PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad: T20 US Private
Undergrad GPA: 3.96
Type of Grad: N/A
Grad GPA: N/A
GRE: 161V, 170Q
Math Courses: 10 senior level courses (All A), 2 PhD level courses (All A), includes analysis, statistics, topology, and probability classes.
Econ Courses: 5 PhD level courses (All A, including graduate Micro I+II), 5 senior level courses (All A), a lot of micro theory.
Other Courses: 5 CS classes (All A), including machine learning and data structures and algorithms.
Letters of Recommendation: Did independent research with 2 professors (also my PhD micro profs), RA'd for the other one. All well-known in the theory world.
Research Experience: Honors thesis on repeated games, RA on macro work, both part time in undergrad.
Teaching Experience: 2 years of TA experience, not very relevant.
Research Interests: Micro theory
SOP: It's ok
Other: N/A
RESULTS:
Acceptances: Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern, UMich, JHU, BU
Waitlists: MIT, Penn, NYU, UCLA, Duke, Brown, UCSD
Rejections: Stanford, Harvard, HBS, Berkeley, UChicago
Attending: One of Y/P/N
Comments: Huge results for a undergrad applying with not much research experience! My advice to American undergrads is that a B.A. is absolutely enough to at least try and apply directly to PhD programs especially if you're not interested in applied stuff and you're satisfied with your resume and transcript, international applicants should still go through the T10 masters/predoc route since that's what adcoms prefer. Take a lot of hard math/econ classes and do well in them. Try to have a decent writing sample before you apply and absolutely try to build good relationships with profs.