Graduate Admissions

Greetings!

Is anyone applying for PhD Economics? Or does anyone have experience, or even any advice regardless? I’d be interesting to hear from anyone on this topic and am keen that this stimulates a general discussion. But I face some specific difficulties. I have BSc and MSc Economics from a British university. I graduated several years ago, so I might have difficulty getting good letters of recommendation. My academic performance is OK - not as good as it could be as I was getting disillusioned with mainstream, but took a while to get acquainted with Austrian economics.

Now I’m in the process of writing some papers. If I can publish any of them that could be helpful. Any other suggestions as to what I should be doing in order to improve my chances?

University - Resources

gary north’s website also has detailed advice on going back to school

Thanks - I have seen those resources. Do you have any thoughts on the issues which aren’t mentioned, such as LORs…?

Also have you done this?

No and no. I’m trying to educate myself reading the stuff here. Getting papers published sounds like a great idea though, in lieu of LORs.

If you can’t sell yourself then you probably can sell anything…

If you feel you are a good at selling then the best option might be to take the route to a PHD in economics from the business or management schools at the university of your choice. These institutions should be more receptive to experience and an ON LINE portfolio of projects, blogs and what not, than the economics departments in the schools of social science.

I’m applying for a PhD program in history. By chance what do you hope to achieve with an economics PhD? I ask because if it is not for academia then social science degree tend to be a bit wasteful.