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I'm an undergraduate student studying economics, and I am planning my courses over my junior and senior year. My goal is to as an equity analyst covering the financial sector (because it is so directly driven by economics), or working at a macro hedge fund. I am trying to plan my courses accordingly, but I'm having difficulty choosing a path. Would anyone be willing to help me map out the courses that I should be taking? These are the related courses I've taken so far: Finite Mathematics Principles of Statistics Calculus I Linear Algebra Microeconomics Macroeconomics Financial Accounting I am trying to decide if, given my situation, I would be better off choosing more qualitative classes, or more quantitative. I am at a top 20 undergrad school with all the typical classes. I will definitely take: Micro Theory Macro Theory Money and Banking Industrial Organizations Instruments and Markets Corporate Finance Investment Analysis The courses I'm considering are: Calculus II Differential Equations Intro to Econometrics Topics in Econometrics Development Economics Game Theory Economic Growth International Finance Strategic Analysis Economic History of the U.S. Wages, Employment & Labor Markets I don't know enough about economics to judge whether or not courses like econometrics and calculus II will be applicable to understanding the economy from an investing perspective (I'm not a quant or trader type). I plan to get my MBA, not a higher degree in economics, so positioning myself for graduate admissions isn't an issue. I apologize for the lengthy post, but if anyone is willing to point me in the right direction (qualitative vs quantitative, most useful courses), I would be greatly appreciative.

Hi everyone, I’m a 32 years old international applicant from South East Asia. I’m preparing to apply for a Ph.D. in Finance/Financial Economics in Fall 2018. My profile is given below. Could you please evaluate my profile? I understand that evaluating an international applicant is quite difficult. Any help would be appreciated. Undergrad: B.S. in Corporate Finance from top economics university in my country – South East Asia. GPA: 8.53 /10, graduate with excellence, top 5 in my class and top 1% of all students graduated (approximate 3,000 students) Graduate 1: M.S. in Finance from a U.S. university (private, unranked). GPA: 3.97, with high honors, an outstanding student of the finance department, rank number 1. Graduate 2: M.A. in Economics from a U.S. university (overall ranking 23, economics department ranking 22). GPA (until now): 3.67 (overall), 4.0 Economics courses Test Scores (GRE): 166Q (92%) / 152V (54%) / 4.5 AWA (56%). Toefl Score: 101 Awards and scholarships: - Winner of the outstanding student awards of the year 2012 from the Dean of the university. - Certificate of Merit for excellent students, class of 2007, for top 1 percent of all students from the Dean of the University. - Academic scholarships for excellent students in 4 continuous years: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. Math courses:Advanced Math I (10/10), Advanced Math II (9/10), Theories of Probability and Statistics (7/10), Principles of Statistics (9/10), Corporate Statistics (8.8/10), Mathematics Methods (7.2/10), Financial Mathematics (9.7/10), Regression Analysis (A), Mathematics for economists (A), Real Analysis (B-), Probability and Statistics for Economists (Ph.D. level, will take in Fall). Finance courses: - Undergrad level: Financial accounting, Public finance, corporate finance, financial analysis, financial and monetary theories, international finance. - Graduate level: Derivative markets, M&A, Working Capital Management, Capital budgeting, Financial strategies, Financial modeling, International corporate finance, Financial reporting analysis, Financial markets and institutions, Investment, Corporate finance. (All A and A+) Economics courses: - Undergrad level: Macro, Micro, Econometrics, Development Econ, History of Economics theories, - Graduate level: Micro (A), Applied Econometrics (A), Macro (will take in Fall). Research Experience: 1 semester for an Econ Professor (top 5% ideas list), will be 10 months at the time I apply. We're doing a research regarding the Bond market. Teaching Experience: None Programming: STATA, MATLAB, R, Python, Advanced Excel. LOR: - 1 from the Professor I’m RAing (Yale Ph.D.top 5% IDEAS lists), should be strong as my Professor encouraged me to apply for a Ph.D. - 1 from the Microeconomics Professor (UCLA Ph.D., not many publications), should be standard. - 1 more I haven’t decided yet. All 3 Professors should be from my MA Econ program. Work Experience: 9 years, mostly in finance positions (CFO, finance manager, project manager) Concentration Applying to: Corporate finance, and financial econometrics (I’m very interested in econometrics course I took at grad school) Number of programs planned to apply to: about 20 Dream Schools: I will apply to almost T30-T75 and I’ll be happy for any admission. For Ph.D. Finance, I'm thinking about UT Austin, ASU, UC Irvine, Texas A&M, George Washington University, Washing State University, Indiana University, U of Colorado, U of Connecticut, U of Oregon, UT Dallas. I also apply to 5-10 Ph.D. Economics programs that are pretty strong in financial economics and rank widely from 20-75 (UTAustin, USC, UCI, UCSC, UCSB, Texas A&M, etc). What made you want to pursue a Ph.D.? First and most important, I love teaching and sharing knowledge with everybody. My dream job is to be a Professor in Finance. Second, I love doing researches or any research related jobs. Third but not too much related, my family has a studying tradition with many Masters and Ph.D. holders, thus makes a Ph.D. my dream since I was a high school student. I understand that my decision to quit my current job to chase my Ph.D. dream will cost me a lot, but following my dream is the happiest feeling I’ve ever had. Questions or concerns you have about your profile? Low GRE quant score, I will retake in Summer, my target is to get 168Q. Don’t have a strong math background, lacking advanced math courses such as cal III or multivariate analysis. I only got B- for the Real Analysis I took in my MA program. The reason is clear, I left the academic environment for almost 10 years and failed with the first half of the course but I catch up pretty quick in the second half and become near the average of my class, which had almost senior math major students. No publications. My undergrad GPA will be low if it is converted to the U.S. scale, but in my country, it’s tough to get near perfect GPA and my GPA is in top 5 of class and top 1% of all students. 9 years working experience would be a disadvantage to my profile as I’m quite older than other applicants and haven’t done too much academic research related jobs in that time. Thank you so much. Best!

Does anyone have any experience with Columbia's M.S in financial economics? I've been working on wall street for 4 years, but had sub-par math/econ grades in college (ivy). My ultimate goal is to gain admissions to a finance PhD program, but realize I need to take/re-take a number of math/econ courses, and was thinking I could take these classes while in the master's. Is this wishful thinking? The M.S is a 2-year program; if I were to be admitted and completed it, would this knock off my course requirements for a PhD program if I were admitted? Appreciate all the help!

Hi there, I've done a lot of reading on this forum so far and was hoping to find some help in evaluating my profile for grad school admissions. I've been out of my undergrad for a little over 4 years now, working in public accounting in Canada, and am looking to go back to do an MA in Economics or a Masters of Financial Economics. I was thinking of applying to the MFE program at U of T and Western in Canada, the Masters of Finance and Economics at LSE, the MSc of Managerial and Financial Economics at HEC and probably the MA of Economics at U of T and Queens. My profile is as follows: Undergrad: Undergrad in business from a top Canadian business school Majors: Business, but majored in economics and computer science for 2 years before transferring into business Undergrad GPA: 3.68 for four years, 3.88 in final year GRE: Just wrote, unofficial score was 166Q, 164V. I think I might be able to get a 170Q if I re-write, but just wrote yesterday so have to wait a month and know that will hold up applications for rolling admissions programs. Is it worth re-writing knowing that it will mean that it will hold up my application for rolling admissions programs (LSE in particular)?Courses (just picked the quant related ones): Calc I and II, full year of intermediate microeconomics, intermediate macroeconomics, econometrics, and finance. Also took a half year of advanced microeconomics last summary as mentioned below. Letters of Recommendation: Struggling a bit here. I can get strong professional letters of recommendation, but academic ones are more challenging since I've been out of school for over 4 years. I took an advanced microeconomic theory course last summer as a refresher, and got a 93, but it was taught by a PhD student - is it worth requesting a letter from him or is better to ask more senior professors I had 6+ years ago who likely barely remember me? Any advice is really appreciated - particularly around re-writing the GRE, reference letters, applying as a 'mature' student who's been out of school for a few years, and whether it's wishful thinking to get into these programs with my stats. Thanks!

I have been looking at a range of schools in the top 50 economics programs. I am interested in applied research questions with behavioral elements. Usually questions that involve markets (financial markets, auctions, etc.) but also areas that have been affected by different forms of policy and regulation (Environment, energy, industry etc.). I think theory is interesting as well. My ideal school/advisor would have research that spans many different topics answering interesting applied questions and also does some theory projects (more applied though). There is no buzzword for my research interests, which is a problem when looking for well known researchers I would like to study under. Someone interested in macro for example can look through macro subdivisions at top schools, or citations for macro papers. I would really appreciate some suggestions of active researchers at different top 50 programs whose research lines up with my description above. If no economists come to mind, then some schools in general that would be good for my research interests would help. I have been spending way too much time trying to figure this out on my own, so it would save me a lot of stress if you guys could help me out. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I am collecting all the information I can (placements, relationship between grad students and faculty, realtionship between grad students, life on campus, the city, etc.) about the PhD. in Economics program at Princeton, Chicago, NYU, NW and Minnesota. I am macro-finance so it would be great if you can rank those departments in that field. Any suggestion is more than welcome! Thanks.

I was an Economics major on the path to becoming a health economist. If all of my research is in public health and I want to switch focus to finance, how would I go about doing this? Should I exclude that info from my application? I'm currently an RA for a Public Health Research Center. How can I spin this to help me get a position as an RA in a finance/economics research center? Do you think this will negatively affect my app? My ultimate goal is to become a professor and spend my career doing finance-related research. Thanks for all your help.