to get a third letter of rec that is very strong and best case scenario you may get a coauthored publication out of it. Spend some time as an RA and I think you will be competitive for top 30. You might even want to look into completing a PhD track masters, many applicants this cycle felt that their RAships were not enough and think a masters would have been beneficial.

Thanks! Congrats on your offers too! I am much more familiar with Berkeley culture than Palo Alto, and its been 3 years since I lived in the Bay Area but I'll give you my two cents: Berkeley, and East Bay in general, is a bit more alternative, there are large artist communities. Although the hippie era is long gone, there are impressions and remnants of it everywhere. Lots of community gardens, co-ops, that sort of thing. The people tend to be a little "crunchier". The landscape is also more dense and urban than Palo Alto. Things are closer and easier to walk to but crime rates are higher. Palo Alto is a bit more suburban and clean than East Bay. Its in the heart of Silicon Valley and there are lots of people working in tech. BART does not go all the way to Palo Alto, so you can only get into the City on Caltrain (I don't know how often this runs compared to BART). Palo Alto has been a historically pretty wealthy area, while Berkeley, though rapidly gentrifying, has been historically quite poor in some areas (West Berkeley, for example). Both towns fall into the overall culture of the Bay Area and both are still college towns, but the non-student populations are pretty different. On the funding prospects at Berkeley, I've talked to one current student and she seemed confident that she could find adequate funding. I, personally, am not too concerned either. I think Berkeley funding potential is doable and fine, but Stanford's might be more than fine.

It might be good to think about funding opportunities if you feel the strength of the programs in your chosen fields are comparable. Stanford is private and probably has much better access to funding, summer funding, and a lesser load of TA responsibilities. Also, Palo Alto vs Berkeley is close location-wise but quite different culturally. Where do you think you would be happiest spending the next 5 years? I think many professors and economists would urge you to choose Stanford because its on the up and up and has lots of "stars", but Berkeley is also a great choice and I think figuring out what is a good social/cultural fit is important for getting through what will surely be an intense and stressful 5 years.

Thanks so much! I still can't believe things worked out so well. My GRE score did end up improving just a little bit, I think I barely made it through cut offs at most schools and wouldn't be surprised if my app had been immediately tossed at some of the places I got rejected from. I'm also glad that some mistakes my freshman year didn't completely come back to haunt me. I think having an upward trend in my grades helped (my sophomore-senior year GPA is 3.8). I do agree that my letter writers are probably what helped me the most, I have a great relationship with all of them and do think they truly believe in me. I also think I may have gotten lucky and Berkeley was interested in bringing on someone interested in health. This application season seems like it was particularly rough for most applicants. Before I got the Berkeley and UCSD acceptances I was pretty worried and was very seriously considering health policy programs over econ. I agree with your posts in the application sweat thread that it seems like being an RA just isn't enough any more. I think this is really unfortunate, Masters degrees are expensive and the good ones for phd prep are all outside of the US. It seems like a huge barrier to entry to me. My take away from this whole process is that its not impossible to overcome some deficiencies on your application, but it'll take some fantastic RA work or a masters, very strong letters, and a lot of luck.

Institution: UT Austin Program: Economics PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: 15K 1st year 17.5K years 2-5 Notification date: 2/21/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: Email Institution: MIT Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: Notification date: 2/21/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: email Institution: Yale Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: Notification date: 2/21/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: Email to check website Institution: Columbia Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: Notification date: 2/27/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: email to check website Institution: Stanford Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: Notification date: 2/28/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: email to check website Institution: University of Maryland Program: Economics PhD Decision: Priority Waitlist Funding: Notification date: 3/1/2017 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: email Institution: UC Berkeley Program: Economics PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: 30k Notification date: 3/2/2017 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: email Institution: UC San Diego Program: Economics PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: 20K Notification date: 3/6/2017 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: email Comments: Choosing Berkeley! Also got accepted into a few Public Policy PhD programs and a few Health Policy/Econ PhD programs. Still haven't heard back from BU or BC but those decisions no longer matter to me. Berkeley was a total shock for me as my application is good but not perfect. It seems like a lot of US applicants with RAships got wrecked this application cycle and I feel very lucky to have cracked the top 10.

Also curious about the UCSD admissions! I wasn't expecting to hear back from them til March, my application is still "Under Review".

I did undergrad there too, assuming you took econometrics 141 instead of 140, look into taking C142 which is a more advanced methods econometrics class. I found it very useful and challenging and the professor was always helpful in office hours to talk about grad school or career goals too. Take math 104, real analysis is an important grad school signal. Also look into writing an honors thesis or taking the research seminar (I think econ 191) Finally, ask professors about RAing full time after graduation. They may know someone with a grant that can support an RA or something and can pass around your CV.

Thanks! I've been looking through faculty listed at a bunch of different departments and have made some connections through the seminar series at my work so I've got somewhat of a list of places with health economists. All my letters will be from tenured or tenure track professors, so hopefully that will help. I'll try to make sure the third letter of rec is as strong as possible. Thank you for the feedback!

Thanks for replying, I'll definitely be checking in with my letter writers for advice.

Hi, I will be applying to PhD programs this application season to begin in Fall 2017. I would appreciate any advice or help in narrowing down where I should apply to and where I may realistically get in. Here are my stats: Type of Undergrad: Top Public University with a top 10 Econ department Undergrad GPA: 3.6 (3.9 in Econ Coursework) Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA: N/A GRE: 5.5 AW 163 V 165 Q (I know my Quant score is meh, I am retaking in 3 weeks and hoping for a 167) Math Courses: Calc II (C+) -first semester, freshman year mess up, Multivariable Calculus (A), Linear Algebra and Diff Eq (A-), Real Analysis (A) Econ Courses (grad level): N/A Econ Courses (undergrad level): Intro Econ (A), Microeconomics (A+), Macroeconomics (A), Honors Econometrics (A), Industrial Organization (A+), Environmental Economics (A), Economic Demography (A), Applied Econometric Analysis and Public Policy (A+), Senior Research Seminar (B+) Other Courses: I minored in physics so lots of super math heavy physics classes (Quantum Mech, Stat Mech, Electrodynamics) all with B+'s or better Letters of Recommendation: Econometrics professor from Undergrad (he suggested I pursue a PhD and helped me get my current job), my current boss who is a pretty well known health economist, and one other faculty member at the research center that I work at Research Experience: I've spent the last two years working as an RA for a health economist at research center connected to a public policy school. I have one coauthorship published in a medical journal and one coauthorship that is a NBER working paper and we are about to submit the second R&R for a top field journal. I have one more paper that that I am first author on that is almost ready to be submitted as a NBER working paper and to field journals. Hopefully I can have an R&R on that before applications are due but I am not counting on it. Teaching Experience: I worked as a tutor in the Economics department during undergrad, I tutored in micro, macro and econometrics. Research Interests: I am still very much interested in health economics and will probably pursue that in my dissertation but I am also interested in Development Economics, Environmental Economics, Labor Economics, and Micro in general. SOP: Haven't written it yet but it will probably focus on the paper that I am first author on and my ideas for future research on that topic moving forward. Concerns: Poor undergrad grades my freshman year, not enough math classes (Spent all my time doing physics classes but I am not sure if physics classes are a good stand in for upper division math) Mediocre quant GRE score, I am not a good standardized test taker and I make small arithmetic errors. My application is pretty strong in terms of research experience but I am worried that my application may get tossed right away at very competitive programs due to my GRE score. Also I have no graduate level coursework. Other:I am pretty good at Stata but don't know any SAS How broadly should I apply? Do I have a chance at top 10 programs? I am feeling pretty confident that I can get into a top 30 school, but maybe I should be applying more in the top 50? Should I apply only to true Econ programs or should I also apply to health economics and policy specific programs (I know Harvard has one and so does Wharton)? Thank you for any advice you can give me!