经济类申请阅读笔记

danielmiraceUID: 2454767

What I have learnt (MAINLY FOR ECON )From my blog: http://danielyoung.blog.sohu.com/
Lately, I have been browsing through some on-line essays written by American students who are mostly in the PhD program of economics. Some of what said is might be useful to us, Chinese applicants.
1, What matters most? LOR> Math> GRE-Q> GPA
Letters of recommendation are invaluable if they are written by someone the adcom respects. Of course, it is not really an option for most Chinese students.
Then, math. The standard package of math courses of a Chinese applicant include: calculus I-II, linear algebra and Mathematical probability and statistics. Beyond this, real analysis seems to be most critical. In some extreme cases, adcoms favor a math major much more than an econ major with a relatively weak mathematical background.

2, GRE & TOEFL
The performance in GRE is often belittled. However, according to those US students, GRE matters, especially the quantitative section. Importance: Q>AW>V.
Why adcoms attach much importance to “silly” things like GRE. (1) Few things are easily comparable. A similar score in micro might mean wholly different things. (2) Signalling. They take performance in GRE as the proxy for learning ability or intelligence.
Of course, some professors despise the emphasis on GRE, as they should. Nevertheless, given the highly diverse admission standards across econ departments in US, a good score in GRE can not hurt you. By the way, since the split test is now implemented in China, the validity of the test is acknowledged more widely. Do not worry about scoring suspiciously high, if that is your concern.
TOEFL. Do your best in the speaking section. It would be helpful in securing a teaching assistantship.

3, Transfer.
Some applicants plan to join a second-rate program and then transfer to a top one. This kind of transfer might be very difficult, if not impossible.
(1)
The workload in the first year of any program is so heavy that it is very difficult to do meaningful research or take more math courses. Keep in mind that you still have to score very high in final exams.
(2)
Adcoms of top programs are not all that excited about students from less reputable universities.

4, Programs in Canada, UK and Australia merit serious consideration.

The attachment contains the collection of relevant articles in the form of PDF. econ phd net.part06.rar (90.51 KB, 下载次数: 49)

2009-8-8 08:54:05 上传

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econ phd net.part01.rar (195.31 KB, 下载次数: 50)

2009-8-8 08:54:11 上传

下载次数: 50

econ phd net.part02.rar (195.31 KB, 下载次数: 46)

2009-8-8 08:54:16 上传

下载次数: 46

econ phd net.part03.rar (195.31 KB, 下载次数: 48)

2009-8-8 08:54:22 上传

下载次数: 48

econ phd net.part04.rar (195.31 KB, 下载次数: 54)

2009-8-8 08:54:27 上传

下载次数: 54

econ phd net.part05.rar (195.31 KB, 下载次数: 59)

2009-8-8 08:54:33 上传

下载次数: 59

建议仅供参考

dualangUID: 2470343

顶  这些我以前都看过

然后就相当沮丧了。。。

我一直在想，graduate program那么prefer math major的，那么ECON的undergraduate为什么还要存在？就算存在了，我觉得也应该改名，叫做extremely fucking hard to apply for good econ graduate program major，不要***误导那么多人

你说大一大二进来，谁知道那么多事情？最多也就想着GRE好好考，GPA弄高点就算了，结果弄完发现GRE一点也不重要，GPA不高到变态也没什么意义，最终还是推荐信。。。

那么多的潜规则，只能把一些很有潜力的但是没那么早准备的人排除在外，不知道这样的学术圈到最后会变得怎么样呢，呵呵   LOR>EVERYTHING

anyway 不知道这算不算逆向选择呢，还是只能算信息不对称，呵呵

danielmiraceUID: 2454767

哎，我原来也不知道。。。。。