Application Update

I am now all applied to all of the schools since I finished both Claremont and Oregon this month. Those schools went in terms of getting the applications out. I didn't have any problems with recommendors this time since they got them in really early, before I had even started actually. I did have one problem actually... only with the Claremont application though.

As I'm sure you know, Washington* got hit by a snow storm which closed down schools, and shut down roads, including PLU and I-5 (I still see places with snow). Here, where I live, in Olympia, we got 15 inches while ten miles away out in the county they got 28 inches. Then we got freezing rain which caused all sorts of problems like trees falling and knocking out power closing schools and roads for even longer. Things were local schools were closed for over a week and PLU was closed for almost a week. This normally would be a problem but this happened in the middle of January and the Claremont application was due on the first of February. I could have waited but I wanted to avoid paying to fedex it there. Good news is that they got to both schools in time and to the right place.

I had another problem with the Oregon application. It was also easily taken care of. As I was going through I noticed that the economics department at U of O wanted my CV mailed to them and there was no place for it to be uploaded. Mail was the only option. So I dropped it into the nearest mailbox right away and hoped it would get there. Then, Monday I had decided to call the department to see if I had sent my official transcripts to the correct place (to the department not admissions) and the nice lady who I talked to said that I could email my CV in so that way they would be there on time until the hard copy arrived.

Now I have nothing more to do but wait and pray that somebody accepts me. Maybe I'll write more posts more often now... hopefully.

Waiting...,
Kit

*The real Washington, the state not D.C.

To Do List

1. Rebuild my bank account
2. Get accepted
3. Blog

Your Reward:

 

Courtesy of T Rex is Trying.

Applying Myself

This one has been a long time coming. Sorry that it has been so long but I got busy with everything like applications, holidays, family, etc.

     So, like the title of this post implies, I have been applying to the schools that are on my list.  The reason you haven't heard from me in so long is because the applications started needing to be turned in a little after my birthday on the first of December. I applied to two schools that day: UCLA and UCSB. I feel pretty good about UCSB and not so good about UCLA.

     I had a crap my pants moment as I was filling out the applications though. I realized that both schools wanted official transcripts sent to them and received at least by the due date if the application. This was a week less than a week before they were due, so I panicked. I got it all sorted out though. I had to drive up to PLU and visit student services and request transcripts, which isn't free. But Since it was so close to the due dates for those two I had to FedEx the transcripts which was $19.00 per school. They got there though, which is all that matters.

     Then I had UNC due on the 13th of December. Which I thought was strange because it is the only school that I had looked at that had an application due on that day. This application didn't go smoothly either because one of my recommendation writers had problems with the link to submit her recommendation, which I found out the day the application was due. I told her I would resend the link and that she should let me know if it worked or not. She didn't. I was in Seattle at this time and started freaking out. I had emailed a couple people in the morning. Then when I hadn't heard anything back I tried calling on the phone. The next day I finally hear back from someone and find out how to fix this problem. I let my professor know what to do and I hear back within 30 minutes that the link ended up working...

     Two days later I had three more applications due. I had Penn, Northwestern and UW all due on the 15th. Fortunately those went off without a hitch.

     Then my sister (all the way from Japan) and Christmas came, so I took a break from applying for a while (and from writing... sorry). But then after Christmas I had to get back to work. I had to apply to Georgetown which was due on the first of January. For that application I had to cut my personal statement down to 500 words when it was originally a 617.

     I decided not to apply to Harvard Business school since I wasn't feeling too confident about it and the due date was coming up shortly after I got the email from them. It was also going to be a lot of money to apply to another school and so to save money I didn't apply. I didn't feel like paying all of that money to be rejected by them.

     After getting all of those sent off I still have two applications left; Claremont and Oregon due on the 1st of February and on the 15th of February respectively. All in all, I am out a lot of money after all of this and my bank account is running really low. Since I am not as busy working applications I am looking for work during the day to supplement my soccer coaching. That's all for now. I will try to write again soon to let you know what is going on with the whole grad school process.

Officially a bachelor,
Kit

To Do List:

1.  Apply to Claremont
2. Apply to Oregon
3. Find a job

Your reward:

 Courtesy of Economists Do it with Models . I know this is late but since most of the content in this posts revolves around the holidays I think this fits. Plus, it's funny.

Early Birthday Present

Today is my birthday! Yay! Wahoo! Yippee! I'm now 23 aww....

    Now that's out of the way we can get down to business. Yesterday, my birthday eve if you will, I was walking out the door to go coach my team (you didn't know I was coaching? well I am) I flipped through the mail on the table just to see if there was anything there for me, and I found there, on the table, three bills for my student loans (yikes), which I felt I could leave for when I got home later. But also on the table was letter for me from ETS and the GRE. They were my scores. And they weren't supposed to be here until today. I got them a whole day early! So needless to say I opened the envelope right then even though it meant I was going to be pressed for time.

So here are the results:
    Verbal Reasoning: 163 (93rd percentile)
    Quantitative Reasoning: 157 (77th percentile)
    Analytical Writing: 5.0 (87th percentile)

     So basically I did really well. My scores in the verbal part jumped up the most, followed by writing and then math moved up a little bit. I feel really good about the verbal and the writing but I was hoping for more from the math side of things since that's more important to econ programs.

      I felt more confident today about my scores because I got an email from Harvard Business Economics PhD program (more birthday presents). So I think they may have jumped onto my list now. To be honest I am quite giddy about it, that Harvard might be interested in me.

Officially an older bachelor,
Kit

 To Do List:

1. Write my CV
2. Write my personal statement
3. Apply

No reward today. You guys can give me gifts.

Putting the Wheels in Motion

     I have actually started applying to schools. I don't yet have my curriculum vitae (CV) or my personal statement finished yet but I figured it doesn't hurt to start applying to schools anyways. So far it has only been filling out information like my name, address, and social security number. Just the basics. That way I can just plug in everything else (my letters of recommendation, my personal statement, and my credit card number).

     This is taking me back to the fall of my senior year of high school when I had to apply to undergrad schools. But as my boss would say it is, "the same thing but different." This time I am employing the bird shot approach. You know, the one where you apply to tons of schools and hope that one accepts you. Last time I applied to just two and got into both thank you very much (100% acceptance rate BABY!). I'm doubting I will be as successful this time around though. But that's okay just as long as I make it into one (with funding). It's going to be way more expensive though. I think last time I was applying for schools I didn't have to pay anything, since applying online was somewhat new and they were trying to discourage paper applications. Now I must apply online, there is no paper option, and I have to pay a minimum of $50 per application. And since I'm applying to a lot, I'm going to be even poorer. I will have to pay a at least $500 for all of my applications.

     I am also in the process of finishing my personal statement and my CV. I hope to have those done by the end of the week. So it looks like I will have a busy week ahead of me.

Officially a bachelor,
Kit

To do list:

1. Finish my CV
2. Finish my personal statement
3. apply to more schools
4. get letters of recommendation

your reward:

Good School Hunting

     I know I have been talking a long time now about how I need to do all of this research to find which schools I would like to attend and to which schools I would like to apply. This whole time that researching schools has been on my to do list I have been looking but with no real direction. Now I finally have something to report back on.
 
     Looking for a grad school is different than looking for an undergrad institution. With undergrad schools you have a good idea of what schools are good and where you want to go. But having a good undergrad program does not guarantee that that school is a good graduate school, let alone a good econ graduate program.  Then to make matters even more difficult, a good econ program may not have the concentration you want, or if they do may not be very good at that concentration. So this is why my search has been slow, drawn out, and not very obvious to all of you who read this regularly (all 4 of you).

   On my own I was able to find some schools that I am interested in and schools which have good labor economics programs (If I haven't mentioned it before, that's the area of concentration I intend of studying in grad school) and sometimes I was able to find some schools which were both. I accomplished this mainly by googling "econ grad school rankings." Through this I found that Northwestern, UC Santa Barbara, Georgetown, and Washington are all good schools. They even have good labor programs but that was more by coincidence when I first found these schools. But these schools might turn out to be too good.

     The next problem I had was that I didn't know (still don't really know) what schools I can get into. Grad schools don't have a set minimum requirement that you have to meet in order to be accepted to the program (well they do but they don't like to tell you what it is. instead they prefer to say here are our averages but it all depends on the person). When I was applying for undergraduate schools I had a better idea of what grades I needed in school and what scores I needed on the SAT and what types of extracurriculars I need in order to be accepted. There aren't really as many guidelines out there for getting into grad schools.

     Guidance is something that I have desperately been needing, so I made a trip back up to PLU during to talk to my capstone adviser. I asked him about what would be some schools that would be good for me. Specifically, what schools can I get into and find funding? We talked and said that the schools I was looking at were good and then he gave me a list of 8 schools to look at and which would be good for labor. He told me to look into Cornell, which apparently has a guy who anytime  media people want to know something about the labor market they talk to him. UNC and Duke are also good schools but I have reservations about them because I don't know if I could go there due to my basketball prejudices. I was also told to look into Penn, Mississippi State, Oregon, USC, and SUNY Stony Brook. I then went home to research them further.

     I can see myself at all of these schools. I have even come around to the idea of attending UNC despite how I feel about their athletics, and I might even set aside my prejudices and give Duke a serious look. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments.

To Do List

1. Write personal statement
2. Write my CV
3. Apply to schools

Your Reward:
   A correlation VS causation comic

Take Two!

So a couple of weeks ago I took the GRE for a second time. I took at the end of August, so it was the new and "improved" (and improved means not as good) test. I did however save 80 dollars since the GRE was trying to get people to take the new test by offering a sale on it. That's is the biggest improvement I noticed, since now I have paid a total of $240 on tests alone (so that doesn't even include other costs of driving, study books and opportunity costs, check your econ 101 textbook for that one).

My test was at 4pm and I was told to expect it to take 5 hours meaning that I could expect to get out of the test around 9pm! I had to leave my house at 2 because the closest testing center is all the way up in Puyallup (I'm currently in Olympia) and the traffic around Ft. Lewis sucks and I didn't want to be late like I was for the first test.

I got there about half an hour early and they let me start the pre-test rituals right away. I had to right out this statement saying that I won't cheat or share any of the test questions with anyone... in CURSIVE! The last time I used cursive to right anything besides my signature was probably in the  fourth grade when my teacher made us right in cursive. No one uses cursive anymore! So that took a while since I was out of practice. After that I noticed changes to the test right away. Before I could enter the testing room I had to be scanned by a metal detector (to make sure I don't cheat or something) and the locker system was different. You can't take anything in with you besides your locker key and your photo ID.

Then I got to start the test. I started with the writing sections and then unlike the old test I didn't get a break after writing two essays. I had to take the first math section. At least it wasn't more words. Then I got a ten minute break. I tried to use up as much of it as possible by walking around, getting a snack, getting water, anything to get me out of the room. Then I went back and had to take four more sections with only a minute break in between each one. And one of those non-writing sections doesn't even count but they never told my which one it was. I think it was a math one because I had three of those.

Finally it was tine to send off my scores. I sent them to the same schools that I did last time. UW, UCSB, Georgetown, and Northwestern. then after all of that I finally got to see my scores. Now the new test is on a new scale, but since the scales are supposed to be based of percentiles the new scale isn't in place yet. So they gave me a range of scores on the old scale which my test fell into. For the verbal my range was 650-720 and my math section was 720-800. So I definitely improved my verbal which is good, I was disappointed  with my score last time (530), and I didn't do any worse on the math section. Then as I was leaving I was informed that my scores will be sent out on November 8th, my birthday. So now I have to wait and hope that these scores are good enough to get me into a good school with funding, because again with the new test the rules have changed once again. Before with the old test you could take it once a month and no more than 5 times a year. With the new test you still can only take it 5 times a year but now you have to wait 60 days in between tests. So if I wanted to take the test again my scores wouldn't be sent in time to make it for this application cycle and I wouldn't be attending school in the fall of 2011. So this will have to do.

Officially a bachelor,
Kit


To Do List: 1. Find a Job
2. Look for schools
3. Start Applying for schools
4. Blog about it 

Your Reward:
From Economists Do it with Models; from Modified Rapture
The Top Ten Lines for Hitting on an Economist
1. You’ve got the curves to supply my demand!
2. Let’s go to bed and try to disprove the law of diminishing marginal utility.
3. You’re my very favorite kind of moral hazard.
4. I have a feeling you really understand the “nature of the firm.”
5. Baby, I love you so much I’m willing to forgo my exit option.
6. Wanna talk about our private goods?
7. You’re an economist. I’m an economist. How about a little horizontal integration?
8. Now those are some tangible assets!
9. I’ll reveal my preferences if you will.

Life Goes Fast

Wow it's been a long time.

Well first things first. It is the first duke. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, look it up in your history book. And by history book I mean check the last post.

Anyways on to real business now. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote. This should come as no surprise to you because the last time I wrote a post was a little over six months ago. I have been slacking here but I assure you that I have not been slacking in the real world.

So let us start where we were last time I was just starting my last semester at PLU and I had a hard schedule. My prediction for my math classes was correct. Calc was way harder than Proofs was. I ended up pass/failing it but I did get the pass so it will show up on my transcripts for grad schools to be impressed with. I also passed capstone which means that I graduated! I did a labor topic: The affects of private high school on the rate of return to education. And let me say this. I absolutely rocked the presentation (and that's not just me saying that, friends and professors told me and my adviser that too).

Then I graduated and was thrust into the cold, hard, real world. I had no job right away and I had to go back to my former job as a soccer camp coach. It's a good job, only part-time though and it's only for the summer. So now as kids are going back to school, I'm running out of work. So now I have to find something new and since I'm planning on going back to school I am not looking for a career just yet. So lately I have been pounding the pavement and looking for work and walking into places asking if they're hiring.

Then I took a large step forward towards my goal of Econ grad school: I took the GRE. I took the old general test in July and I did okay for only having prepared for the week before I actually took it and for my first try (It's like the SAT. No one just takes it once). I got a 720 in Math 530 in the Verbal Section and 4.5 on Writing. Decent marks for my first attempt but not good enough for the schools I am looking at. So that means I had to take the "Revised General Test" and buy a new book to study with, but that will be a different post where you will hear more about that.

Sorry once again for being so absent from my own blog, but I'm back and I'll do a better job of updating all of you out there who care.

Officially a bachelor
Kit

To Do List:
1. Find a Job
2. Look for schools
3. Start Applying for schools
4. Blog about it

Your Reward: