<p>What are some very important factors they will consider if applying to top graduate schools' master programs?</p>
<p>In what field?</p>
<p>Economics or Finance.</p>
<p>I would say Test Scores (GRE/GMAT), GPA, Publications, LORs, SOP and TOEFL, in this order.</p>
<p>Economics cares that much about the GRE? I’ve heard this before but I wonder why it’s that way. The GRE math is trivial (the high end is saturated with 800s) and verbal often boils down to dumb luck and/or pointlessly memorizing words. GRE is nothing but a way to cut off internationals in engineering and a lot of other fields. Why does economics care so much? Will they actually differentiate a 800Q vs. a 780Q?</p>
<p>How to do a publication during the undergraduate years? Do I need to talk to some professors or just do research on my own?</p>
<p>Top econ programs seem to care a lot about an applicant’s math background. I have seen plenty of websites advising grad school-bound econ majors to take courses such as abstract algebra and topology, which seem to have little in common with economics except for rigor.</p>
<p>B@r is right about the Math background but for the top 10-15 Econ programs, yes, the difference between 800 and 780 on the Quantitative could make a difference. A number of the programs have feedback that says, in effect, don’t even think about a 760. That being a case, there’s very little room for error on that particular filter.</p>
<p>So between GRE score and GPA, which is slightly more important?
Also, I heard that Grad schools don’t really care which school one comes from, so if assume people come from a top school like UC Berkeley or Stanford, it’s very hard for them to get a high gpa compare to those come from a relatively easier school. So will this be unfair to those students who come from a top university?</p>
<p>noodlesli -> The relationship between school prestige and GPA is not simple, but if anything, more prestigious schools tend to have higher average GPAs. Trying to compare the work that one must do to get a x.xx at two different schools is tough, in any case.</p>
<p>I mean it’s hard to get As in those pretigious schools whose grades are based on curves compare to those don’t. Like in UC Berkeley or some others, students find out harder to get As compare to some other pretigous school who don’t grade on curve.</p>
<p>^^^ School prestige has nothing to do with the difficulty of getting As. Some highly ranked schools, like MIT and Princeton, are known to have grade deflation while others, such as Harvard and Stanford, are said to have lenient grading systems. Lower-ranked schools are assumed to give out As more readily because their standards are lower, but that’s not necessarily true, either. Grading is both school- and department-specific.</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess my points is not that it is harder to get As in the pretigious schools than the others. I mean it is harder to get As in schools with grade deflation than those don’t. Like in UC Berkeley or MIT, most of classes are based on curves and need to get a top 20% to get an A. So I believe an average student in those schools wil have a relatively lower gpa than one in the other schools who don’t have this strict grading system. So will this cause the unfairness when facing the graduate school admissions?</p>
<p>No, because if anything the admission committees will know more about the average grades of applicants then us. If year after year a program gets applicants from MIT, let’s say, with ~3.3 or something, and the ones they admit always do well in the program, then they obviously won’t be concerned next time they see an applicant with a 3.3. More generally, the grading policies at relevant undergraduate departments are likely pretty well-known to graduate departments. They don’t just throw everyone’s GPA together and pick the top X% to interview and admit.</p>