Behavioral

My $.02: Find an advisor that will put you on a project ASAP. I would err on the side of structure and even micromanagement at this point. When you begin to develop your own ideas, make your goals known to your advisor that you want to pursue it somewhat independently. I think an advisor that's usually very hands-on being distal is easier to find than an advisor that's typically laissez-faire suddenly becoming your micro-manager.

I may be getting confused myself with another thread. I think I also could have been inferring robot_hamster to be a Masters student with his post and champagnecake mentioned in another thread he/she is currently a Masters student and just got accepted into a PhD student (so I assumed they were probably talking about getting a part-time job while pursuing a Masters).

There seems to be some confusion in this thread. Eigen and lewin00 are both giving advice based on the assumption that you're in a research-intensive PhD program presumably with full-funding. If you're in a Master's program, then much of their advice doesn't really apply to you.

I was dating a girl living at Rita Atkinson before I moved to the Midwest for grad school. She seemed to really like it--at least that first month she moved in. It's cheap, located on campus (rather than near Mesa/OMS), and has great facilities.

It should (almost) never be completely different if you know you're going to be in the same program for MA/PhD. For most people, a thesis will serve as a subsection/chapter in their dissertation. You will likely be involved in a program of research that builds off prior studies and your thesis is a natural jumping point to your eventual dissertation topic.

I'm not going, but I'll be in the Chicago area if anyone wants to meet up. I'd be stoked for Victor Wooten if I were going, though. To those not in the know, here's a video of Vic (on bass) with one of my favorite drummers, Carter Beauford: Here's one of his biggest hits, "Me and My Bass Guitar". His slap technique/speed is unreal and he's the only bassist playing on the track:

14" Thinkpad T420 (i7, 8GB RAM, swapped out HDD for SSD). Couldn't be happier with it.

I'm definitely in agreement with the notion about fellowships being unfair in that they count as both income and as financial aid (so that it's taxed AND counts against my Cost of Attendance)--my fellowship exceeded my school's CoA, so I couldn't take out any student loans (only apply for personal loans, which is financial suicide). If it's taxed, then it should not be counted against my permission to borrow student loans. 20-25% taxed income makes a huge difference in day-to-day living, and if something as bad as an emergency were to come up, I'd be screwed. I have a decent amount of savings from my FT work pre-grad school, but it is only finite.

Zyzz, make sure to record your meeting with the director. It should be a big hit on Youtube.

Yay, Business School rankings are out -.-;;

You're going to need higher numbers just to be considered by top programs. Shoot for 1350-1400+ GRE (this is typical for Social Psychology programs at least) for GRE. Your undergrad GPA will still be looked at, but your Graduate GPA will likely mitigate it partly. Get involved in a lot of research. Research is the main component of your profile that will determine where you get into for PhD.

A beer that a peon like me makes is no beer worth drinking. For me, beer and alcohol is something meant to enjoy, so I wouldn't settle for home-made when I'd never get to the same taste. $5 Stone IPA bottles are hard to come by in Illinois (since I moved from California), but I happily pay for a stock at home. Wine in bulk, though, I agree with. If I find a vintage/expression I like, I'll buy half a dozen bottles. My scotch collection is way too small right now, so I'll probably be cutting back on beer and wine so I can afford a few new bottles.

I don't know anything about Macro (I was a Game Theory dude throughout undergrad), but it already sounds like you prefer Purdue (at least just based on this post). Both schools are in college towns surrounded by mostly farm/corn fields. Iowa City would win out slightly (in my opinion of visiting both campuses only once) in terms of things to do and night life (besides just drinking; both cities have large bar scenes from what I remember). It's all about personal preference. The two cities don't really differ too much, but that's based off two weekend stays.

Either's fine as long as you get the chance to get involved with academic research. If you can publish while pursuing your Masters, you'll get a strong shot at getting into a top OB PhD at either school.

You need Real Analysis. Besides that, good foundations so far. UCSD would be the obvious choice for Time Series Forecasting since all the big forecasting/metrics faculty are there.

You don't use Complex Analysis ... at all in economics. The real analysis is covered by the fact that he did well in PhD Micro I and II. I took the Micro sequence as an undergrad (was a math/econ + psych double) and RA was crucial there. If the OP passed Micro with an A, then they'd get a strong grade in undergrad Real Analysis. Topology is also not needed if the OP's taken all the doctoral cores and done well.

Top 20 for sure. Maybe Top 10 depending on interests.

And this is why it's interesting to see the data from the paper I posted in the first page of this thread. All else being equal (number and location of publications), a person from a "top" school will get hired over a person from a "non-top" school, and when modeled as a Fixed-Effect OLS regression, there is a ~1.5 publication disparity according to the fitted terms in that model (i.e., a person coming from a school categorized as "not top" needs 1.5 extra pubs than someone from a "top" school to be equitable/comparable). Of course that model takes away from the actual qualia and nuances from admissions (the non-quantifiables), but given that the authors of the paper tried to account for confounds and still found these results is telling. And like I said earlier, the paper is about the Marketing job market, but given that many of the top scholars in marketing/consumer behavior are Social Psychology PhDs, and that marketing is an available job market to them, being aware of these data is important when making informed decisions. I'm not arguing whether or not there is a true correlation between quality x prestige, but perception can be reality as it is realized in that paper (and the Chronicle of Higher Education thread I linked to, too). Adcomms are made up of people who are like everyone else: they use simplifying heuristics to inform/guide their choices and this is influenced by things like salience, prestige, signaling, etc., which all play in favor towards schools that are prestigious and also have a reputation for churning out good students in the past.

Perhaps ask one of your professors to tell you candidly what are the reasons you wouldn't be accepted somewhere? I was honest to my professors and they helped me figure out whether or not certain weaknesses were worth talking about, or how I can mitigate the negatives associated with them (i.e., no pubs in undergrad--just an R&R; poor GPA due to bad grades first 1.5 years; mediocre GRE etc.). There are ways to manage 'damage control' and it starts with knowing how others perceive you. Also, what schools did you apply to? Some re-applicants are unyielding of the types of school they apply to when it really is a mismatch (whether upwards or downwards). I got rejected from all the lower-tier schools I applied to (all with no interview), but I was surprised that the schools on the top of my list all wanted to interview me.

Yup. If it's out of your control, then there's no point in getting worked up about it. Just push on and keep focus on factors that you can still influence and make the most of that.

For my field, 1-2 first-authored papers at the A+ level journals is expected for a decent job. 3-5 pubs at A+ journals (or 2-3 really well-cited/high-impact pubs) will put you near the 'star' level in the job market.

Haha, well best of luck, dude. Always just keep on the lookout for departmental funding and any other options that pop up.

Subfield.

The only other thing I have to add is you can't place all your eggs in one basket and expect to work with 1 POI your entire graduate career. The academic field is volatile--people move around, fail to make tenure, become difficult to work with, etc., so don't go to a school (if you can avoid it) who only has 1 person you'd want to work with. All the most successful people I know getting close to the job market do have a main advisor with whom they work closely with, but they all also collaborate with other faculty members that have similar interests as well. I came to my school eager to work with any one of three professors and my interests have changed after taking some courses, and now I'm working with 3 professors all of whom weren't in my original consideration set. If I went to a school with no breadth of research topics and my interests changed, I'd have been miserable. Something else to consider is really look at the CVs of students coming out and see where their research is at. If they're coming out with a lot of co-authored papers with faculty, then it's a good sign that professors openly collaborate with their students at that program. If you see something like a lot of single-authored papers out for review, then it may be a signal that the program is a sink-or-swim environment. You can't learn everything from retrospective information and numbers, but you can definitely have a more informed attitude towards programs based on these signals.

Depends on your field and funding package. If you're doing math without a fellowship, imagine your life to resemble the ones from those clips (source: I was a math major and did research with some combinatorics professors/grad students at a top 10 program; the grad students lived like bums). Apply for NSF grants (GRFP, etc.) and hope for the best.