elinorostrom

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: Econ/Math BA from top 200 US Undergrad GPA: 3.97 (4.0 in both majors) Type of Grad: None Grad GPA: N/A GRE: 170Q, 160V, 5.0A Math Courses: Calc 1-3, linear algebra, differential equations, intro proofs, analysis 1-2, stochastic processes, probability theory, statistical theory, continuous statistics, probability and statistics, math modeling Econ Courses: principles/intermediate micro, principles/intermediate macro, econometrics, international monetary relations, money and banking, public finance, economic research seminar, history of economic thought, economic history of the us Other Courses: Letters of Recommendation: all letters should have been pretty strong as I have close relationships will all 3 and have done very well in their classes 1) department chair, top 5% repec, known me since sophomore year and supervisor for RA; 2) grad director at my uni, took research class from him and supervisor for independent paper; 3) another professor, went to top 30 econ and knows me really well Research Experience: RA for department chair before junior year, turned project from research class into paper (accepted at undergrad journal) Teaching Experience: N/A Research Interests: Applied micro SOP: I think it was good, talked about why I want to study economics, my research experience and interests, and various extracurricular things I have done that are related. Made each customized by reading the webpages and saying why I was applying, and looking up all of the professors and mentioning whose research was of interest to me. Other: another professor that I didn't get a letter from wrote emails to people he knew at the schools I was applying to, which was super nice. Don't know if it helped or not. RESULTS: Acceptances: University of Washington ($), UCSC ($$), University of North Carolina-CH ($), University of Wisconsin-Madison ($), Coumbia (MA), Boston Universtiy (MA) Waitlists: University of MD-CP ("priority") Rejections: Stanford, Berkeley, Northwestern (03/22), NYU (03/16), Columbia, UCSD, Michigan (04/14) Pending: UC Davis (no news by the time I accepted WI so I withdrew my application) Attending: Univeristy of Wisconsin Madison!!! Comments: Applying straight from undergrad, especially a low ranked one, is really hard. Advantage is you will be much younger when you get a phd! It's becoming a small minority that do it this way, without first doing masters or working. As one admissions director told me, you are competing against people with undergrads from top unis. Also, don't stress too much when you start to hear back, and probably just avoid internet forums for as long as you can... The grad school websites that say "March 15th you will hear back" are liars! I heard back as early as mid February and everything I heard after March 15 was bad news. Of course, this is just my experience. Yours could be different. May the odds be ever in your favor, and I wish you the best of luck. (P.S. summer before senior year was spent doing math classes and studying for GRE) What would you have done differently? Not much. Story would be different without Wisconsin, though. Still not sure if that is just lucky or not. I guess I overestimated my competitive range, so I would've not applied to NYU and Columbia and instead more schools in 30-15 range. I had lots of extracurricualr hobbies like clubs, etc. throughout college that I enjoyed but probably doing reserach would've helped my application more. But I have had so much joy from that part of my life that really helped me get through college. I would've started applications earlier. The applications was the workload of another class for me, and I really couldv'e started way earlier and finished way earlier as well instead of having finals and grad apps all bunched together.