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As an outside observer of this site straddling management and economics, I thought I would post this here. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bolotnyy/files/bbb_mentalhealth_paper.pdf PhDs are immensely stressful and isolating. A recent study (linked above) shows that Econ PhDs at top schools are about as mentally distressed as incarcerated people and as lonely as retirees. The collective economics profession is currently going through serious soul-searching on mental health in light of recent tragic events at Harvard, Princeton, and other schools (quick google searches can provide more information). Our profession is incredibly hard, both mentally and emotionally. Unless you are steeped in an academic research environment from a young age, you often don't fully understand the rigors and challenges of research academia until you enter a PhD. As PhDs and faculty, we often tie up too much of our identity in peer recognition of our work or our status in the field. In many cases, the norms of academia lead us to be inappropriately confrontational and coarse in interacting with our peers and their work. This environment is intensely personal but often does not promote the idea that each person has intrinsic self-worth. This has to change now. We are living in extraordinary times due to COVID. Check on your cohort-mates, colleagues, and friends in academia. A little kindness goes a long way. You never know when an interaction with them will be your last.

How disadvantaged are international applicants compared to citizens/permanent residents? Aside from the general tips for applicants, how can international applicants increase their chances of getting admission in a top school?

Will PhD admissions at the top 10 places be more or less competitive next year? As students of Economics we should be able to figure this out. Curious what other people think. Couple consideration that come to mind -Recession causes more applicants -International Applicants may not apply this cycle? -Funding constraints cause PhD programs to downsize cohorts.

----------- Note from Forum Admin ----------- Welcome to the 2020 Ph.D. in business concentrations' sweat thread! This is a thread for applicants (hopefully!) starting their PhD program in 2020! Use this is vent, discuss any frustrations, or random musings that you would like others to weigh in on! Best of luck to this years applicants! For those of you just starting to browse this website, check out the Welcome to the Forum thread for information that has been helpful in the past. ------------------------------------------------------- Hey friends. I'm hoping to start a business PhD in 2020, and I'm already starting to sweat with the first deadlines coming up. I also don't know any other applicants personally, so I wanted to start a thread for anyone also starting to sweat. :luck2:

So I've been lurking about this forum for sometimes and one thing I observed is that the application sweat thread got less and less active each admission season. I wonder if it's just the general trend of people moving away from online, anonymous forum, or there are new channels for applicants to converse? I wonder if there is a group chat or a Discord channel somewhere that is replacing Urch?:drunk:

When do the admission committees go over all the applicants? How long do they take to come to a decision? When do they start informing applicants (informally or formally)?

Welcome to the Ph.D. in business concentrations' sweat thread for applicants! This is a thread for applicants (hopefully!) starting their PhD program in Fall 2019! Use this is vent, discuss any frustrations, or random musings that you would like others to weigh in on! Best of luck to this years applicants! For those of you just starting to browse this website, check out this thread for information that has been helpful in the past.

Hello Urchers-- Reading the various pieces of advice and profile evaluations on this forum got me thinking about the value of accumulated advice / anecdotes versus quantitative data. So naturally, I wrote a survey to collect information on our applicant profiles and admissions outcomes. This survey will not collect any identifiable information, but it will give us a basis for understanding the applicant pool at various universities and the likelihood that a person with a specific profile would be within the range of accepted applicants. Hopefully it will also give us some information on the relative importance of scores, GPA, letters, SOP quality (fuzzy to measure), personal connections / contact, work and research experience, English proficiency, etc. The survey should accommodate applicants to Economics and Business PhD programs, and is geared towards US programs. If you have specific suggestions (important data points I'm not including, revisions for clarity), please let me know. This is the product of a few hours of quick tinkering, so I'll be shocked if there are no errors. This is not formal research and has not been reviewed by any ethics committees, FYI. You can access the survey at the link below. Please take it only once, and take it AFTER you have received all of your admission results. This year's cohort will need to wait until March / April to complete the survey, but those of you who are already in PhD programs or who applied in previous cycles can provide information now. Survey link (via google forms) About you Good luck to the current applicants, and thank you to anyone who chooses to participate. (cross-posted in PhD in Business and PhD in Economics)

It is a well-known fact that external funding sources can have a large influence on admissions outcomes. Does anyone have information on fellowships that prospective applicants can apply to? The following are under my radar: - NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (deadline passed) - Soros Fellowship (for 1st/2nd gen immigrant applicants) - Ford Foundation Fellowship (for minority applicants) Are there any else that people are aware of?

Welcome to the 2018 Ph.D. in business concentrations' sweat thread! This is a thread for applicants (hopefully!) starting their PhD program in 2018! Use this is vent, discuss any frustrations, or random musings that you would like others to weigh in on! Best of luck to this years applicants! For those of you just starting to browse this website, check out this thread for information that has been helpful in the past.

For how much I've heard that admissions can be affected by letter writers leveraging connections with colleagues on adcoms, I have no idea how this works in practice, or if there is a role in all this for the applicant. I suspect other applicants find the process similarly opaque. An example on context, in this wonderful thread I lurked ( http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/157874-admissions-process.html ), @startz and @Kaysa offer some very useful, candid opinions on the admissions process, and cite the importance of adcom members knowing an applicant's reference. I have two questions on this process, hoping to get some first- or second-hand accounts: (1) Where in the process does the whole personal connection thing tend to factor in? @Kaysa suggests profs on adcoms may call letter writers they know. Is it common for writers to directly ring up a friend on an adcom? (2) Does the applicant need to play a role in any of this? For example, if writers do tend to ring up their colleagues, is it the applicant's job to nudge the writer in that direction and/or signal clearly which program(s) the applicant really would love the help with? What time in the application/admissions process makes most sense to do this? Thanks!

Hey All, This might seem a little frivolous, but I've been wondering what CVs for applicants typically look like. I know that in the US one page is usually the standard, but does that still hold true for PhD applicants. Or do you try and copy the format of academic CVs that professors usually have? Instinctively I'd be leaning towards the latter option, but it seems a little absurd, since there is little academic information (no published papers, etc.) that I can provide. Do I include any work experience and extracurriculars? I'd love to get some help on the headlines according to which a typical PhD applicant structures his/her CV. Thanks so much for the help Lumpi

For those of you thinking about taking the plunge in the fall, I thought I'd share what I'd learned in this painful, arcane process to save you just a little suffering. Start your math journey early. You're going to need at least Calc I-III, Linear Algebra, some serious stats classes (not gen-eds), and some proof-writing courses. Since math is highly sequential, you want to at least get Calc I- II done ASAP so you can begin on those other courses. However, don't get stuck on the idea of "I NEEEEEED to take Real Analysis or Advanced Calc, if I can't take it because of course sequencing/pre-reqs/scheduling/bad luck, I'll never get in!" This is totally false. What you "neeeeeed" is proofs courses. I took an intro to proofs class, and a course called Math Econ which covered the necessary components from RA. Proofs courses require a certain mathematical maturity; you'll frequently feel lost, frustrated, and annoyed. Take them when you're ready. Do stuff to stand out. I don't mean volunteering at tuba club or whatever high-school style things you did to stand out. I mean, give schools a reason to look at you. There are dozens and dozens of more or less "ideal" candidates who apply to each school; people who majored in Math and Econ and got really good GRE scores. You want those things, but try to show initiative. Seek out research opportunities of all kinds, not just RA positions. I was able to get funding to do independent economic research, something which my schools were very interested in. Take grad courses if possible. If you can get into the honors program, do it. Each of these things is only one feather in your cap, but with enough feathers, you can get a pretty impressive headdress going. PARTICIPATE!!! You need to participate in classes to get good letters of rec, plain and simple. If you're part of the "faceless blob" as my professor calls it, you're going to get a very lukewarm letter. Go to office hours, ask questions, participate, go above and beyond on your projects. The letters of rec are easily the most important part of your application; this is where you're getting tried and true economists to say "yep, he has the right stuff, accept him!" Show that you're passionate, and more importantly, that you're competent. These people will also be excellent mentors to you as you try to pick the right programs to apply to. Find a Mentor. If your school has a grad program, try to make friends with people there. Ask them about the process, what they liked/disliked about different schools, etc. Don't be a pest, but don't be shy either. Grad Coordinators, Professors, Grad Students ,etc can all give you valuable info that you can't get anywhere online, particularly about program quality. Don't get trapped in the top 10 bubble. For some reason, people frequently get really stuck on the idea that they absolutely must go to a top 10 school. This might be true if you really only want a PhD to go into Academia at another top school. But If you look at the placement records for most schools, the placements aren't too shabby. Even schools way down in the 70s, like Clemson and UHouston, place people at fortune 500 firms and the Fed, and in the mid-range, people still do get placed into academic positions, but maybe not at the most prestigious schools. You should probably also evaluate, why do I want a PhD? Is it because I love Econ and I'm passionate about it and I want to learn all I can? Or because I think it's a stepping stone to some prestigious, influential position? If you said yes to the first one, you have *far* more options than just the top 10, and you should seriously consider all of them. The job market even for completely unranked programs is not bad at all. Hopefully you find this helpful! Feel free to comment with your own advice as well!