Facultoadviso

Yes, not getting any offer is truly saddening and hurting. They take candidates based on the applications they receive and can't take every excellent student that applies. My student this year with a similar profile as another one I placed in top 5 last year (i.e. similar or even higher GPA, near perfect GRE, 10 papers, research experience, etc etc, though different in some perhaps very obvious other ways) couldn't even get into a top 20 this year and was waitlisted at several top 30. It's very tough all round and the schools must make a difficult decision. If he had not applied to a handful of top 100 schools, that would have been the end - zero offers. If you're still interested in this PhD thingy, the best line of action would be to prep for next year and shoot for the places you believe you deserve, yes, and maybe even much higher place, but also consider some lower places that would fight to have you join them. A student told me this year that a certain top ~100 program promised to increase their stipend by a whopping 20K/year if only the student would ignore a top 50 offer to attend their own program, lol. For an international student, that is some large temptation right there. Anyway, you have a right to feel sad about this painful application campaign this year. I wish you a more successful outcome next year - if you choose to still apply. If there are any comma in your profile, this is the time to start patching it against next year applications.

Obviously yes, those are great courses and pretty much cover all you need to be competitive on the course side, provide B/C do not exist on your transcripts after your grades come out. What are your grades? Is the analysis 2 functional analysis (i.e. banach spaces, extension theorems, contraction maps, fixed points, etc etc)? Copy the link to the description let's see. The optimization you took, is this dynamic optimization (discrete, continuous time time, etc, bellman, Hamiltonian, HJB, etc)? Look at the simple model at the end of this paper What Do Deviations from Covered Interest Parity and Higher FX Hedging Costs Mean for Asia? | Open Economies Review (springer.com) the appendix. Can you formulate and solve it? Meanwhile, You could add the metrics if it's not going to be overload. Ultimately, I would focus on research at this point even before you get a chance for a predoc post undergrad. How good are you at research? This paper was written by a recent undergrad, my RA. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4385223. Can you produce something like this? If no, you should consider starting to build research skills. You have time. Feel free to DM.

I know a junior from top 30 with a top 2 offer. Outlier, yes. But it happens. Hope I have not outed myself.

One would only hope that all the close to 20 or more posters here have seen this Profiles and Results 2024 - PhD in Economics - Urch Forums and are getting ready to post their profiles and results there to help future applicants and keep this place lively like it was in our days, 2009-2010. Past few years have been unfortunate as people strategically avoided the thread. I hope/trust this cycle would be better.

Nice, thanks for the update. Wish others could be like you

Let's remain hopeful

I don't understand. How did this happen? Did you apply to only the top 25 programs? I cannot understand or believe what I just read from you. Try explaining.

Economists at Fed Reserve write letters for assistants all the time. The same for economists at IMF. These letters get people into schools, sometimes even top 10/20. Yes, get active researchers to write letters, but such people can indeed be outside academia. OP, sorry to hear about how things have been so far. But admissions have ended.

I seee.

This is serious. In my days, you would have had a top 5 offer by now. In any case, remain optimistic.

Hmm. That luck must be a really cool special one. Without self doxxing, is this predoc from one of those known notable places - e.g. Chetty and others? Do you have an R&R or even a pub with your predoc advisors? I know race-based admissions consideration is banned, so your result can't be race based. I ask because I have a student with an otherwise great profile. He has 7 offers so far, but none is top 10 - not even one interview

My student interviewed with Oxford. Anyone else did this?

How in this world did this part get so stale and quiet? Wow. Finance should be active. This is the most lucrative part of academic research job

I would have gone with B. If calculus 3 is calculus of many variables, then it shouldn't take time to grasp since you have done calculus 1 and 2 and did well. I would instead do Linear algebra since it's not yet another calculus sequence and it has more applications beyond the applied econometrics you did. Hope your admission season is going good. I just wonder that you guys pay 1,500 dollars for a course in math when there are other much cheaper alternatives with at least as good outcomes and more varieties of math courses. Have you heard of BT math certificate? Or UCT math? The former holds way cheaper online math and econ PhD courses, and goes a step further to place top performers at US top 20 schools

Erin, of course. That would be great. The 2000s were great. I also suspect people got more selfish. Maybe it's a generational shift? Imagine people would come here, get information and then refuse to post their outcomes and profiles later in the profile-result section. Let's revive things back to the interesting, good days of the 2000s. In any way that oldies like us can assist, we shall be jocund to do so.

Your situation is not that hard. You showed character and honor by caring for your loved one before he/she passed. Some people on any admissions committee would value this and yes, it is not a bad reason to leave a PhD. If you have coursework passed in the previous PhD, then yes you have leverage in putting together something even if you don't get a letter. The only problem is if courses didn't go well. Then schools will automatically conclude that this is why you ran away from the program. PM me if you don't mind. I like your story and think we can arrange ideas together to help you, if you really want to return to a PhD. If in doubt of returning, then perhaps it's better to pursue the other sure interests

Quite sad that these young folks come here to get information, but run away as soon as they have gotten offers instead of coming to share information on their profiles and results. I miss the tradition of past years, especially when I was on the admissions market over a decade ago! Compare the quality and content of posts of now and then, mainly the profiles and results, you will be amazed Which other oldie is kinda disappointed?

Why you insult us? What's bad in being old? And to think you are cursing us for a 2019 post? Don't let us old people swear for you, it must surely catch you

We can't make life decision for you. PhD is a personal decision to make and you must make it before you come here to ask how we can help you achieve that goal. That said, there are countless (well finite) number of faculty members today whose grades prior to PhD were only average to goodish at best. If you want to do a PhD, you will find one. Just that you can't be picky. Last, PhD requires WORK, even the smartest ones work. If you don't like to work or are not motivated to work, then it's time to do something else. Finally, Cramming can be a great skill. Sometimes cramming causes understanding. That type of cramming is called cramminopore. But it is done well before exams.

No pure math course is a problem. Rigorous application of math is different from rigorous math training. Even applied econ program would like to see math on transcript There are many online math programs you can take and earn a transcript. Even if these are no name places, at least they still signal you did formal math. Go search for them, they're many. Take them. If you need help with choosing which, let me know, or PM

Your GRE quant score is good enough for the places you're targeting. I placed a student an a Georgia school with 164Q, I placed another student at a Washington school with 166Q. Kudos for a great writing score. I personally haven't seen many indian candidate with that writing score. In all honesty, if your grades from India are excellent, I would ask you to be a bit more ambitious in the US and push the supremum to top 30 and infimum to top 100. Polish up one of your *solo* working papers from your job. I think you're good to go. For Europe, Oxford is possible; I think their GRE Q cut off is 165? Please check but def not more than 166. In your shoes, and with excellent grades, I would even add LBS, LSE, Imperial, Warwick, QMUL etc Lastly, since most Europe (and UK :)) schools are free, I suggest applying to ALL. It is the US where application fees come in that you should be careful with applying anywhere because of the fees. Good luck son

OP, your record looks impressive. But as Starz said, you actually should load up on mid and safety schools too. As much as you would like to feel you stand out, you DO NOT. These are routine profiles at the places you are targeting. You haven't even taken grad level econ theory. To put what I have said in perspective, my student with grad econ (3.89/4.00), undergrad econ and OR (4.88/5.00) and some certificate diploma in pure math (3.8/4) plus 3 years research experience and a PhD-looking writing sample, plus heavy heavy letters from me and other colleagues, (s)he got rejected from almost ALL the schools on your list except 1. You would think someone who is an obvious minority with such outstanding stats would have had those schools lining up to admit them. They simply did not. Don't play with big risk. Load up on safety schools, as Starz recommends. Admissions can be weird. If you can find a way to take grad econ theory (micro/macro, but especially micro), take it. I also see you do not have proper research working paper, try to get one, at least. I have seen PhD applicants with working papers and even publications, some solo authored. Lol. It's that crazy. And oh, the minority candidate I described above had a perfect quant GRE and near perfect verbal.