Latino_in_Economics

PROFILE International Student from Latin America. I applied two years ago, so if anyone is curious, you can check my post in the Profile Results 2022 page. Type of Undergrad: US News Top 15. Lower for Econ (around 30) Undergrad GPA: 3.92 GRE: 170Q/163V/5.0AW - The GRE is noisy. I had a higher verbal score from previous years, but I decided to submit only this new version with 170Q. Btw, I had to take it a few times to get 170Q. Was it worth it? No idea, but once you are already going through all the effort of doing a predoc, you might as well cover all the bases. Math Courses: Calc I,II,III (As); Linear Algebra (A-); Intro to Math Reasoning (A); Real Analysis (A); Intro to Op. Research (A); Probability (A); Math Stats (A); Numerical Analysis (A); Intro to Math Research (A); Topology (A); Problem Solving in Math (A); Intro to Stoch. Processes (A); Math Meth. in Fin. Econ (A); Algebra (A) Econ Courses: Undergrad: Principles of Micro/Macro, Intermediate Micro/Macro, Stats for Econ, Econometrics, Monetary Theory, Game Theory, Advanced Macroeconomics. Senior Thesis (I/II). All As Graduate: Microeconomic Theory I (A-), Econometrics I (A); At top 5 Predoc: Financial Economics (A+); Macroeconomics (A - Didn't receive grad before submitting applications). Letters of Recommendation: Two well-known professors from predoc. One tenured professor from undergrad. All super positive (they all explicitly told me that). Definitely, the only important difference from my previous application. Research Experience: Two years working as a predoc for two Top 5 professors. RA as an undergrad for two years for undergrad professor. Senior Thesis. My thesis was not ready when I applied the first time, but now it was. Second most important difference from previous application, I would say. Teaching Experience: Math Grader + Tutor for two years Research Interests: Macro-Finance. For finance applications, I emphasized the finance part. Finance interviewers always asked me "why a PhD in Finance and not in Economics?", so this is a questions you must be prepared for. SOP: Looking back at it, my previous SoP was very bad. I believe that are two strategies you can follow: either you write a very detailed research project and portrait yourself as someone "who knows exactly what they want to do in the PhD", or you portrait yourself as someone "who wants to explore, but that have had a very good preparation so far". I chose the latter strategy, meaning that my SoP detailed the most important projects/topics I had encountered during my career, and briefly mentioned one or two topics I am eager to study during the PhD. RESULTS Economics: Acceptances: Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn Waitlists: UChicago Rejections: Harvard, MIT, Princeton, LSE, Oxford. Finance: Acceptances: Chicago Booth, Northwestern, Yale SOM, NYU Stern, UCLA Anderson. Rejected: HBS, Sloan, Stanford GSB. Comments: The only major thing that changed in my profile was the predoc. Nowadays, the proportion of students that get straight into an Economics PhD without a predoc/masters is super small. The good thing is that, although I tried to avoid it, I believe I am now much better prepared to start graduate school than I was two years ago. Try to find a predoc program where you will work closely with your advisors (who are somewhat important in their fields), and in which your advisors' interests are aligned to yours (aka. they want you to get into a good program to say so). I was super lucky to get into an amazing predoc program in March (after getting rejected from most PhD applications I had submitted). Nowadays, almost all spots are filled in December. What would you have done differently? I sold all my bitcoins back in 2016... Seriously, nothing. I enjoyed my time in undergrad a lot, and I don't think that, as an international student, I would be able to emulate the offers I received this year had I done anything differently back in undergrad. Good luck to all future applicants, and remember that the application is extremely noisy. As my final words here in this forum: Thanks a lot for all the posts, messages, and replies I have read over the past 5 years. Urch has helped me a lot since I first started to dream about getting into a PhD back in my freshman year, and I hope future applicants will continue to take advantage from this amazing resource for many years to come.

Hey guys, I would like to thank you all for participating in this thread. This has been the most successful Sweat Thread of the last few years, and I hope that this trend continues in the next years so that future applicants will have a reliable source of information during the applications. Also, congratulations for surviving the application season, everyone! Just submitting an application is already a huge milestone. For those who received some acceptances, it's time to finally reap the benefits of your efforts. For those who were unsuccessful, life goes on (trust me, two years ago, I applied the first time and also didn't receive any offers. It felt like the end of the world. It wasn't.). I hope you all the best.

This couldn't be further from the truth. The best predoc programs vastly dominate the best masters you can think of. Predocs usually won't save a bad profile, but they can be the final push for a solid profile to break into a good program.

Two years ago, they tried to be very transparent, putting all accepted and waitlisted students in a single Slack group and treating them equally on the visit day. But it was during COVID though, so we had a virtual visit day. I haven't heard of anything yet. Since they have a very late deadline, maybe they will contact many students in waves?

I am sure people's willingness to share their thoughts on applications hasn't changed, so I wonder where people went. EJMR is a whole different beast, gradcafe forum is even quieter, and reddit doesn't seem to have a similar community (r/academiceconomics is close, but I feel it's too broad).

It's quite unfortunate that it has been dying slowly—I remember looking for information here back in freshman year to start making plans for applications, and now that I am at the end of a predoc the forum is a quite quiet. Hopefully things heat up soon. I was wondering the same thing. I even tried to use https://archive.org/web/, but they don't have the one from last year LOL

Any updates from this starting week? A friend from my office got Kellogg Finance interview.

We are all anxiously waiting for it... hang on tight!

First of all, 170V is amazing, congrats! For quant, it depends on your aspirations. I don’t think that many places will filter out all candidates outside the 90+ percentile (these days, 169Q+!). However, if I had to guess, a non-zero amount of schools in the top 10 will. I guess it’s all a matter of opportunity cost. Studying for the GRE takes a lot of effort, and you should determine if your time is better spent in other parts of the application instead of grinding for 2 or 3 extra points in the GRE.

Hey! In the last few years, the "Sweat Thread" had already been created by this time, so I am launching it now. Wishing good luck to everyone!

PROFILE International Student from Latin America Type of Undergrad: US News Top 15. Lower for Econ (around 30) Undergrad GPA: 3.95 GRE: 167Q/169V/5.5AW - The GRE is noisy. I took five practice tests and got 169-170Q in all of them, and never above 163V. Math Courses: Calc I,II,III (As); Linear Algebra (A-); Intro to Math Reasoning (A); Real Analysis (A); Intro to Op. Research (A); Probability (A); Math Stats (A); Numerical Analysis (A); Intro to Math Research (A); Topology (A); Problem Solving in Math (A); Intro to Stoch. Processes (A); Math Meth. in Fin. Econ (A). Econ Courses: Undergrad: Principles of Micro/Macro, Intermediate Micro/Macro, Stats for Econ, Econometrics, Monetary Theory, Game Theory, Advanced Macroeconomics. All As Graduate: Microeconomic Theory I (A-), Econometrics I (A) Other Courses: Intro to Programming/C++ (A). Letters of Recommendation: Three full-time professors. I did research with two of them for over two years on a huge project. The other one I just took a class with. Research Experience: RA as an undergrad for two years for two professors. Senior Thesis (Mentioned in the SoP, but it was not ready in time for the application) Teaching Experience: Math Grader + Tutor for the last two years Research Interests: Macro-Finance: Forecasting and Indexing SOP: Pretty standard, I assume. RESULTS Acceptances: None Waitlists: Stanford, UPenn, Northwestern Rejections: Harvard, MIT, Stanford Business, UChicago, Chicago Booth, Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, NYU, NYU Stern, Wharton, UCLA Attending: Off to a Predoc at a top department. Although I am not happy with my results, I thought it was important to post them here for future applicants. Comments: I know from the Stanford waitlist group that over 90% of people in a top Ph.D. have either a Masters or 2-year predoc. So, it is pretty reasonable that I could not get in this time. I also suspect that I was automatically put into the pile of applicants from my home country, and they are all two or three years older than me with a lot more research experience. If you are an international student at a US undergrad, know that your path will be more challenging than for Americans (I know one guy from my school that got into the top 2 with a weaker overall profile). If you doubt if doing a predoc is worth it, you are not alone. It is two years of your life in an underpaid job (do not forget: you are giving up 200k you could have earned in the industry for 2/3 recommendation letters). All of that in preparation for yet another underpaid position for 5-6 more years. So, if you cannot get into a Ph.D. directly from an undergrad, stop for a bit and think if your love for economics and research is enough to put you in a stressful position until you are in/close to your 30s (for me it was). Also, you cannot believe how crazily competitive it is to get into a predoc these days. The best ones (OI, SIERP, Chicago...) now have many applicants with predoc experience or masters. Most prestigious predocs also have their application deadline in December, so apply to them before knowing the results from your Ph.D. applications. My two cents: it is sad to see where the Econ Ph.D. system is heading to. A few decades ago, you could have become a doctor at around 26. Now, it is becoming more and more common to see people finishing it when they are close to 32-35. What would you have done differently? My profile has some flaws (not perfect GRE, my writing sample was a 15-page class paper and not my Senior Thesis, A- in Grad Micro, etc.). Nonetheless, I think I did as most as I could have done in the last three years, and when I compare my profile to the ones from previous years, I was expecting better results. I came really close in some of the waitlists, but it was not enough. The path to getting a Ph.D. is rough (primarily for international students), so dive into it with caution.