PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution: shitty public school in eastern europe
Major(s)/Minor(s): Economics
Undergrad GPA: bot convertable, but mediocre
Type of Grad: Economics MA in an OK private, american university in eastern europe
Grad GPA: ~3.6
GRE: 162 V 164Q 4.5 AW
Any Special Courses: the full MA sequence in micro & macro, full phd sequence in Econometrics + (pol.econ, voting behavior, pol psychology graduate seminars)
Letters of Recommendation: had a close relationship with all of them and I assume they were very strong but none of them is very well known. 2 econ profs (PhD Michigan & Harvard), 2 polsci profs, and the former minister for the economy in my home country
Research Experience: bunch of research papers, one publication in Electroral Studies
Teaching Experience: 2 semesters of teaching in a business school
Subfield/Research Interests: methods, behavior, polecon
Other:
RESULTS:
Acceptances($$ or no $$): Harvard PEG (no funding info yet, but shouldn t be a problem), Stanford ($$), MIT ($$)
Waitlists: Caltech, Duke
Rejections: Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford GSB Polecon,
Pending: Harvard, NYU (assumed to be a reject)
Going to: ?
Advice: A lesson is that you might have a shot in top tier school even with not so nice stats if you have some sort of extra. In my case that could have been a publication, a lot of independent research and teaching. Apparently fit was also important (even if not the way I expexted): I was rejected by some "lower ranked" schools and accepted by supposedy better ones.