notacolour

I don't think that if you spend five years focusing on macro, you're going to want to dump all of that and go to applied micro. That said, switching to a somewhat related field is common. There are indeed some postdocs that encourage this, but not many. I'm thinking here of the Robert Wood Johnson postdoc, which IIRC is aimed at getting people who didn't specialize in health to do health-related work. But otherwise, switching fields (beyond, say, expanding into another area of applied micro or somesuch) generally doesn't happen until post-tenure, because there's a huge investment to make in learning the literature of a new field and so on.

So I can't ask questions about the band Boston here?

What do you mean? Are you talking about doing a PhD in Europe?

Glenwood South is pretty good, and has my favorite restaurant in the Triangle (which is really just a bar that serves really good, not-too-expensive food): Rockford. Also a ton of other restaurants, some of them great, and quite a few bars. I actually don't know about clubs, but that's not my thing. My impression that the clubs are more downtown in Raleigh. As far as music in Raleigh, my two favorite places are Lincoln Theatre (which seems to have stopped having music that interests me, alas) and the Pour House. The latter is pretty laid back, with pool tables upstairs and good beer. Often pretty good music, too. And now that I've typed that up, I don't know where the original questioner was actually asking about. Perhaps you meant more Durham or Chapel Hill. Oh, well... Not so sure you have to see Bull Durham, but it's a pretty good movie. I would say it's less indicative of the Triangle than it used to be, though I imagine minor league baseball hasn't changed too much. Unfortunately the Bulls moved out of the stadium where that was filmed, but their new one is a nice place to go watch a game.

I mostly agree with you there, which is why I dispute the first part of the original quote, not the second. The math GRE measures test-taking ability and a very narrow range of basic mathematical skills. I don't really think that an MA is going to help at all in raising your math GRE score--certainly not as much as spending much less than a year reviewing basic math and taking practice tests.

I love Weaver St. Market.

It's Carrboro.

It's not used in econometrics, but it can be the ideal model in experimental settings. You're right that it's generally not as intuitive as regression, but psychologists and some statisticians come at everything from an ANOVA perspective, so it's helpful to have some grasp of that. Many economists don't.

ARE, let me know if you need any recommendations while in Greensboro. If there's anything you'd like to ask me in person, let me know and I can make sure I'm in my office.

I don't know about parking on campus for econ grad students in particular, but I'm going to assume it's horrible. I biked a fair amount in Raleigh, but yeah...it's not a very bike-friendly city. On the other hand, parts are pretty flat and biking through the neighborhoods between NCSU and downtown isn't bad. My roommate had a nice scooter (basically a knockoff Vespa) that he rode to campus every day with no trouble. But if you're planning on biking, definitely check out the route beforehand to see if it will be reasonable to bike.

Well, there's something of a tradeoff between campus and bars. There used to be bars and restaurants on Hillsborough St., but now there are just a couple (though I did like Jackpot back when I lived there--hilarious hipster-wannabe crowd, and there are a couple of restaurants and cafes left on Hillsborough). A lot more bars and restaurants are in Glenwood South (including my favorite restaurant, which is basically just a bar that serves impressively good sandwiches, Rockford) and into downtown (e.g. impressive beer selection, but annoying frat-boy crowd, at Flying Saucer). I rented directly from a horrible small-time landlord when I was there, and wouldn't recommend them. But here is a map showing the walk from where I lived to the econ building. The neighborhood just south of where I lived (across the train tracks) is Boylan Heights--nicer area (though note that that hole is Central Prison) to live than where I was, with some rentals available I think, but all in houses. But I was pretty far from the econ building, obviously, and that would be even farther. I hate recently-built "garden"-style apartments, but there are some neat older apartment complexes around there. Some hate them, and some like places with character. Two examples are near St. Mary's on Hillsborough (both slightly closer than where I lived): Grosvenor Gardens and Cameron Court. Still probably about a 20 minute walk to your part of campus, though. Another great area to look would be just north of Hillsborough St. There can be a lot of undergrads, so I'd recommend poking around and checking out the neighbors, but there can be some decent rentals in there as well. And Cameron Village, for being basically a strip mall, has its charms. There's another old building over there which I never went in, but it looked interesting: the Raleigh Apartments. And walking or driving around that neighborhood, I'm sure you'd see some available rentals. Anyway, those are some suggestions.

What do you mean, a good area? That kind of depends on what sort of area and housing you'd like.

Well, those are very vague questions, so I'm sure there could be aspects of them for which an econ phd would be useful. That said, you'd have to make a huge investment in math coursework--at least three semesters. And with an econ phd, you'd be spending a ton of time gaining lots of tools that wouldn't be very useful for looking at those issues. On the other hand, public policy would allow you to gain relevant tools of economic analysis while not getting bogged down in the methods you wouldn't use. In geography as well, there is a whole body of research in economic geography that has probably looked at some of these issues as well, focusing on their spatial dimensions.

First, I don't think you really know what an econ phd is about. You would need lots more math (at least three semesters of calculus, ideally also linear algebra and real analysis), and then you would spend years learning formal mathematical theory that probably wouldn't really interest you. After all of that, you could start doing applied work. So no, I don't really think econ is what you'd want here. I also don't see how an urban planning degree is really applicable. I guess it could work if your idea is just to obtain another degree for its own sake, but it's not all that relevant to what you want to do. It seems like the possibilities you could think about would be poli sci, geography, and public policy. The latter two would probably be more flexible in terms of the questions you could examine and the jobs you could get with a PhD, but poli sci could work better as an extension of what you already know--assuming you can fit the work you'd like to do into that framework.

Yeah. You'll be fine, really. Just do the best you can in the class and know that nobody will care.