Susan Athey's Homepage                 Professor of Economics
Department of Economics, Harvard University                     
Other affiliations:
Chief Economist, Microsoft Corporation
Consulting Researcher, Microsoft Research New England (2008-)
Research Associate, NBER
Disclaimer: Material on this website represents my own views and research and not those of any Corporation or institution, including Harvard University, Microsoft Corporation, NBER, or the National Science Foundation.
Advice for Applying to Grad School in EconomicsDisclaimer: These are just opinions, and some people may disagree with the claims here.  You should seek opinions from your advisors.
  
Choosing classes

• Graduate schools care much more about what hard classes you've taken and how you've done in them than about overall GPA.
• If you have taken difficult classes its probably a good idea to point this out in your application essay because schools might not know what the math classes are, which economics classes are the advanced ones, etc.
• Real analysis is an especially important class because it tends to be demanding everywhere, and forces you to do logical and formal proofs.  Get a good grade in this class.
• Taking some graduate classes can be a good thing, but be prepared.  You will be at a disadvantage since the grad students will all have study groups.  Try to join a study group and devote serious time to any graduate classes you take.  More and more applicants are taking graduate classes.
• Students from top universities who have the bare minimum coursework (an undergraduate major, no graduate economics or math classes, and only basic undergraduate math classes) will need something really outstanding -- like a thesis that is publishable in a top economics field journal--to get fellowships at the top two or three graduate programs.  Typically the strongest applicants have some distinguishing feature, like scoring near the top of a graduate class at a top PhD program, very strong math (e.g. graduate level real analysis and topology), or an outstanding thesis or coauthored research.
• Undergraduate classes at most U.S. universities are much easier than graduate classes.  To be a strong applicant you should be getting mostly or all As in undergraduate economics classes--with grade inflation even A-'s are not going to help you.  Some poor grades your freshman year won't disqualify you though, doing really well in very advanced classes will more than compensate.

Recommendation letters

• Recommendations which are not from economists have very little value.  Recommendations from economists who have contacts at the schools you are applying to are most useful.  However, one letter from someone you have worked for after undergrad may be useful to document your work ethic, maturity, etc.
• Get recommendations from people who know you well.
• Corollary: Get to know some professors well. Professors will be very excited that you want to get a Ph.D. in economics.  Don't be afraid to approach them.  Listen to their advice.
• Give professors every possible opportunity to say they don't feel comfortable recommending you to the school you're applying to. If they express any hesitation don't have them send it. One bad letter hurts much more than any good letters can help.  A letter that mentions a poor work ethic, or basically almost any substantive negative, probably spells death at the best programs.
• It's fine to have a letter from someone you worked for even if they didn't teach you in a class.
• If you do not have relationships with economics professors (e.g. you are a math major) or if you attend a college or university without faculty that have connections at the top Ph.D. programs, you still have a good chance of admission if the rest of your application is stellar.  Just be aware that objective criteria such as GRE scores, grades in hard math classes, and essays will receive more weight, and make sure that you do everything you can to help the admissions committee evaluate your record.
• Your professors' letters will be most effective if they compare you specifically to other students in top graduate schools.  This is especially important if your professors do not have personal relationships with the faculty at the top programs.  The admissions committee needs to be able to calibrate the content of the letter.  To get into Harvard or MIT, the letter probably needs to be pretty explicit that the student is comparable to other students who have been to those programs and succeeded.  For foreign students, where transcripts are particularly hard to evaluate, these comparative statements carry a lot of weight.  The comparative statements should be backed up with reasoning--such as comparing analytic abilities, coursework, the quality of the thesis, etc.  You can tell your recommender about this site since you don't want to tell them what to do!

Application Essays

• On your graduate school application its very important to write an essay saying what kinds of areas of economics you're interested in, what questions you think are interesting, what papers you've read that you've liked etc. Be as specific as possible. It may be helpful to discuss your thesis or research assistant work.  Its not necessary to have a specific thesis proposal, and odds are if you try to pretend you have one when you really don't you'll come off as sounding naive which is a bad thing. Mostly schools just read these to see what field you're interested in and to get a sense whether you have any idea what you're getting yourself into.  You should therefore try to talk intelligently about your topic of interest to show that you understand something about what research in that field would be like.
• Get someone to read your essays, preferably an advanced graduate student or a faculty member.
• Application essays for NSF fellowships have typically been judged differently. They seem to want a specific thesis proposal and value clear brief surveys of the existing literature, a clear statement of what you'd like to add to this, a discussion of datasets you might want to use etc. They don't like vague statements about liking economics, and don't seem to mind that people aren't really going to do what they say.