guessandverify
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Everything posted by guessandverify
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Congrats everyone, these are great results. My case is fairly unusual, so probably doesn't generalize well. (Essentially, I had to suddenly deal with a chronic disease during my undergrad. While I was getting medical care, had a tough time studying. But was fine afterwards.) Profile Type of Undergrad: Mid-tier American private university Undergrad GPA: Less than 3.2 Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA: Very high (took some grad courses during predoc) GRE: 170Q, 167V, 5.0W Math Courses: Mix of grad and undergrad. Did very well in some (As in PhD topology sequence) and very poorly in others (F in analytic number theory) Econ Courses: Mix of grad and undergrad. Same as above. Other Courses: N/A Letters: I think these were very strong Research Experience: Some in undergrad, including NSF REU. 2 year predoc (not Top 5) Teaching: N/A SOP: I think this was fine. Mentioned some specific lines of inquiry/papers. Other: Am coauthor on a working paper. Am not an under-represented minority. Strong software development background and intend to do computational work. Results Acceptances: Rutgers, Simon Fraser, WUSTL (off waitlist), Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Waitlists: Virginia (priority waitlist for 1st year funding) Rejections: Cambridge, Oxford, Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, UT Austin, UC Santa Barbara, Boston College, Penn State, UBC Pending: UNC Chapel Hill, Ohio State Attending: Carnegie Mellon (normal cohort size) What would you have done differently? Not gotten sick during undergrad. I think conditional on that, I did more or less what I could. Applying to a ton of schools was definitely the right call this year.
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I don't think so. The resolution is actually fairly narrow: "students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support before April 15." If an offer of financial support is made prior to April 15, applicants have until April 15 to accept it and the program should honor that commitment through April 15. Extension of this deadline beyond April 15 is up to the individual program or institution. Programs and/or institutions are free to make offers of admission and of financial support after April 15 if they choose to do so. They may set any deadline for acceptance of the offer, as long as the deadline is after April 15. Programs and/or institutions may choose to offer conditional admission and offers of financial support to students with incomplete applications (e.g. lacking test scores) or to wait until all requirements can be satisfie April 15 Resolution | Council of Graduate Schools
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Thanks for elaborating. I think that extra context is helpful.
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Profile Evaluation: Phd In Economics/ Financial Economics
guessandverify replied to Nightfury1234's topic in PhD in Economics
I think the best approach would be to go to a terminal master's program at a good school, like UT Austin or Zurich or UBC, and then apply to PhD programs. It sucks, but the best (and perhaps only) certification is to be a "known quantity," which means coming from a well-known undergrad or master's institution, doing research with academic economists, and things like that. I don't think stuff like Coursera or edX helps much, since you don't get the signaling and letters out of it (going to a good master's program will also help you get good letters.) But I could be wrong. If your professors have placed students in US grad schools in the past, then you could probably just apply anyway. Hope it helps! -
I think it's important to give people reasonable advice on how to measure success of an RA/predoc. Applying to PhD programs with publications or coauthored WPs is exceedingly rare. No RA is going to leave with "a couple of decent working papers" under their belt; PhD students don't even generally go on the market with that record. If you can produce a couple R&Rs in 1-2 years, that's an indicator you should be tenured. And forget about impressing the chief economist. (If you did do this, you'd probably get into a Top 1.) I agree with Wahasky; this is information they should have (the whole point of the predoc is to prepare people for doctoral programs), and it's very reasonable for you to ask. My gut would be that IMF is similar to one of the regional Feds in placement (i.e, a good gig), but that's just guessing. For what it's worth, I did a predoc at a uni that's probably "Top 30," and thought it helped enormously.
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Still waiting on any word from bunch of schools (UNC, UT Austin, Ohio State). Leaves a bad taste in my mouth to have heard nothing so close to the deadline. The rational thing is to assume IR (although UT has rejected a bunch of people, so maybe IW). But I think the basic social contract should be to at least give applicants some sort of notification before the end of March. Especially since we're paying to apply!
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My CMU app still says "submitted." Haven't heard anything after interview. Edit: Apparently CMU has posted rejections online. If you haven't heard anything (i.e., didn't get an interview), I would check the portal and make sure.
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If you go, try to plug yourself into existing research projects early on. If you have strong computational skills (Julia/Python/R), that helps. You might want to find driven junior faculty that could use capable assistance, and then really crush it. Also, looking at your grades and GRE, I'm guessing that your GPA was weighed down a bit by humanities and English type classes? I think investing some time to bring up your reading/writing GRE would be a good idea. Quantitative skills are paramount, but it also helps to convince committees that your papers will be written well and you'll be a good presenter. Lastly, I think an MA from UBC will help in the Canadian job market (although you'd need a work permit, but you would qualify for a post-graduation work permit). I have good knowledge of the department and life in Vancouver, so feel free to PM me with questions.
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Yeah, I think they tend to move at their own pace... good luck! Edit: He did say in the interview that offers will be made sequentially starting this week, and that the cohort will be a normal size. Was mainly curious what the probability of getting one is conditional on an interview!
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Anyone know the deal with CMU Tepper interviews? I had a short one today (following up on an interest letter from them last week), and am checking gradcafe nonstop!
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I'm on the waitlist and received the open house invite. Looks like the schedule involves presentations from fields, interactions with faculty and current PhD students, and a formal Q&A with the DGS and Prof. Cosar. Last year, seems like they had a "strong waitlist" but invited everyone to this open day. Maybe this year they changed their approach.
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Anyone have info about CMU? I received an email asking for my interest, but not sure what's the probability of admission conditional on this.
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Thanks chateauheart. This is sober but necessary advice. That said, given the rate at which academic publishing proceeds, maybe this will be done by the time I go on the job market...
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PhD in Economics Advice for Research Heavy Undergrad
guessandverify replied to Zaramemon's topic in PhD in Economics
I'm not sure why this was downvoted, to be honest. As a T30 predoc, a lot of this is good advice. My predoc let me become "indispensable" precisely by mastering computational methods, which ended up leading to coauthorship on the project. But even if you don't end up becoming a coauthor, the prof can then sincerely say "the project would not have happened without Predoc X." -
I should say that the publication itself is still a working paper, although my advisor thinks it could land in a top 5 (he's published in such journals before, so this isn't just smoke-blowing.) I'd just meant to emphasize that I coauthored something.
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Thanks startz. This gave me the motivation to do so. Edit: I ended up asking, and the prof agreed, despite it already being Dec. 18. So this puts some programs potentially in play that weren't before.
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Alphatrunks (still don't know how to tag people in this): yes. My CV has a few RA credit publications, and one coauthored one. (Although this is perhaps diluted by there being 4 authors. one of them a "big name." The project has a significant computational component, though, so many hands...)
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Thanks Zubrus. Do Penn State, UNC, UVA, WUSTL, Rutgers and UT Austin strike you as falling within that range?
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Edit: This is for applications to a PhD in Economics Edit2: And GRE is 170Q, for what it's worth. I've posted something similar on Reddit, but I since discovered these forums. My profile is "strongly mixed," to say the least. I have a very high grad average (only comprising a few classes over two years; the rest of the time I was a predoc at a strong department.) And a ~3.2 undergrad GPA from a recognizable place, including a litany of graduate math and economics classes. Some of these I did very well in, some not. The discontinuity is due to a chronic health condition, which was finally treated late in my undergrad. My predoc has led to a publication. And one of my undergrad professors (who wrote me letters for this predoc) described me as "by far the best undergrad I've ever seen," so I have some hope that my letters are strong. Perhaps I should have asked this prof to referee me for PhD applications, but I figured recent is better. The other thing to mention is that I probably have unusual skills in computer programming. I'm the maintainer of some "big in Japan" (i.e., popular amongst a small set) open-source economic packages that have been accepted for talks at conferences. I've applied to about 15 well-known departments in the 10-30 range, including some Master's programs, and a smattering in 30-50. My predoc institution is probably my best shot for a good placement, in my mind. Mainly I'm opening this thread to calibrate my expectations, and get advice on how to approach this profile in any remaining applications. And to see if there are any schools I should apply to before the Jan. 1/Jan. 15 deadline. Thanks in advance.
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Thankfully I've got a research project to keep me busy in the meantime. So now I only check gradcafe while code is compiling...