Unsure

Hi EasternLance, thanks for the advice and sorry for the late reply. I did my BA at a school in continental Europe which is usually ranked in the top 50 to top 75, my final GPA is roughly equivalent to a British first class or an American GPA of 3.9+. At the moment I'm studying abroad for a year on a Fulbright-Scholarship at a top 3 public university in the US (a scaled down version is available for BA students in my home country), where I am taking a curriculum of upper division maths classes designed to complement an econ degree. Through conversations with professors in the US and my home country I got the impression that (in the US at least) Adcoms do not look that favorably on candidates which have only completed a three-year BA, common in continental Europe, when admitting fresh PhD-students. As I would like to be as competitive as possible when I do start applying for programs, I've decided to complete a masters-degree before trying to get into PhD-programs. Enjoy the holidays and good luck with your own application!

Thanks for the encouraging reply cjyNel. Merry Christmas!

I just got back the results of my first GRE test and I got quite good scores in quantitative and verbal (Q170/V169), but somehow I managed to not do that well on analytical writing (4.0). I should probably also mention that I am not a native speaker, am a rather slow typer, and usually take time to develop arguments before writing them down. My problem is, that some of the MSc.-programs in economics I am applying to have soft cutoffs above that for the AWA section ("most successful applicants have scores above 4.5 ...", etc.), so I am a bit unsure about my results. As most application deadlines end in January, I will most probably have to go with the scores I've got as there will not be enough time to retake the exam. My questions are: - How important are AWA scores in the application process? - Do you think my verbal and my TOEFL iBT score (115) might be able to compensate for my somewhat low AWA score? - Should I mention my TOEFL score in my essay and ask the application committee to consider my AWA score in context, suggesting that I might just have had a bad day? I would hate to have to retake the GRE, as I am happy with my scores in the other sections and don't fancy spending another $205. I know this forum is mainly for PhD- applications, but I have been lurking here for quite some time and would really appreciate your input. Thank you for your help!