Jump to content
Urch Forums

laborsabre

1st Level
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    73

  • Joined

  • Days Won

    2

laborsabre last won the day on June 6 2020

laborsabre had the most liked content!

Converted

  • My Tests
    No

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

laborsabre's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

17

Reputation

  1. laborsabre
    I would add on to this by saying that measure-theoretic probability theory is a pretty useful in many fields. I am a current PhD candidate and I wish I had a better grasp of it. It is very helpful for theory and econometrics.
  2. laborsabre
    You can generally just candidly tell the program your competing offer and say it would really help you out if they could increase your stipend. Just be polite and email the appropriate person (usually a graduate advisor or the graduate program chair). No need to dance around this - negotiation occurs regularly, and most departments have policies built to deal with it. usually the worst that happens is they say no, and the best that happens is they actually give you what you ask for.
  3. laborsabre
    I wanted to add one more comment to this thread from the perspective of a 3rd year PhD student. I agree it is worth considering moving in your case, but you should also ask yourself what you expect to gain from switching programs. In terms of coursework, you might have better access to 2nd year courses in the fields you like. But this aspect is a little overrated, because 2nd year courses are often just surveys of the literature (and you can get just as much out of replicating a famous paper in the literature yourself). If they are more methodological (so you get a skill out of the course) you can often just audit a course at another department. Given the virtual format that has become common during the pandemic this has become even easier to do (I audited a nice structural labor class and it was awesome). These two facts make the coursework value from switching much lower. The other reason to switch, which seems to be your main reason, is the connections/advisors. While this is a stronger argument, if your advisor leaves you can continue to have them on your committee in many cases (even if unofficially). Even if they are going to the fed, you can often keep them on as an unofficial advisor. I have a few faculty I speak to at other schools and they have always been willing to give me advice/direct me where I need to go. I also think that having an exact match with the research interests of your advisor is overrated for two reasons. First, joint publications with a senior faculty member are heavily discounted. Second RA work is mainly useful only indirectly, be providing you skills/references/connections. You can RA with people only loosely related to your field of interest and still benefit because many of the tools used (especially in applied) are very similar across subfields. So I would recommend you seriously consider how you can make do at your current program. If there is no one in your field (if you have no applied micro faculty at all) then that is one thing. But if there are faculty in applied but they do not exactly study poverty I would think carefully whether switching (which has pretty large costs) is best for you.
  4. laborsabre
    Given you go to a top school, adcoms know that these courses are often curved and that you are competing with PhD students for the A/A+. An A- is probably around the 60th percentile, and it's probably fine for conveying that you can not fail micro, which is the point of taking it in undergrad. I wouldn't worry at all. You can take micro 2 if you want, but it'll probably be of only marginal benefit. Honestly for you it's going to come down to the letters of rec and luck (everything is very noisy, especially with covid). If you were to invest in some aspect of your profile it's faculty letters. You want them to convey that you are talented (using some hard metric like percentage of undergrads they have advised) and a good fit for a PhD.
  5. laborsabre
    I'd go even further: some programs actually explicitly say not to email professors during the application process.
  6. laborsabre
    Don't take this as absolute truth, but I went to undergrad at the school I am now getting a PhD. I was a double major in Poli sci and econ, and my experience was that there was not too much cross-communication between departments. So I don't even know if they'd know you applied to other programs outside the department (the school uses a centralized portal, but decisions are department specific I think). It's also decently common for econ PhD applicants to send in apps to Poli sci programs. I definitely considered it, and I didn't get the sense that this looks bad.
  7. laborsabre
    You are correct that they have few development placements and they have a large focus on security type positions. But you can check their placement page and you'll find a decent number of post-docs and academic positions, definitely nothing to sneeze at. I agree they might not focus on the areas of policy you care about, and I think definitely it's probably not as good a match for international students.
  8. laborsabre
    You seem like a really good fit for a program like the RAND Policy Analysis PhD program. I looked into the program extensively during my application process and it seems like they'd weight your profile almost better than a traditional econ PhD profile. They like candidates with policy experience. They also have excellent government/think tank placements.
  9. laborsabre
    I want to echo startz: with the courses you've taken I don't think people will care very much about one or two A-s especially in a math department class. It's more concerning in a grad econ class where grades are curved to be A or B, so the + and - are more meaningful signals of class rank.
  10. laborsabre
    Synthesizing what the last few posters have said, I think a decent strategy then is to maybe throw one or two top 20 schools into your application portfolio, while not being under the false impression that you are likely to be admitted. It is worthwhile to dig deep into the connections your letter writers have with faculty at other schools. Because academic hiring is so top skewed, you might find out some faculty at your school actually went to pretty good programs, and have connections to faculty at schools you are interested in.
  11. laborsabre
    I think it is an average of an A- or B+ with no individual course grades below a B, although I cannot find the document to confirm.
  12. laborsabre
    At my school the comps have been changed to allow students who achieve high enough grades in the core sequence to skip potentially all of them. There will still be first-years who need to take them, and my impression is that they will be done virtually.
  13. laborsabre
    Econ departments are usually quite ok with undergrads taking grad classes. That's not the issue. I think the difference between math and economics is that economics undergrad classes are at a vastly different level than grad classes, while I'd imagine (although this is speculation) that there is not a huge gap between an upper level undergrad math class and a grad math class. I think fundamentally this is because economics is not a hard science - it's a social science. The people who are undergrad econ majors span the gamut from people who will go on to sales or marketing to people who will perform theoretical economics research (basically applied math). As a result undergrad classes tend to lean more into the softer less rigorious aspects of economics. So it's not that they are so impossible, it's more that people are often caught by surprised by how different it is than intermediate undergrad classes.
  14. laborsabre
    I actually agree more with Bayes re: taking grad micro. There is an interesting trade-off when it comes to grad micro: it is the best signal of your ability to pass your first year, because the micro sequence is the one that most often causes attrition. However, it being a good signal means that if you fail it, you are sending a good signal that you cannot handle the rigor. Given your performance in intermediate and introductory micro, you should consider carefully whether you are ready to take grad micro. The alternative of taking the math and perhaps the most rigorous non-grad micro/metrics classes you can seems like the best option. Then, if after taking the analysis class you feel ready then you can take grad micro. The truth is that many successful applicants from top undergrads do not take grad micro prior to their first-year. And many of them will just barely squeak by in grad micro during their first year, but this is okay, because if you do not want to be a theorist it is not necessary to excel in the micro sequence. All that being said, your general interest in policy issues, minor in political science and interest in applied micro make you a good candidate for public policy PhD programs. You should check those out. They also tend to be a little more forgiving when it comes to math background.
  15. laborsabre
    I agree with the last two commenters that the visit can be very helpful on your end in making your decision. But I do see where you are coming from, and if you think the additional information is not helpful, I don't see an issue with not going. The additional information would not be helpful if: a. You are convinced you will not go to this place even if it is the best place on earth. b. You are convinced you will go even if it is the most terrible place on earth. c. You already have visited the school and know what you are getting into if you choose it. These are rarely satisfied for most people (even for people that get only offer) but they were for me (I fell into c) so I did not go. I think there might be some marginal benefits to going, like meeting your cohort-mates (this is a decently important aspect) and maybe making some early faculty connections, but I think these are second order.
×
×
  • Create New...