Journey to an Economics PhD at US from a non-traditional background from outside US-Part 2:Reference & Research Interest+ GRE+ English Proficiency
Links to previous parts of the series:
Journey-to-an-economics-phd-at-us-from-a-non-traditional-background-from-outside-US-part-1
2)References and Research Experience
First of all ,let me make it clear that references are the most important thing in your application.
Let me explain it later .First ,let me provide the reason why I have put References and Research together because strangely these two are highly intertwined with each other in a complicated manner at least in economics.
You obviously need to show that you have research experience in economics so as to justify your passion and ability to produce independent research during your PhD .How do you show it?
Doing research projects/thesis and getting references from the Professors.
No……
Getting references by doing research projects and thesis
What is the difference between two? The reference letter writer must be impressed enough to write you an even more impressive recommendation for the admission committee. The committee gives more importance (read most )to the quality of recommendation more than the type of research that you have conducted. In fact they don’t care about the type of research that you have done. This reason is quite justified as members of the admission committee may not be well versed by your research and your general attitude while conducting research and hence care more about recommendations where someone who is already a well established economist vouch for your ability to do independent research.
But who to ask for your references ?Some who knows you well to comment on your research abilities (Hopefully positively?)
Well here this gets pretty complicated? I personally feel that there are four types of recommenders existing in economics PhD world.
A. The category of professors who are extremely well connected to the department.
These include professors who work or have co-authors in that department or themselves are graduate of that program.
I have a few classmates who have continued to work as pre-doc at LSE and are now going to do their Phd at the same department.
B. The category of professors who are well …famous?
For example :Opportunity Insights lead by Raj Chetty have known to place their graduate either in MIT or Harvard.
I have a friend who is doing RA under Jordi Galí while another classmate did a summer RA under Daron Acemoglu. She is the one mentioned in Part 1 who is now at Cambridge .
C. The category of professors who are well known in their field
I myself had my references written by a famous econometrics professor who knew me well as I have taken both Econometrics modules of PhD level of 1st and 2nd year under him and have done relatively well .I also regularly attended his office hours to the point of annoyance asking him questions, discussing papers and in short boring him. My only tip is be shameless-At worst he is ignore you or at best he is going to give a reference.
D. The category of professors who are not so well known nor connected to the department but have excellent credentials(read belong to top economics departments of their country) and know you well enough either with you working as research assistant under that person or he/she being your (master) thesis supervisor.
Now here is the point that, I have to mention again .There is a caste system in economics . This is an open secret .There must be someone to vouch for you who themselves come from an equally good graduate program ,are associated with a top econ department of their country , who has done significant research and published in well established journals .There must be someone in the circle to bring you in the circle. In short -Economics departments are like cults.
So how to get that reference?
A. Full time research Assistantship-
After completing your masters work as a research assistant for well professors in a top econ department.
There are many people who I know after completing their masters in India have done their research assistantships at Indian Statistical Institute ,Delhi School of Economics ,Indian School of Business or IIM .They have been placed at Cornell, NYU, Columbia, Rice .
There is also another set of RA’s who have worked a couple of years for professors at various research centres in India , then moved to working as RA at some prestigious pre-doc program like SIEPER,J-Pal or Tobin Centre. This is of course a few top of the mind examples that I can think of. If you have the patience and believe a couple of 4–5 years of your life is worth investing as an RA to get into a top 10 PhD program. Go for it!
Then there are numerous RA positions in US and Europe. These positions are extremely competitive (I can say from personal experience) but is stepping stone towards a PhD. For these usually you need at least a masters degree or a 4 year undergrad degree from a well known economics department .I know many people from my batch or senior batch who are doing RA’s at LSE, UChicago, Harvard Public Policy, Harvard Business School, Cornell , Columbia and University of Zurich.
B. Part time research Assistantship
Many of my friends have been working part-time for various professors .This is a good gig as there lot of restrictions like budget or visa to get a full time research assistantship. Moreover ,these are usually not advertised and you have to personally approach the professor for such positions. This means there is less competition.
I myself worked part-time from September-November for a professor at Econometrics in Oxford . He is a fairly well known known person and he was pretty impressed with my Python skills .Hence ,I asked for his recommendation and since I have an offer ,I am sure he wrote me a nice one :).
C)Doing a thesis
If you have described your thesis in detail in your Statement of Purpose or resume-you have to ask a recommendation from your thesis supervisor for validation of your work and to explain how you carried out original research.
I described my thesis on muti-asset options which I did in University of Edinburgh and asked my supervisor from mathematics department for recommendations.
Most successful candidates have either worked as part time /full time research assistants(sometimes both) under a professor +done a thesis to get the necessary reference (You usually need 3).
3)GRE
You need Quantitative section at least 163–165 ( depending on the program).This is kind of necessary condition used to weed out applications. Usually ,applications below this mark are discarded. After this ,nobody even looks or cares about these scores again while reviewing your applications .
Nobody cares about your verbal or analytical writing. If you have above 153 ,I guess you are safe.
My Quantitaive-169 ,verbal-156, Analytical Writing-3.0
4)English Proficiency test
This is again a necessary condition .Your application is not judged on your English score. Just get the necessary grade required and be done with it.
In my next section ,I am going to talk about Statement of purpose and how to choose colleges .The link is below:
