Consecutive Withdrawal in my transcript. Thank you!

[aeolus92]

Hi everyone,

I am an international student from southeast Asia, and I would to ask several questions in regards to how class withdrawals would affect my chances to get into a top graduate economics program (Princeton, Stanford, etc)

This fall, I am going to transfer to UC Berkeley from my community college as an Applied Math in Economics Major. Nonetheless, there were several flaws that I committed in my last 2 quarters. On Spring 2012, I took Calculus 3 (Series, implicit differentiation, and vector calculus) and I withdrew from it.

My main reason was, there was a class (English 1C) that I mentioned I am going to take in my UCB application, and it started in middle Spring, and conflicted with this Calculus 3 class. I withdrew the class, and registered for the English 1C class. However, the class was canceled by my college, since there were only 4 students who registered for the class. Hence, I did not get into the English class, and decided to take my math class in Summer.

Nonetheless, I did not do really well in my Summer Math class (my grade was between a B and B+) and I withdrew again from the course, since I did not want to risk my acceptance to UC Berkeley (I have to get at least a B from the class).

They are my only withdrawals in these 2 years, however, my community college transcript will show that I withdrew from the same class in 2 consecutive quarters. Would you please tell me how bad would these withdrawals affect my chance of going to a top 5 graduate econ programs?

Thank you very much!

[TheFez]

Not a good thing.

What is your GPA? ow did you do in all your other math classes?

What is your Math GRE score?

No one will really care about the reasons. The many "W"'s signal a potentially low grade you bailed out of.

[aeolus92]

My GPA is in the 3.6 range (community college GPA). I am currently still in my junior year, so I have yet to take multivariable calculus until numerical analysis.

I haven't taken GRE yet. So Grad Schools will also pay a lot of attention to my community college transcript?

Thank you!

[TheFez]

The ad comms will pay attention to your entire record which includes:

1. All your coursework. With an emphasis on the tough subjects and all of your math courses. An econ PhD is very quantitative.

2. Your GRE score - in particular your Quant score. On the old scale above a 750 is typical of students entering an econ PhD (90th percentile) and it's not uncommon for people to have 780-800 scores in T10 programs.

3. Your 3 letters of recommendation that attest to your ability to succeed in a tough PhD program, and to do independent work.

4. Your SOP. Which needs to really make your case about why a PhD in econ, and the details of why that program, your research interests, etc.

To get into a top program (i.e. Princeton) you need to be top-rate in almost all of these areas. Sure you can have a "B" in a class. But you need to be an "A" math student with the minimum courses I described above (note: it's not numerical analysis but Real analysis - which is a tough, proof-based course).

My candid assessment is that you need to also apply to some lower ranked programs as Stanford and Princeton are a dice roll even for top candidates. With a record of withdrawals, summer courses, community college, "B"s in math...and unless you have done some great research, etc. with a 3.6 GPA, you will likely get many rejections.

So cast a wider net.