LOR from Econ professor

[FinStat]

Hello,

I am a longtime lurker, first time poster looking for some advice on LORs.

To give a better idea of my background, here is my profile

Undergrad: Large Masters Granting Public with affiliated PhD (top 50 Math, top 75 Econ)

Major: Mathematics and Economics

GPA: 3.68

 

Graduate: Same

Major: Statistics and Applied Math

GPA: 3.87

Coursework includes Grad (MA) Real Analysis at level of Royden and a lot of Prob and Stat classes, both theory and applied.

Type of Student: Domestic White Male

GRE: Took some time ago, 164Q, 167V, 4.5A, retaking in late November.

I have research experience in econ and finance, a final project for my masters which was an applied stats paper and teaching experience in stats at a local LAC.

I completed my masters six years ago and I have been involved in a number of things unrelated to stats or math (or econ for that matter) since then. However I can demonstrate that my math knowledge/skills are still current.

I am interested in risk management, math finance and time series statistics. I am mostly applying to finance PhDs, but I am applying to a few PhDs in Statistics and Operations Research who have faculty in my areas of interest.

I know that Stats and OR PhD programs prefer math and stats professors over econ professors for LORs, but I was never really close with any of my undergrad math professors and of the three stats professors I was close to during my MA, one retired a couple of years ago and the department does not have current contact information for him and another was a visiting professor who is now retired and his old department has not been forthcoming with contact information.

At the moment my LORs are

1) Stats prof, extremely well published, ASA Fellow, took a number of classes with.

2) Econ prof, emeritus, well published with publications in mathematical economics, specifically dynamic programming.

3) Econ "distinguished lecturer", has PhD from top 30 econ program. Has floated back and forth between industry and academia over the last 25 years and has a number of publications in statistical modeling in finance and risk management. 

All of these LORs will likely be very strong. These LORs will probably be good for my finance applications, but I am afraid that for stats and OR phd programs having two econ LORs will not be enough.

I can probably track down the other two stats profs who I was close to with but even if I do, I am not sure they will be willing to write LORs for me, and I was not as close to either of them as I was to the three professors that I am using for my LORs so I do not know if the LORs will be as strong.

Any advice on whether my current LORs should be sufficient would be greatly appreciated. 

Edited October 31, 2017 by FinStat