calahas

Psychapplicant2011, Thanks for the reply. I will contact Rabin. He is the specialist on BE among all. Thanks again. Calahas

Hi cogneuroforfun, Thanks for your answer. My findings: Econ PhD programs only require the three courses from an under-grad program: Micro-Econ, Macro-Econ and Econometrics for admission qualification. It is an almost unwritten rule that a BA in Math major has a better chance at admission into Econ PhD programs than BA in Econ major since the grad portion of Econ is heavy on real analysis and linear/matrix algebra. The 3 semester sequence of courses in Micro-Econ and Macro-Econ in the 1st year of PhD program is the litmus test for PhD survival and all these 2 sequences of courses are math heavy. My background is this: under-grad/grad in CS/Math, finished relevant Statistics courses, finished needed Econ courses and am taking more Econ courses now. So far in my 2 to 3 years of preparation for this, I have contacted current PhD students at 2 major campuses, then taken the 3 and more Econ courses to qualify myself for the PhD admission into Econ and am now almost ready for filing my PhD applications into Econ departments for 2011 Fall or 2012 Fall backed up by my work on my under-grad, grad in CS/Math and continuing Statistics/Econ coursework. My GRE score is decent but may be it can be improved. I also found from advice from current PhD students that taking courses in the area(s) of interest and having LOR from those Prof is essential to admission decision-making at top univ. Taking every Econ course that is offered, irrespective of area of interest, is difficult for me as the number of courses is large and I am not interested in all of them as well. And I found 5 areas of interest to myself: Behavioral Econ, Institutional Econ, Monetary/Trade Econ (Macro), Financial Econ, Labor Econ (Macro). I have narrowed down my core areas to Behavioral Econ and Financial Econ and Institutional Econ. The similar underlying thread connecting all three areas being that all these three have some overlap of Behavioral Econ work in one form or another (atleast per my readings of literature and textbooks). Macro-Econ also has a hotly debated research area for its Micro-foundations (the Keynesian versus Neo-classical versus New-Keynesian theories - the last one saved us from yet another Depression in 2008 but does not lower unemployment rate in US) and Behavorial Econ as a role there as well but I cannot handle this area initially as the number of courses and the literature/research for Macro-Econ program specialization will occupy an entire grad program itself (I am positive about this looking at its scale). I am also reading up on Econ literature in 2 of these 3 areas (Financial Econ/Institutional Econ) and Stat literature too to produce any possible new research ideas. I have come up with a few ideas and I am crystallizing them into conference papers that I will send out for review and to actual conference editors for possible acceptance. I intend to also use this feedback experience in my PhD application. And when I approached Behavorial Econ coursework, I was surprised to find Econ departments do not teach or introduce serious Psychology training for this purpose (but one course will exist for this at top universities Econ depts and that is about it) and that this is a seldom sought-after grad area though it appears to me that the Rational/Adaptive Expectations assumption of Neo-Classical/New-Keynesian theories will not hold up in reality. There is empirical proof for this that one can build up through pains-taking statistics data-collection and inferences (Maurice Allais already worked on this but was not given his Nobel for this work). Which is where I am trying to find direction now since I think I need to somehow gain more understanding of Psych before I do get into any place. It looks to me from your answer that I have two directions: #1 Apply to Psychology depts after adding Cognitive Psychology and other Psych coursework to my existing work and this would be a study on human decision-making problems rather than behavioral econ problems. This looks to me to be more generic in nature than econ decision-making. #2 Apply to Econ depts after adding Cognitive Psychology coursework to more Econ coursework list. This would working on behavioral econ problems rather than human decision-making itself though both will overlap for all purposes. Do you think I understood your answers right? Thanks again for your invaluable help. Regards, Calahas

Hi db2290, Thanks for your answer. My findings: Economics departments do have research programs tying Psychology to Economics but it looks like these are limited in scope at present due to specializations of schools in one or more disciplines. As you and cogneuroforfun stated, the new areas are growing in scope but I am uncertain as to how existing departments will treat them right now. There are of course exceptions as you stated. For instance, UCB and UCLA are big macro-economics oriented schools with enormous research in Labor, Monetary, Trade econ disciplines. Behavioral Economics (which includes Neuro-Economics) is not a major field there. U-Chicago seems to be the place for Behavioral Economics. Richard Thaler is from there. Gary Becker was from there too. Europe (Some German, British universities - like University of Munich, University of Zurich, University of Cambridge etc) seem to have adopted Behavioral Economics more than USA with the exception of U-Chicago. It looks like I will need to take courses leading to specialization in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive-Neuro Psychology. I have a MS in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. And I am taking Statistics courses and necessary Econ courses with progress so far. Adding necessary Psychology courses is a big burden that I have to bear but looks like this is needed if I intend to work in the area of Behavioral Economics. I do not think I will need to get into Neuro-Biology and Neuro-Science for this purpose. Thanks again. Calahas

Hi db2290, Thanks a lot for your answer. Appreciate it. I have more questions below. Please answer them as well. -- To study economic-decision making from a behavioral psychology/neuro-science perspective, what should I specialize in? Please give an overview. I have taken a course under M Borgschulte, a PhD student at UCB who is a Macro-Economist and an expert in that area. He liked my ideas but suggested I take no Psychology courses at all. In fact, he wanted me to move into Macro-Economics for a PhD program and apply in that area at major schools around USA. He even offered to introduce me to a full-time Professor at UCB in Trade area and suggested I pursue the contact more including pursuing any RA/Fed Reserve programmer positions that involve Statistical Analysis of macro data for more experience. He stated that Psychology is not introduced seriously to graduate students until late in the grad/PhD program. -- I am improving on my understanding of Dynamical Systems theory and Non-Linear Systems theory in Math area and I seem to be ease with most Statistics areas including Statistical Inference and Stochastic modeling. But using these skills will only make me a traditional economist. As you have stated (and from what I read too), it appears to me more work needs to be done in the area of Neuro-Economics and Behavioral-Economics (including Game Theory) to account for the biases and randomness in human psychology (including social and cognitive psychological areas). How do I approach this problem to create a meaningful contribution to the area with my background? Should I enter Econ departments' PhD programs that do not use Psychological training to solve the above problems (except for a few departments in US and Europe - like Ernest Wehr, Kahneman etc which you mentioned) at present and improve my Psychology skills on my own with courses and seminars? The contribution then seems to be more from an traditional Economic perspective. Or Should I enter Psychology departments' PhD programs and use my Statistics/Math/Econ skills to develop myself in the new areas so I can pursue these problems more from a Psychological perspective? Thanks enormous for your answers in advance! I have lived with these questions for more than a year and am losing my sleep thinking I am wasting time and skills. Regards, Calahas

All, I have a background in Computer Science (BS and MS in Computer Science from UT Dallas). My graduate course list included Queueing Theory, Queueing Modeling of Computer Networks where I did well in both the courses as well as my thesis which was in this area. I was also good with my under-grad Math course list including Linear Algebra, Real Analysis and Differential Equations. I took no more Math courses as I was focused back then on finishing my CS major degree using CS electives. And I have been taking Concurrent Enrollment courses (while I work full-time as a Systems Architect for a Telecommunications Equipment manufacturing company) in Statistics (upper-division Theory of Probability, Theory of Statistics, Stochastic Processes and Game Theory along with upper-division Statistical Inference) at UC Berkeley (2 courses per semester-started in Fall 2010), does this help with my aim of attempting to get into a PhD program in Economics or Finance departments for researching Behavioral Economics/Behavioral Finance topics? I will be adding upper-division Econometrics, upper-division Financial Economics and upper-division Monetary/Trade Theory to this list of courses. I already have taken upper-division Micro-Economics and Macro-Economics courses with good grades (both As) so far in Econ department. My graduate MS thesis is in Queueing Theory. My graduate CS GPA is 3.9/4.0. My under-graduate GPA is 3.75/4.0. My past GRE score was Q=770 and V=580. I am posting on Psychology board as I want to know if it is necessary to know Psychology to get into Behavioral Science programs in Econ department? Or is it possible a PhD program admits me knowing my interest but I lack Psychology background (except the lower-division courses offered at a Community College like Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology and Principles of Psychology which I have finished again in Fall 2010) and that I can take advanced courses in the Psychology department depending on need to know more? Any feedback on my tricky situation is most appreciated. Thanks, Calahas

I was a former PhD student who applied only to three universities for under-graduate studies - UT Arlington, UT Dallas and UT Austin (that was my strategy; all in one geographic area). I did half of under-graduate studies at NIT Warangal in 2001. I wrote my SAT and finished my under-grad and grad degrees from UT Dallas finally. I left my PhD degree track at UT Dallas to join industry but re-applied to get into all three campuses again. I was initially rejected at UT Austin when I had no work experience out of under-grad but accepted after I worked for 2 years in the networking industry in an important technology startup in optical switching. But I did not take my final PhD admission acceptances into UTA, UTD and UT-Austin. All three have very good Communications and Nano-technology research groups (UT-Austin ranks somewhere in the top 3 and UT-Dallas ranks 4 or 5 in USA for Nano-technology research; Similar rankings exist for Optical Communications research). So if you have a graduate expertise from IIT or NIT in India, then it will help with your letters of recommendation - atleast one professor must be known in the areas of digital communication or wireline or wireless networking fields of applied computing (CS). If you cannot get such a letter of recommendation, I would recommend highlighting your conference papers and the peer professors who reviewed it as well as the conferences where they were sent to. Did you visit those conferences and talk about the papers? Were the conference papers good ideas to be published into some journal (IEEE Journal of Communications, SIGMOBILE etc)? Your GRE scores are good in Quant and Verbal but Analytic is weak. So you might want to point out that you are actually a serious journal/conference author and that the AW score is one-off. What is your final aim if you know of one? I am sure aims keep changing but there has to be an initial aim. If you want to be an academic, then a top-20 university PhD counts in CS or EE. In such a case, I would suggest a strategy where you choose atleast 4 to 5 universities from the top 20 and 3 universities from the next 20 and atleast one from the next 20 (40 to 60 rankings). Remember private universities may give you admission for MS/PhD programs but will not give you financial aid right away unless you are unusual in every aspect of the admissions process (GPA, GRE scores, LOR, SOP, journal papers etc). So choose wisely. The economy is bad in USA and will be so for computing and other industries for another 10 years (my estimate). In your list, Caltech, USC, Rice are private and so will be costlier than UT Austin. Even UCSD is costlier than UT Austin. Purdue is a good choice. I would suggest you add UCSB and UCI to UCSD. UCB is not known for networking specialization. UCLA is known for that research. Other public universities include SUNY and its campuses, some of which are known for networking research. Even University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is known for communications/networking research. A lot of the mid-western universities do not have that well-known a specialization in communications research. University of Washington at Seattle is another good choice. University of Oregon is a decent tier-3 choice. UT-Arlington and UT-Dallas are decent Tier-2 choices, especially for optical communications much like UC-Irvine. Washington University in St. Louis is a good choice. Harvard University and RPI are good east-coast choices. Ivy League is not known for Communications research. Stanford is private but is a great choice for networking research. So is USC. Caltech is a great choice but is private and exclusive by nature. Less than 25 under-grad students get in in a normal year and the number of PhD students in CS is probably the same. Caltech admission rate for CS is probably worse than Yale or Princeton for CS. So I think you should exclude it unless again you think you are unusual (meaning top on everything). Further, please choose your specialization accurately - it cannot be stochastic processes and wireless communications at the same time. If you go for stochastic processes and its applications, then that list has a large number of engineering, economic and mathematical disciplines to account for. And stochastic modeling is a tool widely used in economics, finance, communications research, psychology, bio-statistics, phamacology etc. So I believe you are talking about wireless communications and that you are very thorough with stochastic modeling application to communications research. Which is how you should state in your SOP as an aim. But that is how focused a SOP can get and how I would write. You can disregard my advice in this specialization case. If you want to get a PhD to satisfy your mental discipline or to get those 3 letters next to your name before getting a job in the industry, then the same strategy can be used for selecting universities but in a more relaxed manner - like 4 from top 20, 4 from next 20 and 2 from next 20. Hope all experienced writing helps. Calahas