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Hello all wise men, I am in a desperate need of advice to calm myself and view this matter realistically, not with a too pessimistic nor too positive attitude. Also, please let me ask various and personal questions I have about Econ Phd admissions. To give you some background, I am a Purdue University (flagship, 50s National Ranking, 40s Econ Ranking, 20s Math and Stat ranking) undergrad in Economics Honors with Math and Stat minors. So, I will be completing Calc1~3, Linear Alge, Diff Eq, Foundations Analysis, Probability, Regression Analysis, Quality Control, Experiment Designs, as well as Econometrics, Trade, Micro Macro Theories, IO, Game Theory, Banking. My GPA is 4.0/4.0 for now, and I believe I can make it at least 3.9 by the time I apply and I graduate. I am also an RA to renowned professors here, and will be doing some TA and RA works at the department starting Summer 2021. So, I will get a lot of experience in Stata and may get decent LORs from top faculties who studied in universities like Michigan, Oxford, Stanford, etc. I will applying this year. Also, I am an international. I transferred to Purdue to study Flying, but ended up in Economics because of both my personal interest and COVID's detrimental impacts on Aviation Industry. I did not have enough money and time to transfer again to another prestigious university/college. I want to study Trade and Development. Here are my concerns: 1. The name of Purdue as an undergrad in this elitist world. 2. The timing of courses; I will be taking Diff Eq, Senior Honors Thesis, Probability, and some Stat courses and Econ courses during Fall 2021 and Spring 2022. I believe this means the performance in these courses will not be counted toward my admissions. Please let me know what this actually means in real world admissions. 3. Poor performance in prior university: I took some electives in a foreign university (quite good actually) for a year before I transferred. There I got 27 credits and GPA was about 3.2/4.0. How is this going to play out? I am planning to apply for the following universities due to my personal reasons (I want to go somewhere that is not too far from here): (1) Northwestern, Michigan, Wisconsin (2) OSU, Wash U (3) Purdue (Including AGEC), Notre Dame, UIUC, MSU What do you think my chances are at these universities? Also, I want some advice on AGEC. One of my plans is to pursue a AGEC Master's here and proceed to AGEC programs in places like Berkeley, Davis, and Maryland. How is this compared to the Econ PhD admissions? Better shot? AGEC vs ECON in real world academia? Would AGEC Master's with thesis be an advantage to ECON PhD admissions if I try once more after the Master's? Thanks for reading this long story+questions. Please help me out. I would appreciate any advice and opinions. Thank you.