Profile evaluation PhD economics

[Cooperatores]

Hi everyone, I have a couple of questions about my profile:

Educational background:

-Bachelor: 4/4 with honors (top 100 university, Europe)

-Master: 3.6/4 (top 20 university, Europe)

Core Courses at Master level:

-Math (real analysis) B-

-Statistics B

-Econometrics A-

GRE:

Quant 160 Verb 162 (planned retaking)

Reference letters:

My Master thesis supervisor, top faculty member and reasonably strong

My Bachelor thesis supervisor, I assume not so strong

Research experience:

No RA

Work experience:

currently in a one year traineeship at ECB with high programming content

questions:

-Apart from retaking the GRE, are there other ways to make my profile stronger? What are the European universities reachable?

A sincere thank you in advance.

 

 

[SwissEconomist]

So your math grades are not particulary good. But can you tell me in which european country you did your bachelor and master that makes it easier to evaluate your grades (because the level of grade inflation is pretty different between the different european countries). Maybe you could also say how you rank within your program (top 10%, top 20%, top 30%, etc.).

 

Regarding your GRE, your verbal score is fine but try to get your quant GRE at least at 165. It is a pity that you don't have any RA experience that could be a major drawback when it comes to your application. Is your ECB traineeship comparable with a RA or is more like a regular finance job?

Edited July 12, 2022 by SwissEconomist

[Cooperatores]

I attended Torino university in the Bachelor and Bocconi for the Master. For the ranking I would think about top 10% of the Bachelor and 30% of the Master.

Regarding the GRE I agree about the fact that the Quantitative score gas to be improved, indeed I will retake it.

The traineeship has a great amount of data mining and data cleaning, but at the moment it does not include an high theoretical content. It would be wise to search for RA experience after the end of my contract at the ECB?

[SwissEconomist]

I mean the Bocconi Econ Master is one of the best Masters when it comes to PhD placement and the ECB traineeship definitely works somewhat as a substitute for RA work. Therefore I would recommend that you apply to a bunch of Universities in the top 10 and the top 20 of Europe (I would ask your Master Thesis Supervisor for advice for which Universities you should apply - which will also tell you something about the quality of the LoR he/she will write). If you don't get into a program you like than you can still try to get a Predoc Job and reapply in the next year. 

[Cooperatores]

Thank you so much for the useful  advices, surely I will write to my thesis supervisor for a complete feedback.