So You Want to Get a PhD in Economics?

This is a nice conversation between a graduate student and an undergraduate student who is asking the advice of graduate student on Economics PhD. Enjoy it on You Tube when you need to relax from hectic process of application.

How to Get Bank Letter Showing the Financial Availability

Before you get admission letters and I-20 you may be asked to provide the proof of financial availability. Since US education is costly therefore you may be asked to send the financial affidavit before the university issues the I-20 form. Remember even if you have got the assistantship you might be asked to send the proof of financial availability if the estimated expenditure for the year exceeds the assistantship amount. Only after the proof of financial availability is received by the university the university will issue the I-20 form and it may take 7-10 days to reach via regular mail depending upon your location. . Once you get I-20 form you can apply for visa. Yes, you can’t apply for a student visa unless you get I-20 form.

The proof of financial availability can be in two forms first, bank letter and second, financial affidavit. So, what is a bank letter? A Bank Letter is a statement that you have ‘stated’ amount of money in your account with a particular branch of a bank. This is a statement printed on the Bank letterhead and normally is not valid if not on a bank letterhead. So make sure you get the statement on the bank letterhead with the seal of the bank and original signature of the branch manager.

And how do you get the bank letter? It’s as simple as that. Normally if you have got assistantship you would be asked to show not ‘huge’ amount in your or your sponsor’s bank account. You may be asked to show some 2-3 thousand dollars in your account. However, it’s advised to show a little more amount than what has been asked, may be 2000 dollars more.

All you need to get a bank letter is, to contact your branch where you have a bank account and ask them issue a certificate showing that you have such and such amount in your bank account. The amount must be stated in US dollars equivalent by using the latest exchange rate. There may be a fee for issuing the certificate but it would not take long time.

You can also show money in your parents account or some close relative’s account. In that case you would need a financial affidavit.

How to Choose the Best University from among the Acceptances

When to expect admission results to be out can be found here. Once the admission results are out, the selected candidates would normally be notified by email. Sometimes the applicants are notified about the admission and assistantship decisions simultaneously however sometimes you may be notified of admission decision while the assistantship decision might be on hold and has not been taken yet. In such a case it could probably be a good idea to write to graduate director of your department asking about the assistantship decision.

Once you get an assistantship decision in your favor, you may proceed to next step. And that is applying for a student visa. However, you may probably want to wait for the admission and assistantship decision of other universities you have applied to. If the acceptance that you have got from is from the most favorite university of yours, then you can proceed for the student visa otherwise wait. Once you have got the admission decisions from all the relevant universities you have applied to, it’s time to choose the best university for you; by best I mean the most suitable university for you.

How to choose the best university you have got acceptances from? There could be two important criteria, inter alia, to choose the best university among the various acceptances; one, the perceived quality of the program as indicated by the faculty and your area of interest and the second, the financial status. If you haven’t already done this, go and check the profiles of the professors working in your area of interest of all the universities you are considering getting in. Some university may have a better ranking but there are not very good professors in your area of interest so it would be better to finally get admitted to one which has probably a little lower ranking but professors working in your particular area of interest are better renowned. Remember though ranking matters, ranking isn’t everything!

The second important criterion obviously is the financial aid status. Say, you have got admission into your first choice but not the assistantship then probably it’s a better decision to enroll into one that has low rank but you have secured assistantship in. For international students this is particularly a very crucial decision as for them US education might be prohibitively costly and they are not allowed to work outside campus. If you are working inside campus, your earning wouldn’t be sufficient to pay for your fees, let alone the living expenditure. Though some students work illegally outside the campus but that is very risky and if caught you might be deported back to your country and hence not advised.

Once you are decided about the university you are going to join request them to have send admission letter and I-20 form to your address if they haven’t already sent them. But before they send the I-20 form you might be asked for financial affidavit which is to be discussed in next post.

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Getting a B in PhD Course

Well… this post is a little deviation from PhD admission rather it’s related to those who are already pursuing their PhD. The motivation of writing this post is again a search item in Google with post name.

So what is the implication of getting a B in PhD courses? Okay… a B isn’t bad and if you have only B’s and no A’s and no C’s then it’s still okay but if you have only B’s with no A’s and even a single C that is probably bad. In most of the universities your assistantship is contingent upon maintaining good academic standing which means your GPA should be no less than 3.0 otherwise it may lead to assistantship withdrawn.

How is the GPA determined? Well… normally a student can get an A or a B or a C or an F in each course. If you get an F that means you have failed the course. Let’s not talk about this as you will be kicked out of the program in most of the economics departments. If a student gets an A he is given 4 points, a B means 3 points and a C means 2 points. The GPA is the sum of the total points divided by the number of courses. So if you get 2 B’s and an A in three courses you have a GPA of (3+3+4)/3 that is, 3.33. With a GPA of more than 3 your assistantship is safe. SO if you get B’s in all the three papers your assistantship is still safe and you don’t need to worry. Nevertheless, it’s better if you have slightly more than 3.0 such that you have room to make some mistakes in future. The main idea is not to let your GPA go below 3.0 if you care of assistantship.

Now, what is its implication academically rather than from assistantship point of view? Well… in my view in PhD grades should not matter much and this is your research often indicated by published journals or job market paper. But the grades do matter in real world. However, if you maintain most A’s and a few B’s this is certainly a good thing as better GPA is certainly going to give your transcript more value than otherwise. Anyways, at PhD level one should avoid getting C’s. C’s don’t look good on the transcript.

I would emphasize that research work is the most important thing. However, A’s on transcript looks better but you don’t need to worry if you have B’s in courses with some A’s.