Detour

I recently was corresponding with an old college classmate that told me about his backdoor admission into a well-rated economics PhD program. This reminded me of a post I wanted to write, years ago, on the subject. The idea is simple. Get admitted into a less competitive, but related, program at your target university. Take the first year core courses (Macro, Micro, and in some schools Econometrics), pass the Q exam. Then ask the program to admit you as a transfer from the other program with your core classes and Q’s already passed. What is the risk for the program? I think this happens much more then is ever advertised. Congrats on your admission…you know who you are.

On a separate note, I would like to thank the following sites for linking to past posts on Detour.

The Guardian Unlimited Newspaper in the UK mentioned a post I wrote months ago about my irritation with Al Gore. Now I have an inbox full of nuts trying to convince me of something I already believe is true. I believe global warming is occurring…I’m just not convinced of what percentage of the cause can be attributed to man. I am sure the number is between 0 and 100%, but my hunch is the percentage is below 50%. Guess I will have to write a post about the reasons why I believe this. Stay tuned.

There is a new website about the Cornell economics department (Phd program) called Corneconomics. I have agreed with nearly everything said so far. Of course, judging from the tone of the site, the minute they hear that I will se a post blasting anyone who thinks global warming can be attributed to anything less then 50% man-made causes. From what I have read soo far, the blast will be well written and pretty damn funny.

Finally, I have been receiving incoming links from a site called The Un-Broken Window, an obvious reference to the broken window fallacy. Check out the site here.

Talk at you later.