Courses

What to take: The best list of courses may depend on your field of interest. You should start with this list and consult your faculty mentors.

  • Empirical Research Methods
  • Applied Econometrics
  • Regression Analysis / Regression
  • Advanced Real Analysis Seminar / Real Analysis
  • Advanced Macro Theory / Macro Theory
  • Micro Theory
  • Advanced Probability Seminar / Measure Theory
  • Probability
  • Statistical Inference
  • Statistical Learning / Machine Learning
  • Intro to Computing
  • Data Structures
  • Elementary Topology
  • Linear Algebra
  • Multi-variable Calculus
  • Differential Equations
  • An Economics CW course
  • Any other coursework in Math, Economics, Statistics, and Computer Science

What about field courses in economics? Valuable they might be for your learning and undergraduate research, they are not as valued by PIs of top predoc programs except for those specific to some programs (e.g. a health economics class could benefit your application to Amy Finkelstein’s lab). Field courses with more math and more academic papers may help you more than those with less.

Sequence:

  • Consider taking the most challenging and “useful” / “practical” coursework as early as possible to help you get research opportunities
    • Personal experience: In my 2nd year a PI at Brookings commented during the interview on the fact that I was already taking real analysis, and it might have factored in the offer he made me eventually. (For reference, however, you may wish to know that many students at Harvard take real analysis as part of their first math course - that is just how math classes there are structured)
  • Some courses are offered only once every few years. You should try your best to do them as early as possible, by taking the pre-reqs early or talking to the instructor.

Gain Research Experience

To:

  • build your CV
  • learn and practice how (best) to do research
  • develop relationships with potential future letter-writers
  • gain (potentially long-term) mentorship
  • learn about different fields of social science
  • develop ideas for your own thesis / independent research

Similar to some other jobs like IBD and consulting, a common career ladder is: part-time RA → full-time summer RA → predoc, where the scale of project, your contributions, and the name recognizability of your PIs increase along the path.

Part-time / Semester RA @Midd

  • Part-time semester RA positions at Middlebury usually require little or no prior research experience.
    • Core economics courses and coding skills in Stata and R make you competitive
  • Due to search cost, not all semester RA positions are posted publicly
    • So reach out to faculty
  • At this stage, you should take on projects with maximal learning opportunities and good PIs
    • Your interest in the field / topic should be secondary
  • You may also consider RA positions in the statistics or political science department

Part-time RA Outside Middlebury

  • Some PIs run large labs with many part-time RAs who help with manual / dirty work
    • These PIs tend to be prominent researchers with many projects and thus high labor demand
    • e.g. Melissa Dell and David Yang
  • These positions usually require more skills than an average part-time RA position @Midd
  • You should expect no pay
  • How much you gain depends on your contribution
    • Part-time RAs usually report directly to pre-docs, and many part-time RAs make insignificant contributions
    • Personal experience: I know someone who became a PI’s part-time RA by cold emailing and eventually co-authored as the sole first author a paper with the PI
    • Work for someone whose work excites you

How to find opportunities:

  • Visit the PIs’ personal website
    • Some PIs explicitly state on their websites that they hire part-time RAs
  • Check out the PIs’ Twitter - some post there
  • Check out centralized postings such as predoc.org / Econ RA Twitter
  • Cold email PIs whose work interests you
    • You should write a sincere and concise (1 paragraph) email explaining your interest and highlight your skills.
      • Consider this email as a cover letter where you have 10s to make the reader want to learn about you more
    • Attach your CV, transcripts, writing sample, and code samples
    • Expect most PIs to not respond. Thank those who say no. You should keep on cold-emailing, but don’t over-do it. You may look bad if you got multiple offers but then had to turn most down
  • Use Middlebury’s alumni network
    • A few alumni in the past two decades are now professors at top research institutions, and more alumni are current PhD students
    • You should connect to them and see if they have or can refer you to any opportunities.

Summer RA @Midd

MiddEcon hires summer RAs around March or April.

You should apply asap with your CV, transcripts, writing sample, and code samples.

Summer RA outside Midd

  • There are many summer RA opportunities / research fellowships / bootcamps outside Middlebury
  • These can be quite competitive, with slight variation across programs
    • A good rule of thumb: if any past Middlebury students have done it, then perhaps you can too
  • Formal summer positions are mostly paid
  • Applications open around late-autumn till spring

How to find these opportunities? You should certainly look up on the internet, but there are 2 easier ways: asking the economics faculty - they know their students and their colleagues’ students - and chatting with alumni. With a few conversations, these two ways allow you to compile a long list of positions that Middlebury students can typically get into.

There are also informal summer research positions that you could get from cold-emailing PIs. They are most likely unpaid, but Middlebury’s CCI has funding for you if you phrase this as a research internship

  • You may get a summer 0555 credit for external summer research that results in concrete deliverables (a paper or at least a slide deck)
    • At this moment I might be the only person in recent history to have taken advantage of this, and Jeffrey Carpenter helped me. You should contact him if you are interested.

Read (Lots of) Papers

A good researcher is creative, but where does creativity come from? You may be a genius and simply create from the void, but that is hard for me. Instead, I gain creativity from reading lots of papers, from which I learnt about new data sources, methodology, common arguments, theory concepts, ways to measure / quantify conceptual variables, and questions that were / are being asked by economists.

Reading may be hard at the beginning, but it gets easier as you read more, because you come across more familiar concepts and are able to connect unfamiliar ones to familiar ones. This is a long term effort.

Here are some opportunities:

  • Follow NBER / IZA / economics journals on LinkedIn / Twitter / Instagram. Fill your social media with interesting papers
  • Sign up for research summary emails from institutions like J-PAL or HBS
  • MiddEcon invites external speakers to present papers and talk with students. Sign up for a lunch if possible and attend their presentations
  • Join MiddEcon’s student advisory committee (SAC) for free lunch chat with candidates visiting to interview at MiddEcon
  • Ask MiddEcon faculty for lunch, offered for free at MiddDining
  • External opportunities for talks. For example, Harvard has its seminar series, the majority of which is steamed on zoom
  • Econimate on Youtube

If you are new to the economics literature, sometimes reading research summary books may be better than straight going to cutting-edge literature. This is because books are more structured and systematic, so they can give you a fuller picture of the field, while a paper usually focuses on a narrow aspect. Also, books are usually more tailored to a less technical audience. Examples of books include:

  • S. Dubner and S. Levitt, Freakonomics
  • D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, Why Nations Fail
  • D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, The Narrow Corridor
  • D. Acemoglu and S. Johnson, Power and Progress
  • D. Acemoglu and D. Autor, Lectures in Labor Economics
  • C. Goldin, The Race between Education and Technology
  • A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Poor Economics
  • A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times
  • A. Case and A. Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
  • J. Angrist and S. Pishcke, Mastering Metrics
  • D. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Networking

This is one of the most important skills in your life. You learn about the job, the application processes (including how to write good CV / cover letters), and get some insider information (e.g. which PIs to avoid, what’s in the job interview, what are good opportunities, past placement, etc.)

Learn networking and cold-calling / cold-emailing. Connect with alumni and strangers on LinkedIn and ask them about their jobs / PhD programs. Follow people on Twitter. Learn how to leverage existing connections (including professors) to make new connections.

If you have trouble learning / doing these on your own, instead of not doing them, you should reach out to CCI for help, or even participate in MiddCORE to practice.

Transfer / Study Away

Conditions permitting, you should consider transferring to / studying / exchanging at institutions of top economics departments / rigorous academic trainings in Math, Economics, Statistics, and Computer Science, including but not limited to:

  • Any US institutions with a top Economics department
  • LSE / Oxbridge
  • Stockholm School of Economics
  • Swarthmore College (Middlebury’s official study away program)

These institutions tend to offer more advanced classes (e.g. graduate classes, advanced real analysis, proof-heavy math classes) and their grades are more recognizable.

Feb Yourself

Most predocs start in early summer, but some PIs will prefer candidates who can start earlier. Being a Feb does not hurt and sometimes is an advantage, so do it if possible and all else equal.

Take the GRE

Many PIs value both competitiveness in grad school applications and qualitative & quantitative skills. A pretty GRE score helps with your application in both dimensions - and you will have to take it anyways before applying to grad school. (I have, however, encoutered no predocs that require GRE scores to apply - this is totally optional.)

Have Your Thesis / Writing Sample Ready

The vast majority of top predoc programs require, or at least accept (certainly will value), a writing sample. They claim that it is to help them evaluate your writing skills, but you can demonstrate a lot more qualities in your writing sample: your creativity, research potential, thought processes when engaging with data, quantitative prowess, good “taste”, organization, graphing skills, Latex mastery, research interest, and how many papers you read. With these in mind, have your thesis ready (i.e. written, reviewed by faculty / peers, rewritten, and proofread 3+ times on different days).