PhD Economics

[marksheppard]

I'm applying to three PhDs:
1. Carnegie Mellon
2. Georgetown
3. Fordham

I am finalizing a MA in Political Economics from Georgetown, I did my undergrad at Berkeley in Law & Economics 3.6.
I have 160Q and 160V
My work history is mostly working in policy: US Senate, US House, CA state Senate, etc. 
And I have 3 solid LORs, 2 academic, 1 work
I will be finishing Calc2/Calc3 online

Thoughts on the likelihood?

[socks1367]

160 quant is too low - below the cutoff at most schools (for example, Georgetown says "Applicants who score below the 80th percentile are most likely not considered.", and 160Q is 74th percentile). You probably want >163-4 or so. You still have time to study and retake in about a month.

If your third letter of reference is from working in policy, it likely won't have a lot of weight, unless it comes from a PhD economist who moved from academia to policy. Can you get a third academic letter?

That's a weird mix of school to apply to - Georgetown is solidly ranked, Carnegie Melon is fairly lower down, and Fordham is unranked. I think Fordham is maybe likely (emphasis on the maybe) to admit you with this profile, but they have pretty bad job outcomes - maybe on the margin of "not worth going there at all". You should talk to someone about your choice of schools and try to figure out what range you actually want to target. Three is also a very low number of applications to send out - there's a lot of randomness in the application process, and most people do closer to 10.

What are the other math courses on your transcripts, and grades on them?