PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad: Roughly top 20 econ European uni (top 20/30 of Europe, not world)
Undergrad GPA: 8.5/10
Type of Grad: top 10 econ European uni (again, top 10 in to Europe)
Grad GPA: 74/100
GRE: 167Q/160V/4A
Math Courses: standard intro to math courses in undergrad and pre-sessional maths in masters, plus an advanced maths class later in undergrad (focused mainly on differential eq)
Econ Courses: advanced courses in micro and metrics for both undergrad and masters, elective courses in urban, labour, health, economic growth, economics of information, ...
Other Courses:
Letters of Recommendation: 1 from predoc (finance prof), 1 from master dissertation supervisor, 1 from undergrad dissertation supervisor
Research Experience: 1 year predoc (in finance), did some work as an RA during masters and undergrad
Teaching Experience: 1 year teaching seminars to undergrads in macro, micro and linear algebra
Research Interests: applied micro
SOP: hard to judge my own SOP but I guess good?
Other:
RESULTS:
Acceptances: UCL, CEMFI, Bocconi, UC3M, Mannheim, Bonn, Imperial, Toronto. All with funding except for the first year at UCL (nobody gets funding first year as far as I know).
Waitlists: Toulouse. Offered interview at European University Institute
Rejections: Warwick, Oxford (offered MPhil), LSE, Zurich, BGSE/UPF, Stockholm, British Columbia, Boston, Northwestern, KU Leuven
Pending: Queen Mary
Attending: cemfi
Comments:
Even though I think most know this I would like to say to anybody who is applying the next years/people who were not happy about this cycle's results: the application process is super noisy, apply to as many universities as you can to minimize the noise and don't take rejections personally.
Edited to include: talk to as many grad students as you can! There's a lot of private information and often just having a look at a university's webpage is not good enough to have an idea of how good their programme is. Of course it's hard if you don't know anybody who's at that university, but IMO the environment with the professors and other students is really important and can make a huge difference between PhD programmes. Grad students and professors at your university will prob have some information about this and know if at some of the universities you're interested in the professors generally don't care about the PhD students (I've heard of a few with this problem).
What would you have done differently?
Not sure there is much I would have done differently as I had a lot of information before the application cycle started. I guess take masters degree more seriously.
