reactor

Hi, Is any body familiar with using eviews to conduct rolling cointegration analysis or Kalman filter analysis? I'd absolutely appreciate any help or pointers! Thanks, Reactor

Hi, Is any body familiar with using eviews to conduct rolling cointegration analysis or Kalman filter analysis? I'd absolutely appreciate any help or pointers! Thanks, Reactor

I know cases of students who have been admitted to Cambridge PhD economics with GRE Q740 or even a bit less! Though, they did have MSc with distinction from good UK schools (but not top). So I think you have a chance for the MPhil.:)

NOT U of Toronto. I have met at least 4 students who: 1) took PhD micro & macro I & II and got A (in U of T there is A+ but it also counts for 4.0) 2) GRE Q800, undergrad good enough to accept them with full funding to the MA (doctoral stream), and who got their applications rejected from all top 15 US schools (up to Columbia & UCLA). If of course by "top phd" you include non-US schools, things can be different. U of T admitted all of them with full funding (=teaching from the 1st year). If you find information about placement of U of T MA to top PhD programs, please let me know.

To quote Athey's webpage: "If you feel like you have an exceptional case for contacting a faculty member at another school, seek the advice of your advisor first." If you no one to contact (i.e. not supportive advisor etc) then you can try posting in TestMagic or PM some members for specific advice or evaluation of what you have to say to the to-be-contacted professor.

@ rom: I have a hunch that Ohio State University (PhD econ) would be a "safety school" for someone with your profile. I agree with the comments that the enviroment at UofT MA,MFE,PhD is not that "collegiate". Many times you might think that any kind of camaraderie is absent from these programs. I also agree that there are some professors who are nice people and many who are bad/negligent lecturers (the two sets have non-empty intersection). On the other hand, this might be the case in many programs. :hmm: Toronto is awesome as a city. (Though not sure if it matches Vancouver.)

I agree. I saw this [no department specifically asked for updated scores] happening two years ago to many applicants. A friend was asked to submit updated grades. You can submit a short and to-the-point statement with your grades explaining why they may not all be stellar and how you plan to remedy the deficiency on knowledge. I have seen this kind of statement working big time!

Excellent! :tup:

Looks like a good post Italos. :) Is this piece of advice written by you or are you reciting it?

"[m] is not greater than the integer m" means that [m] is less or equal to m. If m If m>4 then [m] could be equal to 2 or 3 or any number equal or less than m>4, so we do NOT know if [m]=2 :)

Do you mean "only for computer science" or "also for computer science" ?

There is young theory (assistant) professor in the econ dept in my school who is interested in a math course in logic. He is doing general equilibrium.

Nice post twinkley! :) I appreciate that you share your experience and infromation with us. If you refer to the exams at Warwick the not everyone has to face the same thing, just the Warwick MSc econ studets. If for example you have horrible microeconomics lecturers and they put a horrible exams only the students who take the exam "face the same thing" and there UK is nothing like the US; there is no proper scaling after the exam (unless of course no one has got above 70% or too many people are above 70%). So if you get 60% with highest mark in the course 70%, you are stuck with the 60% even if you are in the top 5 of you class (say 90 people). Maybe between the top 10 US econ PhD programs there is no big difference. Maybe between Warwick and Oxford, Cambridge, UCL (even LSE) the distance is not huge. But I cannot be convinced that Warwick is comparable to top 20 US econ phd programs. I'm convinced that even if a student who could go to top 20 econ PhD programs did come to Warwick, the quality of her job market paper and job prospects would end up significantly poorer.

Most students (even the ones that eventually get high grades) have no clue what will be in the exam. Past exam papers either are not made available or are irrelevant. Many times, topics that have not been taught (at least explicitly) appear in the exams in the form of such questions and even if you had studied them before, it would be hard to reproduce during the exam (let alone figuring out the answer under exam conditions). The lectures and the notes are not only useless but also give the wrong impression of what is expected in the exams. Even top students told me that studying the notes and what is presented in the lectures, guarantes failure in the exams! Approximately out of 90 students, 20 fail at least one exam. I think that if you are ready to be deceived by lecturers (and sometimes well-published professors) that do not give a damn about students (and are not embarashed to show it) then go to Warwick. Just do me a personal favor and if you fnally attend Warwick, post at TestMagic your experience. Simply put, Warwick professors' research may be rising but it's at the absolute expense of (at least) MSc students. As a former Warwick msc econ student (who is now in a well-respected PhD program) said: "You pay, you suffer, you go through agonizing and desperate times, you get no high marks and you learn nothing". I expect Italos to comment on my post and I challenge and invite anyone who has attended Warwick MSc in economics or has some honest friend who did so, to comment on this.

If you do excellent (80%+) at Warwick then you might have a chance in top schools. However Warwick Econ has extremely bad teaching at the master's level and I have cross-referenced that with more than 10 former Warwick MSc econ students who did well in the MSc and some of them are current PhD students at Warwick. Most of them were also talking about unfair exams. If you can do really well with extremely poor teaching and unfair exams then Warwick is for you.

I agree on this. I've recently been to Oxford and my friends and I liked it a lot (although we seriously doubt how comfortable their student is but then London housing can be miserable too).

All my comments are from what I was told; no personal experience. 1) I don't think you can go too wrong with either school. It is like choosing Harvard over U of Chicago; maybe LSE PhD is ranked higher but we don't know about the MSc. 2) Questions: What is the size of the incoming class? What are the course requirements in each school? Any differences on when the examination period is? (i.e. do both schools have only finals in June? Any January exams or midterms?) I think that at this point we need some insider's info. Otherwise the two masters seem to be at the same level.

I think they mean both (but after the PhD).

Most, if not all, professors that I have discussed the subject seem to agree that, at least at the PhD level, LSE economics offer better chances for placement than Cambridge. No other info:). Excellent choices anyway!

I don't think that you generally have to report them. Some schools ask them in case your case is borderline and they want to make you an offer or keep you in the waiting list instead of sending you a reject letter. Maybe, even if they don't ask for it, sending the (good-to-excellent) grades can increase your chances for an offer.

Doing well in as many courses as the one's you did not do well, would offset by 99% the masters bad result.:)

There are many kinds of TAs. "Lecturing-fullcourse TAs" and "grading/officehours TAs". The former requires more advanced skills than the latter does. (Most probably) Being a "grading/officehours TA" won't produce a very usefull letter.

If you do well in the exams you can get a good letter. The higher grades you get in the exams the greater your chances for good LORs. Without good grades in the exams no serious professor gives a a LOR. So, in my opinion, you should focus on high grades (unless of course you can produce a top paper).

There are quite a few professors at Harvard and Berkeley that teach the same way you described in your previous post. Essentially, students learn 99% of the material on their own with the notes they make outside the lecture. The lecture is just to get a very rough idea of the topics covered in the course. You hear the professor say: "overlapping generations" and you go back and study whatever you can find on this topic. Expect nothing from the professor. At least this is what I have seen at Harvard and Berkeley and this is what I was told by friends in some other top schools in US. Before you go to the US, try to visit and see what is going on. Otherwise you might be bitterly surprised.

:D Italos: I understand your concerns regarding teaching but you guys have 4 weeks of Christmas break to prepare for exams, right? (Not to mention 5 weeks of Easter break). Then, in a sense, you are lucky not being in a US school with all the midterms and finals and almost no break at all. Did you manage to do well in this professor's course?