can_econ

Chances are the course is called "Honours Linear Algebra". Adcoms would expect that the honours stream of any course is relatively hard at a decent school; I can't see the point in mentioning it. I also can't see how you could gain that much from contacting people at Caltech. Since your advisor has contacts there, you could ask him/her whether you should contact anyone (and who), and also how you should work your SOP for Caltech.

I've heard that the waitlists for a studio can be quite long at Thunderbird. I'm not sure about the 4 bedrooms - I've heard they're shorter, but I'm not sure how much shorter. Quite a few PhD students in Econ live in Thunderbird.

I'm at UBC. Development has been traditionally strong at UBC (though I know LSE has a few very good development economists) - Siwan Anderson, Patrick Francois, Ashok Kotwal and Mukesh Eswaran are all at UBC so you'd be well supported if you want to do development econ; I'd definitely have a look at what they're doing. UBC offered grad courses in political economy and behavioural econ for the first time this year, and has made hires in political economy who aren't listed on the website but will be at UBC by the time you take your field courses. There's a decent group of profs in micro theory (Mike Peters, Sergei Severinov, Yoram Halevy, Okan Yilankaya). There tends to be a bit of a Canadian bias in the best placements, but last year a job candidate had an offer at a top 50 US school so I guess the bias isn't that strong. I know LSE has a really strong group of people doing political economy, development and contract theory, and a couple of people doing applied behavioural theory, which makes it a hard choice if that's what you know you want to do and you have lots of money to spare and you think that you'd get good support from the faculty at LSE. But definitely look up UBC's development faculty and Matilde Bombardini (political economy) - I really think you could get great faculty support in these areas at UBC as well. Yoram Halevy taught the behavioural econ course and Joe Henrich taught an interesting psych-and-econ course this year, so there are people doing behavioural research here, it would be worth taking a look at what they're doing too. The bottom line is that UBC could definitely support your range of interests. Given that your reservations re: UBC come down to fit and placements, I'd arrange to talk on the phone with Mick, and ask about grad courses and faculty in political economy and behavioural econ. Ask about placements too, as Mick should know about the last couple years of placements which were pretty reasonable (I don't think they're on the website). I don't know much about UPF or their program.

My impression is that the schools are comparable but UBC has a bit of an edge in terms of overall ranking; I'm at UBC so I may be biased. There's a good group of trade people at UBC are in the business school - Keith Head, John Ries, Werner Antweiler come to mind off the top of my head, also Jim Brander, Barbara Spencer... Usually a couple of econ students each year have a committee member or co-advisor from Sauder (mostly people doing IO or trade). There aren't that many students doing trade, but there are a few; one PhD grad from last year doing trade ended up at York U which is ranked ~100 on econphd.net

I'm at UBC and I like it. It isn't too big a class, and there are a good number of students interested in macro. I think the international macro (Devereux, Lahiri, Hnatkovska) faculty is really top notch. In macro-monetary and macro-public finance, check out what Henry Siu and Paul Beaudry are doing (they co-taught 1st year PhD macro in the 2nd semester for the past couple of years). Both are very approachable and enthusiastic. Also, Giovanni Gallipoli is working in macro-labour and has a few students who seem to be doing well. For empirical public finance - UBC has a great group of empirical researchers doing labour/public econ, out of them, Kevin Milligan and Phil Oreopolous have taught a public econ grad class in the past. The environment here is friendly; while there's definitely pressure on you in first year to get through comps, the environment tends to be cooperative rather than competitive. Attrition seems pretty reasonable (2 people due to comps in my year out of 11 who wrote comps). I talk about research ideas with my classmates all the time. UBC is typically ranked above Iowa in international department rankings, but Iowa has had some very good placements in the past couple of years at the upper end. I'm not sure what that reflects since I don't know the program so you'd probably want to ask around a bit more to make an informed comparison. As a place to live - yeah, it's a bit expensive. A lot of PhD students live in Thunderbird apartments on campus, if you're looking to get an idea of how much rent would cost on campus - Thunderbird Residence

Definitely apply around. Most people I remember from my MA at UBC had grades in the high 80s or 90s in undergrad (esp people who got funding). Maybe if you have a UBC undergrad they are a bit more lenient. Somewhere will probably give you a chance, but expect some rejections - from my experience with PhD applications, there can be a lot of randomness in the process, so it's entirely possible that you'll get into a decent program but be rejected from lower ranked programs. Your profs will give you an idea of what programs they feel comfortable recommending you to, so you'll want to ask your profs about where to apply. Good luck.

At UBC, people with first semester MA averages in the ~90% range tended to get accepted at UBC for the PhD, people much below that didn't tend to get accepted (that probably isn't that useful since you don't know how MA grades work at UBC). So it is still somewhat competitive to stay for the PhD. In my year, 6 out of a MA class of 50ish decided to do PhDs in Econ at UBC + a UBC MA from the year before me joined the PhD program; about the same number of people had applied to PhD programs and either chose to go elsewhere or didn't get in at UBC. In the class after mine, maybe 2 or 3 UBC Econ MAs ended up in the UBC PhD class this year. So it varies year to year. Normally I think you'd have to be at least in the top 1/4 of the class (maybe it's a little bit more competitive than that), but the quality of the class and the number of people wanting to pursue PhDs varies from year to year. I heard that at U of T, even if you're in the doctoral stream you still have to apply for admission and not everyone gets in - I'm not sure how hard it is to get in from their MA, but my impression is that it's far from guaranteed. Check posts from Reactor, who was at U of T.

The better developed your economic tools are, and the more you know a literature, the easier it will be to get a good understanding of a paper without reading it in detail. So I wouldn't worry too much about your reading speed right now, as you should get better at reading papers quickly as you move along in grad school. That being said, there have been a couple of papers that I've spent a few hours working through last semester. Sometimes to really understand a paper I find that I need to work through the details, which is hard for me with some theory papers. You can learn a lot from going through a paper slowly and replicating the key results, so don't be discouraged if that's what you've been doing and it takes you a long time.

I don't know how you're setting this up, but most of the profs doing research in finance are in the business school (Sauder), there are people both in asset pricing and corporate finance. I don't know whether you could necessarily get someone to take you on as a summer student or RA though, but I guess you can always try.

one thing a friend of mine did was mention his paper in his SOP, including the title and the SSRN URL. (so if they really cared they could look it up). These are 'report papers' as opposed to research papers? Then the value added might be negative anyways. If it isn't like the sort of research you'd do as an Econ prof at a research-based department, then the value added will be negative for pure econ programs at research-based departments. If you're applying to applied econ and AgEc programs, things might be different.

For funding - most programs offer funding to some students, but not all students. Within Canada, it tends to be the case that for a given applicant, you have higher chances of getting better funding at a lower ranked school than at a higher ranked one. I know that Calgary, McGill, SFU, Alberta, and Guelph all have some good environmental economists on faculty, and I think they all have reasonable MA programs. If you're sensitive to funding, I'd apply to a few of these schools. Note that Econphd.net rankings probably underrate Calgary.

If you're interested in environmental economics, you could also apply for UBC's Ag Econ MSc (2 years). Queen's, U of T, and UBC are the 3 most known Canadian MA programs in Econ. You could also try schools like Calgary, McMaster, York, etc. in Canada.

I'd echo some previous comments - it should be possible to get in somewhere. I'd recommend trying a range from top 50ish schools to top 100ish schools. Ask your former profs what's reasonable. Hopefully at least one prof (preferably 2) from the school you attended as a PhD student will be supportive of your desire to pursue a career in economic research and will be supportive in suggesting schools that would be appropriate for you.

I'm actually at UBC. Like any other PhD program, you could go in straight out of undergrad if you were sufficiently prepared. What's your background, academically? Most students in my year (and I think the year below me as well) have MAs; the year above me is a mix. Most Canadian students who are interested in grad school and don't get into a top 10 school out of undergrad do a MA as far as I've seen. There may be a slight preference for those with MAs - since MA grades are usually a good predictor of PhD grades.

First, I wouldn't limit yourself to applying to 10 schools (despite the cost) - perhaps apply to a couple more top schools if your references don't mind (eg Yale, Penn). Given your profile, you do have some 'upside risk' of getting into a top 9 school if your references think you do - in which case you should apply to a few more to up your chances. Sure, apply to UCLA and Mich too, other people seem to have offered good suggestions as well. I would apply to a couple of business schools too, given your interests. You can decide later where you want to go after your offers have come in, there's a lot of randomness in the application process, plus during your masters you'll learn a bit more about your field interests, different schools, etc (even if you think you already know a lot about these things). I don't think applying to 15 schools is unreasonable. To the OP: I think with Canadian placement - any preference for Canadians comes from closer contacts between Canadian profs + that stated preference for Canadian applicants (I think they're required to make that statement) + they realize people who are from Canada are more likely to want to live in Canada and hence are more likely to take the job if they get multiple offers. Given that you did an undergrad and MA at Queen's and (I'm guessing) are a citizen, I'm not sure how much more going to a Canadian grad school would help you get placed vs going to an equally good US one.