MY PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN APPLYING FOR GRAD SCHOOL IN ECONOMICS.

    TLDR: you need:
    (1) 4-year bachelor’s degree in Economics, Math, Physics or related fields with GPA 3.6+/4.0
    (2) GRE with quant score 160+/170
    (3) 2-3 strong reference letters
    (4) CV
    (5) Motivational letter.

    Disclaimer: this is my personal advice and it does not necessarily guarantee that following it could increase your chance to get admission. It comes mostly from my own experience and also some recommendations from my friends, seniors, and professors.
    I am going to give you my personal advice to a student who are:
    • Interested in applying for grad school and aim for top 100 schools
    • Do not have a strong background in math nor take many math courses in undergraduate.
    • Uncertain about the chance of getting an admission
    • Not sure about which universities to apply for.

    1. Before you start to prepare your application:
    Firstly, you need to check your eligibility. For most cases you would need:
    • A bachelor degree in Economics or Mathematics or Engineering/Physics. (some schools also accept Computer Science degrees). Normally degree in business/commerce is insufficient
    • While undergraduate program lasts for three years in many countries, grad school normally only accepts four-year bachelor degrees. For example, grad school in Canada strictly accepts only four-year degrees only. Which means that if you get your undergraduate degree from, for example, New Zealand, you will likely need to do an additional year of Honours to meet this requirement.
    Failing to meet the criteria above does not mean that you are not eligible. You would want to contact to graduate assistants of the schools you are interested in to ask for waives and advice (for example your GPA might not be high but you had few years of experience working in Central Bank). I am also not fully aware whether grad schools accept three-year bachelor degree.
    Most schools welcome international students, however quotas varies from school to school.

    2. Once you are certain that you are eligible, you would like to start thinking about how to prepare your package. For most time you would need:

    a) Academic record
    b) GRE scores
    c) Reference letters
    d) CV
    e) Motivation letter
    f) Research proposal (optional for most of the time)
    You want to evaluate how competitive and strong your application package is. It will help you to narrow the set of schools that you have a good chance. The strength of the application will mostly depend on (a), (b) and (c). I am not sure what the right weight is, but my hunch tells me that they are equally important, and if anything the reference letter can carry more weight than others.
    Let us go through each item above:

    ACADEMIC RECORD

    It is all about GPA and the number of economics, econometrics and math courses you take.
    – Most schools require a minimum GPA of about 75%-80% (in the scale of 100%). This is equivalent to some 3.0/4.0 in Canadian system. Something like 7.5/9.0 in New Zealand system. However, from what I have seen in gradcafe it is very likely that you will need to have at least 3.6/4.0 to get into top 100 schools. I have seen people in gradcafe with 3.95/4.00 being rejected from top 10 schools.

    – Without a doubt, you want to have as many A+ as you would wish in your academic record. Let me quote an admission requirement from University of Toronto website to give you a feel for what courses you should take and excel to have a chance to get into top 20 school:
    • average GPA in the last year of undergraduate studies above A-
    • average undergraduate CGPA above the mid-point between B+ and A-
    • advanced micro and macro theory courses with at least A-
    • advanced econometrics course(s) with at least A-
    • several courses on mathematics (e.g. calculus, linear algebra, real analysis,…) with high marks
    “Since we receive over 25 foreign MA applications for each available slot, we seldom admit a foreign applicant in our MA program who does not exceed all the items in this profile”

    Of course, UoT is just one of the examples that set a high standard for international applicants. That being said, if you do not aim for top 20 but top 100 is good enough, the requirement is of course not that high. My math background is wrapped in following courses:

    – Two second-year and one forth-year econometrics
    – One first-year calculus one first-year statistics for economics and finance

    So, do not feel down if your math courses in the record do not outstand! At any point in your undergraduate, if you realize that you would love to do postgrad in econ then you should immediately enroll in any real analysis or math courses.
    The ranking of the university where you get your bachelor degree is important. Ideally you want to get a bachelor degree from school which is internationally recognized, is a top school in your countries and ideally you should be among top students in your cohort. Top schools in China, Iran, Bangladesh etc.… are well recognized in international scene. Meanwhile, top schools in Vietnam and Malaysia may not be as well-known. In this case, you would ideally want to take an additional year doing Honours or Master in a lower-ranking school first before applying to top 100 schools the next year.

    GRE SCORES

    – A common question I run into is: “do I have to hand in GRE scores?”.
    – The answer in general is yes. Most Canadian and US schools and many European schools strictly require GRE scores. There are several schools state that GRE is optional but highly recommended. My suggestion is that you SHOULD get one. Having GRE score improves your chance to get admission and funding.
    – Most of the schools set a threshold of 160 on quantitative skill (80th percentile). Several top schools explicitly require 90th percentile on quantitative skill. Not so many schools mention any requirement on verbal reasoning. Some schools require a minimum analytical writing of 4.0 out of 6.0.
    – Ideally you would like to score 170 in quantitative and as high as possible in other skills. My experience checking gradcafe from time to time is that with applications with quant/verbal/analytical of 170/168/6.5 often report to get admissions from top 10 schools; those with 166/160/5.0 will get to top 50 schools and those with 162/150/4.0 will get to top 100 or so.
    I had less than one month to prepare for GRE so honestly my scores are bad. However, if you look for materials for quantitative section, these are few books which you can start with:

    – Ideally, one would want to spend 3-6 months before taking the test, based on how much math concept you still remember from secondary/high schools. I myself had 3 weeks before taking the exam. I spent 90% of my time doing questions in the books mentioned above and 10% of my time to read instructions and some samples of how to do verbal/analytical writing.

    RECOMMENDATION LETTERS
    – Most schools require 2 to 3 letters from professors who teach you or from those who know you well (your supervisor/manager in your workplace). However, letters from professors seem to carry more weight
    – Relationship is important. If schools know your referees, chance is substantially higher. You could also ask your referees to email committee members if they have connection.
    – Needless to say the more famous your referees are, the higher chance you get admissions into good schools.
    – So how can you get a strong letter? My personal advice is to approach your professors as soon as you realize that you want to further your study, tell them so, and ask them whether they need research assistant or that you want to do some research on the fields that your professors are specialized in. I guess that many professors will be very happy to know that you want to do MA/PhD in Economics, and be willing to help you. Get your hands on doing research with them. Score well on your professors’ courses. Sharing your thoughts and economics perspectives with them. Talk to them. Email to them. By doing that, your professors will get to you know well and more than just the grades showing on your record. You do not want to have a letter emphasizing just your grades, like:
    “This student scores top 3 in my class so he is capable of doing well in your program”.
    But something like:
    “This student scores top 3 in my class. He actively engages in researching. He always curiously asks questions and is willing to learn to tackle those questions…”.
    In short, you want your professors (or the person who writes letters for you) know more about you and grade is just a part of what make you outstand than other candidates.

    CV

    CV to apply for grad school is standard. It should not last for more than 2 pages. It should outline your:
    • Education history
    • Work experience
    • Volunteer experience (optional)
    • Computer skills
    • Scholarships and Awards
    • Languages (possibly optional)
    • Interests and activities (possibly optional)

    MOTIVATION LETTER

    The letter should be 500-1000-1500 words long depending on the demand of each school. My suggestion is to write a baseline 1500-word letter, leaving one or two paragraphs to personalize and tailor it for different schools (you do not want to hand in the letter in which you do not even mention the name of the schools you are applying for).
    I am not fully aware of how important the letter is. However, it is generally said that motivation letter is not very important when applying for grad school in Economics; and the admission committee will only read your letter when they really like your application and just a small step away from deciding to admit you. Still, impressing the committee in every possible way is, in my opinion, is important to secure an admission from top 100 school.
    I am not the best writer to give advice on how to write the letter. Just to give you an idea, my letter is structured as follows:
    – Introduction (about 5 lines): my name, my undergraduate school, the reason I write this letter.
    – Body:
    + Research skills (about 10-12 lines): the research projects I have done and with whom, the skill sets I obtain from those projects.
    + Teaching skills (about 7-9 lines): my teaching assistantship experience, courses I teach, how teaching helps me in confidently expressing my ideas in front of the crowd.
    + Learning skills (about 10 lines): how well I do in undergrad, how good I am at math, expressing my eager to learn, acknowledge the importance of math in econ and willing to take few additional math courses or self-study to prepare for grad schools.
    + Side skills (about 10 lines): what factors make me an outstanding candidate (I was a professional gamer and won a lot of tournaments at the games I played, I was also a winner in micro-stake PokerStars client).
    + Why I pursue PhD (about 12-15 lines).
    – Conclusion (about 6-7 lines): what do I apply in school ABC. This is where you want to personalize your letter. You want to show that you do some research on the schools you are applying to. Get to know their ranks, their famous professors, get to know one or two well-known papers published by their department etc.… Really. It does not take much effort but the return might be unexpectedly high.

    3. Choosing school:
    – The options you have depend on how competitive your application is. In my opinion, a minimum standard to apply for top 100 schools is:
    • GPA: around 3.6-3.7/4.0. Major in Economics. Ideally minor in Maths. Major in Maths/Engineering/CS and minor in Econ also does. You should be among top 5% of your cohort.
    • GRE: around 165/170 in Quant, optional 4.0/6.0 in analytical writing
    • Letters: from professors in econ who teach you and you score A/A+ in his class. Ideally he knows you for more than one year and engages in one or two research projects with you (something like Honours or Master thesis definitely works).
    – The first starting point in choosing schools is looking at the ranking. There are popular several sites. My preferred one is: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.econdept.html. It is easy to search for the schools and the locations of the schools. Needless to say, the higher the school ranks, the harder it is to get into and the more opportunities you will have in job market after you finish your PhD. Also, if you know exactly what your research interest is, you want to look specifically for schools in which their strengths match your research purposes.
    – When looking for schools, you want to create a spreadsheet. It helps you to keep track of the deadline of the schools, their requirements, their rankings, the link to the application portal, how they want to receive the reference letters, their GRE requirements etc.…
    – Most of the grad schools will offer a funding package which might require you to be a teaching assistant. The generosity is positively correlated with the strength of your application.
    – Most US schools have deadline around middle of December. Most non-US schools have deadline around middle of January to middle of March. Nearly all schools start their programs in August.
    – In what following, I will name the schools which I think are around top 20-100. These schools are outside US since I do not have any knowledge on US schools (I did not apply for US schools for personal reason). The top US schools dominate in both ranking and placements but if you are happy with top 100 then there is always opportunity outside of the US.

    CANADA:

    SPAIN

    GERMANY

    FRANCE

    • Paris School of Economics
    • Toulouse School of Economics

    NETHERLANDS

    I miss out a lot of good schools there e.g schools in Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, England etc.

    4. My application package
    – My profile looks like this when I first apply for Master of Arts in Canada:
    1. Academic record: GPA 3.9/4.0 for two most recent years.
    2. GRE: 162/147/4.0 on quant/verbal/AW
    3. Reference letters:
    (1) from a professor in VUW who I take 2 courses and do 2 research projects with. He knows me for nearly 2 years
    (2) from another professor in VUW who I take 1 course with. He knows me for about 8 months (3) from a supervisor in New Zealand Treasury who I do my internship with. He knows me for about 3 months.

    With this profile, I applied for 5 schools in Canada (back at the time for personal reason I applied for Canadian schools only).
    – UBC: rejected
    – Western Ontario: rejected
    – York Uni: rejected
    – SFU: accepted. Funding 17k CAD + 2k scholarship/year. Tuition fee: 7.5k (same as domestic tuition)
    – Carleton: accepted. Funding: 8k/year. Tutiton fee: 17k.

    I ended up going to SFU. This year, with the same profile and additionally I three A (max is A+) in micro, macro and econometrics courses in SFU, I applied for:
    – Queen’s Uni: accepted. Funding 27.5k/year. Tuition fee 14k
    – SFU: accepted: Funding 27.5k/year. Tuition fee 7k.
    – University of Carlos III Madrid: accepted. Funding: 900 euro/month. Tuition waived.
    – University of Frankfurt: accepted. No funding for first year. Tuition waived
    – Bonn GSE: rejected
    – Uni of Stockholm: rejected

    5. Last words
    I hope this blog gives you a feel for how to apply for grad schools in Economics. I still remember how struggling and panicked I was when trying to find information and preparing my package. If you need any assistance, feel free to email me: phan.nam1009@gmail.com. I am happy to help 😉