<p>Hey all,</p>
<p>I'm a second-year econ major at UChicago, and I'm really considering entering academia when I graduate; ideally, I want a PhD in Econ/PubPol. I'm at roughly a 3.5 GPA, and I was wondering if anyone knew how GPA works for grad school. </p>
<p>I know med schools want high GPAs, for example, so does a 3.5 bar me from top programs already? Also, do you usually apply directly for PhD programs, or first an MS in Econ?</p>
<p>Victor Lima is both literally and metaphorically your friend. Talk to him.</p>
<p>I will give you a long form response for others who might be in the same situation:</p>
<p>1) Dont talk to Victor Lima / Grace Hammond or any other advisor / professor in the department until you more thoroughly understand your own goals, the coursework that different caliber departments respectively look for, and the statistical odds or getting into various programs. In general, you should come to a conversation about pre-PhD goals well prepared, as it is in many ways an interview about recommendations letters in addition to a conversation about your goals. You are in direct competition with other undergraduates who are seeking support for their applications down the road, and professors dont write recommendations for every strong student since the more they write, the less clout is given to each (think about it: students all apply to the same programs, and hence a professor who recommends 20 students is doing no one a favor). They also talk to each other to ensure that the best applicants from Chicago are getting coordinated support. </p>
<p>2) Bad news first: While a 3.5 is very respectable in the college (it puts you in like the top quarter of your class), it is far short of what you need in the PhD admissions market. For a top 10-ish department (so the big five plus Yale, Berkeley, Columbia, Penn, Northwestern) you need to be nearly flawless GPA-wise, surely Phi Beta Kappa material overall, honors thesis, and a straight A student in demanding math sequences (full year of analysis certainly, plus some higher level courses to prove that was not an aberration). Some graduate coursework (PhD price theory or stat courses are most common) and rec letters linked to RA work is also pretty common these days. Several other strong applicants from Chicago will have these points and you will be compared against their CVs. It is no uncommon to see students with these numbers end up with only one or two offers from the top 10. </p>
<p>You would also be a long shot (but it would still be worth applying) at top 30 universities that are otherwise generically prestigious outside of economics (NYU, Cornell, Brown, Caltech, Michigan, Duke, Hopkins), since especially amongst applicants from selective colleges, many skip over top 30 departments that are not linked to strong schools in general (and thus competition at the aforementioned programs is more intense). International applicants tend to canvass the top 40 or so pretty thoroughly without regard to non-academic cache. </p>
<p>3) So some good news: a 3.5, assuming your math grades are principally As, and you put in the effort to do more than one RA positions with professors from which strong recommendations are garnered, probably lands you a spot in at least one large, state university in the top 40 (e.g., Maryland, Minnesota, a UC system school like San Diego) or so or a weaker private school (e.g., WUSTL, BC, GWU). Many of these programs have large cohorts and aim to balance out the preponderance of ESL students with some US graduates from top colleges, if only to ensure there are sufficient numbers of viable instructors for undergraduate courses down the road (at a school like UCLA, you would not just TA, you would actually teach undergraduates very early on in your time as a PhD student). </p>
<p>4) Which raises a separate matter: a 3.5 is very marketable in the elite university masters market for economics, public policy, finance, business, etc., and you should give some thought to if this might be more fitting for you. Two points to consider is that first, for most private / public sector roles a masters is still the right degree vs. a Ph.D., and second, there are numerous masters programs that permit PhD level coursework to be taken (if rigor is your cup of tea). Dont think for a minute you have to get a PhD in economics or quanty public policy to do degree bearing doctoral work in those fields. For example, well prepared MBA students at Booth and MPP students at the Harris School take and do well in PhD courses in the economics department at Chicago, even though they never could have been admitted to the PhD program. </p>
<p>I close with two hints: Look at the CVs of job candidates / current graduate students who are like you on PhD program websites. This will give you a sense of where you fit in resume wise. By like you, I mean the CVs of students from other selective colleges (not foreign schools) who are the same gender (women get a boost) and nationality as you. URM status is a major plus, but URMs are exceedingly rare in the profession apart from Latin students from Latin America (which are ubiquitous). I think you will find my claims above about admissions fitting.</p>
<p>Second, read some of the guides to being a PhD student in economics written by professors and students from good departments that are floating around on the internet. Dont dismiss the claims they make, as they are largely accurate. If they dont read well to you (e.g., I didnt really find real analysis interesting, I would not be happy teaching at a business school down the road if I cannot find an economics appointment), then consider other options.</p>
<p>Ok. I am not a PhD in economics, but I do have a fairly good idea of how graduate school admissions work at top universities. (Disclosure: I was in a PhD program before going to law school, and I am now back in a PhD program in a different subject). I disagree quite sharply with the assessment of the previous poster. I have seen many applicants to PhD programs at good places (Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Berkeley) who were far from “flawless.” But they got in, and they flourished. Yes, GPA is an important component of an application. but I would not say without knowing a lot more, that your GPA excludes you from a top program. </p>
<p>First: I probably shouldn’t have to spell this out to people who work in econ, but it really depends why your GPA is a 3.5. The raw number itself doesn’t mean as much as the information it represents. Admissions committees know this, and I would imagine that any really reasonable econ program would understand this acutely, since – after all – econ is very much about understanding how to use numbers to model more complicated things. Of course, I don’t think there is anything that can make up for bad grades in econ. Since you want to do advanced research in the field, at a minimum, you need to show that you are good at it. But is your GPA a 3.5 because you got a B in your graduate topology seminar or a B- in Ancient Greek? If you took hard classes and took risks in your studies, but had excellent grades in economics anyway, a reasonable admissions committee will see that and not penalize you for it. But if your GPA is a respectable B+ because you took easy classes and got mediocre grades in your econ classes, the committee will see that too, and that will hurt your chances considerably. Another way of putting it is: what story does your GPA tell? For many admissions committees, the story is a crucial dimension of your transcript. Is your story one of improvement over time? Perhaps you got to the U of C from a high school that didn’t prepare you well for the core or in math, but despite a very rough first year, you rose to the challenge and have been doing great work since then. I don’t want to overplay how much admissions committees will try to understand the nuances of your transcript, but they probably will try to understand what the number means a bit. </p>
<p>Second: GPA is only part of the story (as are GREs, and other personal aspects to your application). The critical questions in graduate admissions for <em>every</em> academic program are what does the applicant want to research/study, can s/he do it, and is it something someone on the faculty wants to supervise? If someone on the faculty wants to work with you more than with other people, you will probably be admitted – despite a 3.5 GPA and less than 800/800 GREs; or problems speaking English; or many other issues. </p>
<p>How do admissions committees decide this? The faculty member who wants to work with you generally makes it known to them. Faculty members often communicate their preferences to committee members before a decision is made. How do faculty members decide they want to work with you? You talk to them. You reach out to the people with whom you want to work, and discuss your interests and the issue of admissions. Before you do that, you should have a good sense of what you want to work on and how to discuss it. I have found faculty members quite frank about whether they think it is a good fit and whether they think there are any problems. (A personal anecdote: One professor at a top program told me explicitly that she didnt think she could get me through her admissions committee.)</p>
<p>In some sense, the rest of your application is to reassure the faculty members who want to work with you and the broader committee that they are making a sensible decision: that you will do good work; that you are worth the money they will invest in you (all top programs the university support you financially – and often that money comes from the grants the faculty member her/himself has gotten); that you will not flake out and decide to devote your life to meditation in Hawaii after 3 semesters. Obviously, your GPA is some evidence about these matters. So is your personal statement (really more of a statement of research interests and a place to frame the story your GPA and the rest of your “numbers” tell). So too are the letters of recommendation that will support your application. </p>
<p>So yes: You are talking about very competitive admissions situations at top schools in any discipline, especially economics. And obviously you need to think hard about what you want to do in graduate school and why. And as the previous poster suggests, you should learn as much as you can about graduate programs and what it takes to be admitted. But, as I wrote above: without knowing a lot more about you, I would not automatically be discouraged about your chances to be admitted to a top econ Ph.D. program.</p>
<p>Oh… and if you have a good relationship with an professor or other mentor on the faculty, by all means go talk to him or her about grad school plans and questions. That is what s/he is there for (at least in part). Most faculty I know (yes, even economists), are happy to talk to students in office hours. How else are you really supposed to figure things out?</p>
<p>+1 to uchicagoalum’s recommendation to read the CV’s of job market candidates and grad students who post them. there are a few uchicago alumni you can find the CV’s for fairly easily if you click around at the usual suspects. </p>
<p>+1 to toomanyschools’s observation that a 3.5 in isolation means nothing.</p>
<p>If I were you I’d invest more time in figuring out why you want this degree you claim to want, because appearances aren’t always reality. And I am sure there are unhappy econ grad students out there trolling the internet because they didn’t heed common sense to think about the programs they were applying for, the advisors they wanted to work with, and realistic career outcomes afterwards. They must be out there congregating on the internet somewhere…</p>
<p>How hard is it get all As at UChicago? Is it really that difficult?</p>
<p>From what I have seen the impression I get is that uchicago doesn’t care too much about extracurricular achievements like other top ranked schools. If you have good scores and demonstrate your potential through your essays then you have a very good chance.</p>
<p>@UW I think headed2great is asking about grades. Also, I wanted to point out that (although I’m sure you didn’t mean this) your comment implies that anyone who doesn’t get in must have either had bad essays, bad scores, or otherwise somehow horribly messed up their application. Having seen other deferred applicants’ writing, I can say that there are some seriously awesome people who got deferred (and I don’t mean that as a compliment to myself: there are a lot of stupendously talented people who don’t get accepted.) UChicago’s acceptance rate is on a level with ivy leagues. We all know that plenty of wonderful people apply to ivies and don’t get in. People who got in got in for a reason: they did some amazing work throughout high school and had really strong applications. BUT, that doesn’t mean that a really strong application guarantees admission. Think of the caliber of applicants to schools like Columbia (whose acceptance rate is fairly similar to Chicago’s). People applying to that kind of school probably have good test scores and almost certainly know how to write. But most don’t get in. Not because they did something wrong or were lacking in some part of their application–because the people who got in did something right that we on the outside of the process can’t easily identify.</p>
<p>EnoughNerve, I was responding to post #7 by headed2great. </p>
<p>"(although I’m sure you didn’t mean this)"</p>
<p>You are right. :)</p>
<p>UChicago’s acceptance rate might on a level with higher ranked Ivy league schools but I doubt the applicant pools are similar.</p>
<p>@UW Glad I didn’t cause any offense 
I’ll just agree to disagree</p>
<p>Sadly, I also got deferred. Interview this Tuesday and then hope for the best. </p>
<p>Again, how hard are the classes at UChicago?</p>
<p>2manyschools – While you are clearly right that a 3.5 GPA is not fatal for many/most top PhD programs, I took uchicagoalum’s comment as referring to the top 5-6 economics programs only, and for them I find the comment perfectly believable. They are bigger than most academic doctoral programs, but they have a much, much bigger applicant pool, including literally the best economics-oriented students in the whole world. How many U.S. graduates do they take each year? 100? 120? And the other factor affected by GPA is the choice by the department of which students to support for those top programs. There are probably 30-40 applicants from the University of Chicago every year, and the ones who get the strongest support will generally have impressed all of their teachers, not just a couple of them. That will be true at other colleges as well.</p>
<p>In the end, I doubt the top programs take many applicants who did not do extremely well in their lower-level economics and math courses in their undergraduate schools. I also note that economics departments seem not to love senior theses as much as other departments, at Chicago and elsewhere, so transcripts may loom larger in students’ grad-school applications than in other fields, because they have less impressive independent work to submit.</p>
<p>@JHS: I’ll be blunt. I was trying to say that a 3.5 would not necessarily be fatal at schools like Harvard or Princeton in Econ. I think those are comfortably within the range programs that are under discussion. And I know because I have friends who have come through both of those programs at those two schools.</p>
<p>3.5 overall, or 3.5 in econ and math? Or both?</p>
<p>I believe IRowHard, who started the thread, was talking generally about a GPA of 3.5. My lengthy posting above did not assume any particular relationship between that number and the average for courses in math and econ – because the information was not given. And part of my point was that the relationship is important. In terms of my friends in econ, they had GPAs around 3.5 overall, but strong grades in math and econ. </p>
<p>But I will circle back to one of my main points, which is that the real questions are: What do you want to work on, can you do it, and is there someone on the faculty who wants to supervise your work? If someone at a top program, like Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Yale, Stanford, or Berkeley, wants to work with you strongly enough, you will probably be admitted.</p>