ExponentialDecay

Terminal masters in economics are rare in the States, and funded ones are practically nonexistent. If you want to do this, you're going to have to become a lot more flexible geographically. I know that the MA at Bard College funds some of its students. There might be others.

Graduating and realizing you're so far behind the arrogant plumber and grumpy bureaucrat in salary, retirement savings, relationships, and work-life balance that you may never catch up.

I understand your point, and I agree, and I am in awe of the patience and good character of anybody who can make such an earnest effort. However, she's not the only one who keeps coming back to this forum asking for the same advice on the same goddamned issue, then refusing to take any of it, getting really shouty, leaving in a huff - and then the cycle begins again. Is it wrong to mock these people? As much as it's wrong to mock anyone, I suppose. I'm not pretending to be doing this for the common good. But after a certain point, what else do they expect?

idk. she may have meant that she took classes in the humanities and social sciences, which she could've done in any interdisciplinary program. it's hard to judge without being given the name of the MA.

CUNY has an MA in liberal studies. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Liberal-Studies

Yeah, academia is full of pricks. We may be a bunch of trolls, but don't think that the chilling side-eye academics in real-life will give you for paying real money to go to a cash-cow program in one of the most expensive cities in the world and getting nothing out of it because you didn't like the professors or some shit is gonna be any easier to bear. I'm sorry you hated it, but if that is the case, you either quit while you're ahead or you grit your teeth and make it work. What do you mean, you took 2 classes in your field over the entire course of a graduate degree? What do you mean, you haven't made friends with the faculty? Do you even conference? This isn't undergrad, where you get free toileteries during finals time and one of your dormmates is a paid and trained member of staff whose job is to make sure you get along with your roommate. You're supposed to already have skills like googling and being civil with your superiors. Good god, I know people who have done the MAPH and similar. The only goals are to get a better GPA than undergrad and to get 3 letters from fancy scholars.

On second thought, the prospect of there being more than one person who went to the same school and screwed up in pretty much the same way as YoungCharlie is even more entertaining.

OP, on the off-chance you do get into graduate school, a word of advice: if you receive a criticism that is tangential or even parallel to the point you are trying to argue, say thank you and move the fuck on. Otherwise you'll die of thirst while standing your ground in a seminar. What you don't want to happen is wasting your time and effort arguing about what is, where your thesis is concerned, an irrelevant trifle, and end up looking like an idiot in the process. Here, you took somebody's off-hand, innocuous remark and blew it up into some big stink because your ego was hurt or you have too much time on your hands or whatever it is. In real life/academia, people will manufacture these innocuous remarks because they want you to react in this way, because they want to make you look stupid or angry, or to derail the conversation, or whatever else. In the end, nobody will care who was right or who started it, because the argument had no substance in the first place - they will judge you on your behavior. Because these spats never show anyone to advantage, it's essential that you can stop yourself from engaging in them. This shit destroys careers. You really got to learn to let it go.

She randomly downvoted me! It's gotta be her. This is the bio masterpost btw:

Why is that a bad thing? Well, do you now have solid letters and competitive GRE scores? What is the specific reason that makes you doubt your chances for the PhD this time around? I'd say it's pretty redundant to repeat the same degree in the same subject and in the same country (by which I mean, my answer would have been different if you were an international student from a non-Anglophone educational background, not that you should go to England). You don't mention any specific goals you want to achieve by taking this degree, which does kind of make it sound like your concern is that you missed out on the college experience rather than on anything relevant to the competitiveness of your PhD application. Plus, there's the loss of income and the potential debt.

Ask your professors for advice.

The only way a school would know your score is if you send it to them. So, if you bomb the test, you can opt out of sending it to the GRE-optional places, and as for the GRE-required schools, you'd be no worse off than where you started. You definitely have about 15 things you need to sort out before you even think about the GRE, but I'm just dispelling some misconceptions.

Ahhh Jewish Studies in New York is amazing! You'll have lots of academics opportunities and inspiration available to you. There isn't a lot of special or specific advice. Make sure you know the terms of your visa, be well-prepared for your first border control, get a USD bank account, and try not to get shafted with the rent in New York, I suppose. Take a winter jacket. Obviously, the more arrangements are finalized before you move, the better. And if you're interested in Yiddish culture, make sure to visit the Yiddish Book Center in Western MA.

Melissa Click was an assistant professor of Communications at Missouri, who was fired yesterday because of her actions during the race protests last year. Basically she got real scary while trying to keep a student journalist out of a safe space. http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/university-of-missouris-board-fires-melissa-click/108881 I've read a few articles on the matter in a number of publications (it is uncharacteristically popular in the general media), and it's interesting how varied the opinions and justifications of this case are. Does anybody have any thoughts? I'm not intimately familiar with the UM system (I only know that it's a clusterfuck ever since the hedge fund guru president), and whilst I understand that there was a political motive to her firing, and also that keeping journalists out of safe spaces is kind of the point of safe spaces, all I can think is why she would throw herself under the bus like this when she was under tenure review.

The GRE is just a multiple-choice test that some grad schools use for admission or funding decisions. It becomes useless once you are accepted. Unless you have severe test anxiety or can't afford $150 (both of which are possible and nothing to be ashamed of), I don't see why you don't want to take it.

No, your OP was that business majors make more money than everyone else on campus. "Majors" indicates undergrad, and the rest of it is kind of nonsensical. PS, y'all don't. It depends on the school, and even then, with a few notable exceptions, you don't make more than the MDs, the engineers, and sometimes the JDs. What stats? Give me some stats please. I went to a liberal arts school, a bunch of my friends majored in medieval French anthropology, and they all have decent paying jobs. My father was an engineering professor who became a successful stockbroker. He has seen countless students become piece of shit good for nothing engineers and go into business instead. Now what? My personal anecdotes are hardly relevant to anyone else, much less to these "stats" you keep mentioning. Please, I would like to see some stats. It's kind of meaningless to go around harping that business professors make more than anyone else without a citation to back you up. Look, I don't mean to offend. All I'm saying is, business school is a sham. Sure, you're all set if you go to the Sterns and the Whartons of the world, but even then, I'm not sure how much of it is education and how much of it is cocktail mixers.

Even though you're an international applicant, the GREs are far from the most important aspects of your application, especially if you're not applying for top programs. If you have the time to read a dozen textbooks, by all means, but listening to poetry while you sleep is maybe a little... excessive? Programs are more interested in your ability to interpret than in your ability to memorize. I think all that time and stress will be better spent honing your writing sample or some such.

Forgive me, I assumed that you weren't talking about professors of business, since I figured you'd have the wherewithal to know that these professors come from all sorts of academic backgrounds (and mostly not business M/BAs). They're also making all that money by fleecing clueless young people for a degree that's worth less than the paper it's written on (unless it's a T14 MBA). Insofar as non-professors go, again, never said you make less than others. I said you make the same, as in 0. If you're actually going into business, nobody's gonna care what your degree is in. They will care that you can get results. Which is partially why everybody else laughs at the glorified trade schoolers.

Please. You don't make any money while you're on campus because you're paying 150k for some piece of shit MBA. The saddest thing to witness is the state school finance undergrads who think they're going to work on Wall Street. One shudders at the thought of spending 4 years looking down on English majors only to find oneself getting a job licking envelopes for the ones from Cornell. I'd say generally business majors are put on the same level as Geographers and other people whose course of study consists mostly of reading The Economist and coloring in. Of course, Geography is an actual science.

Foolproof? You study under a few of them, and they introduce you to their friends. Conferences are slightly better than collections of articles, comprehensive reviews, etc., as they can be out of date and moreover they don't tell you anything about who hates whose guts.

Many smart people don't even go to college.

I don't think UGA is famous for anything. I also don't think you've thought this through.

jsyk unless your GRE scores are abysmal, it's probably not your GRE scores

Eh, everybody thinks they're hot stuff going in. It's the kind of naïveté that doesn't arise from age, because no amount years will give you experience with professional academia. I know a number of people who entered top PhD programs in a variety of fields at ages 20-22 (aka straight out of UG). It's not that uncommon, especially at top UGs, and age 20 doesn't strike me as particularly young. The American education system is organized in a way such that it makes it impossible to assume a priori that everyone is at the same education level going into certain milestones. Many people come into college with 1-2 years of college already done through APs, placement tests, or university credits taken in high school. Your age will be a factor (as will everything else in your file), but I seriously doubt that you would be denied because of your age - rather, because of factors running concurrently with your age, such as not having done enough reading or language preparation, or enough research, having an unfocused SOP, and so on. If you were an immature hack in college, it helps to put a few years between that and the new you. If none of those are true for you, to your knowledge (which, of course, if you are an immature hack, would be imperfect), then you should be fine. Plus, as has already been mentioned, some fields are notorious for regarding younger applicants as more talented - and if you ask me, their number isn't limited to math and physics.