Applicant Mentoring Program
Entering a top economics PhD program is a highly competitive and enigmatic process, with success relying on a mix of demanding expectations and luck. Navigating this path can be particularly challenging for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as first generation, low income, those from developing countries and others, due to knowledge gaps in what makes for a strong PhD application. To break these informational barriers, we, the Economics Applicant Mentoring Programme (AMP) offers personalized mentorship to aspiring economists from around the world.
The program started at LSE around 2021 and has since expanded to include mentors from Cambridge, Oxford, UCL and Warwick. Over the last 5 years, we have mentored several hundred applicants, many of whom have successfully gained admissions to top economics programs and predocs.
Learn about the AMP and how to apply here: LSE page and AMP website. If you are considering an academic career in economics and seek advice on where to start, please feel free to reach out.
References
- Stansbury and Schultz (JEP 2023) article on the lack of socioeconomic diversity in economics.
- Brad Chattergoon’s blog on barriers to entry to the economics profession and what is a pre-doc?
Resources
Finding RAships and pre-docs
- J-PAL and IPA
- Positions at NBER, and postings on NBER
- Predoc.org
- Harvard: Opportunity Insights, HBS Predoc, Research Associates
- Stanford: SIEPR Predoc, GSB Research Fellows, King Center Predoc
- UChicago: Becker-Friedman Predoc, Booth Research Professionals
Best practices for data cleaning and analysis
- IPA / Poverty Action guide for RAs
Website building and typesetting documents
- Pascal Michaillat’s design webpage
Writing economics well
- Goldin and Katz on writing a job market paper
- Plamen Nikolov’s Writing tips for economics: 2023–24 edition
- Greg Mankiw’s blog on how to write well
Job market
- Harvard Economics advice on approaching the job market and flyouts