What should I get a Ph.D. in?

[BilboSwaggins]

I applied to 8 econ programs of varying levels of quality and was rejected.  I think this is partly because of my GRE (96th percentile verbal but only 80th math) and the fact that my university’s undergrad econ program is not that good (I have had to take way more math classes than are required in order to be competitive for grad schools, and none of my classmates are going for a doctoral level degree, as far as I know).  

 

The way I see it, my options now are to:

 

1. Retake the GRE, go to another university and get another undergrad degree in economics, and then reapply

2. Pick another major from a list of rolling-admission type programs so that I can avoid option a.

What does everyone think?  What might I be qualified for given my background?  

[Apogeee]

14 minutes ago, BilboSwaggins said:

What does everyone think?  What might I be qualified for given my background?  

I'm sorry about your rejections. What are you planning to do with your degree? What had you written in your personal statement about your research interests? Were there any hints in your rejection letters? When you wrote your thank you notes to those deans who responded to you, did you leave the door open to ask them what you can do to make your portfolio more effective? And finally, what do your current professors think about your portfolio, about your CV, and about your personal statement?

[Cheshire_Cat]

 Accounting, finance, risk management... Anything that uses economics as a base, really. So look at various business programs.  My GMAT math score was a lot lower than yours and I got into a decent accounting program.  Plus, the pay is better.   But a lot of programs require a master's degree.  So if anything, I'd go for a statistics masters at a decent school and then try for a Ph.D.

[rising_star]

2 hours ago, BilboSwaggins said:

The way I see it, my options now are to:

 

1. Retake the GRE, go to another university and get another undergrad degree in economics, and then reapply

2. Pick another major from a list of rolling-admission type programs so that I can avoid option a.

It seems like you've eliminated a lot of options here! I mean, why would you take the GRE AND go get another undergraduate degree in the same field? Is there any particular reason you have to be in some sort of degree-granting program next year? Based on what you've said here, it sounds like you would be better served getting some work experience and then going to school later, especially if you can get a job which deals with economic or financial data/research. 

I think your current two options just don't make sense at all. Doing a random degree program won't help you advance your career goals, neither will doing a second undergraduate degree. You really should take some time to think about what it is you want to do and talking to your professors about how to get there.

[cwr]

7 hours ago, rising_star said:

I think your current two options just don't make sense at all. Doing a random degree program won't help you advance your career goals, neither will doing a second undergraduate degree. You really should take some time to think about what it is you want to do and talking to your professors about how to get there.

I would agree with this. A round of rejections is hardly a mandate to start over from the beginning of your undergrad, at least not in my eyes.

I wanted to mention one other thing, and I may be totally and completely wrong in this regard. My bias as someone in physics – where the nearest fields of applied mathematics and applied physics (and even subfields within my own discipline) seem so far flung – might totally color my opinion of this issue. However, the question of "what should I get a Ph.D. in?" struck me as rather odd. My initial thought was if you're unsure of what field to pursue, then you're not ready to delve into the chaos of a Ph.D. program. I mean, I could tell you for hours about how my subfield of physics (and my research in particular) are the most interesting thing in the world and everyone should be studying it, and even I question if I have any idea what I'm getting myself into. 

Again, I could be totally wrong, and someone in a more interdisciplinary field should not hesitate to set me straight. But it seems like OP is asking "what should I study?" as opposed to "what Ph.D. program(s) would allow me to study X?", and while I understand the latter is a totally valid question (since many research questions crosscut disciplines), the former seems like a red flag to me. 

[BilboSwaggins]

22 hours ago, cwr said:

I would agree with this. A round of rejections is hardly a mandate to start over from the beginning of your undergrad, at least not in my eyes.

I wanted to mention one other thing, and I may be totally and completely wrong in this regard. My bias as someone in physics – where the nearest fields of applied mathematics and applied physics (and even subfields within my own discipline) seem so far flung – might totally color my opinion of this issue. However, the question of "what should I get a Ph.D. in?" struck me as rather odd. My initial thought was if you're unsure of what field to pursue, then you're not ready to delve into the chaos of a Ph.D. program. I mean, I could tell you for hours about how my subfield of physics (and my research in particular) are the most interesting thing in the world and everyone should be studying it, and even I question if I have any idea what I'm getting myself into. 

Again, I could be totally wrong, and someone in a more interdisciplinary field should not hesitate to set me straight. But it seems like OP is asking "what should I study?" as opposed to "what Ph.D. program(s) would allow me to study X?", and while I understand the latter is a totally valid question (since many research questions crosscut disciplines), the former seems like a red flag to me. 

Well that's what I mean.  I was into the idea of studying economics, but I doubt I'll be able to land a job with just an undergraduate degree, so I need to find another major and find one fast.  

 

rising_star, that does seem like a more reasonable way to go about strengthening my application for another at-bat.  Even thinking about starting over at this point feels daunting.  I need to give it a couple of months!

 

I came to the conclusion about GRE/my institution since I had a lot of really good writers review my personal statements, and my GPA was above what most places were looking for.  I did get rejected from a health services research program for having research interests that the committee deemed were not a good fit.

 

Thanks for the responses everybody.

[cwr]

35 minutes ago, BilboSwaggins said:

rising_star, that does seem like a more reasonable way to go about strengthening my application for another at-bat.  Even thinking about starting over at this point feels daunting.  I need to give it a couple of months!

I agree wholeheartedly with this. If you wanted to study economics, don't just give up because of one round of rejections. If you're willing to devote 5+ years of your life to it, then a couple months of hard work to strengthen your profile/statements/etc. before giving applications another crack is definitely within reason. Certainly, I would think this should precede completely and totally starting over.

Don't be discouraged. Graduate school admissions can be fickle, so there's no telling what a few months of work on your application will do. Beyond GRE's, which are an obvious place to start if you feel you can/should improve, I would consider doing more digging into the people/programs that interest you. Hell, spend a month or two pouring over some papers from the economists you most fancy working with. You might find something really striking that you can either write them about in an email, mention in a personal statement, or both. In my experience, contacting professors beforehand works; it might be field dependent to some degree, but if someone is going to bring a stack of ten files past their desk for them to review and give a recommendation, them already knowing your name can't hurt. This sort of work – learning more about the people/research that interest(s) you – will hopefully strengthen your profile overall.

One other thing that comes to mind is broadening your list of target programs. This might be easier said than done, but I think it falls right in line with acquainting yourself with the work of people that most interest you. What people are consistently asking the same questions as them? Do they ever collaborate on publications with people from other universities? (If so, who and where?) Look up their last couple students. Are any of them junior faculty somewhere? (If so, see what they're studying now and if you'd want to work with them.)

Disclaimer: I don't know the first thing about economics, so I apologize if I have overlooked some field-specific nuances here. I tried to be as general as possible. Best of luck! 

[ExponentialDecay]

The obvious answer is to get a master's degree in economics or a related field. A second BA will not make you more competitive.

It's true that the math GRE is much too low. However, most US undergraduates have to take extra math classes to be competitive for PhD programs, regardless of whether they're at CUNY or UChicago. Many double major in math, actually. One thing you're glaringly missing is research experience (which can be your work experience, provided you work with something that has to do with economics), without which it will definitely be difficult to get into any kind of social science PhD program. If you go on urch.com, there's a bunch of iterations of your situation discussed in great detail.

[juilletmercredi]

On 3/12/2016 at 11:36 PM, cwr said:

Well that's what I mean.  I was into the idea of studying economics, but I doubt I'll be able to land a job with just an undergraduate degree, so I need to find another major and find one fast.  

Why would you doubt this? Have you tried, have you applied to any jobs? Lots of people land a job with an economics BA. Scrambling around to find another major and get a degree quickly isn't really going to help your job prospects.

There are a lot of non-GRE related reasons you may have gotten rejected, and some of them don't even have anything to do with you. The competition could've been especially fierce this year, or maybe your recommendations were average, or the professor who would've went to bat for you is on sabbatical or transitioning to another university, or whatever. Your personal statement may have been well-written language-wise but not especially compelling for the context it's supposed to satisfy. And so on.

The thing you don't want to do is rush into another program just because you feel like you need to be in school next year. If your GRE is truly the only thing wrong with your application, you'd be totally wasting your time by doing a second bachelor's - you'd only need to retake the GRE and then reapply next year. If you really needed to bolster your app, doing an MA in economics would be a much better idea. Even if you wanted to change fields, unless you want to change to engineering or nursing doing a master's is a better idea.