So much of this advice requires YEARS of foresight- undergrad math, 2 years of RAing, a year of taking the GRE every month until you get a 167 quant score.

I don& #39;t know how anyone without an academic parent and family money ever gets into grad school.

A thread. https://twitter.com/_AlvinChristian/status/1290274152360812546">https://twitter.com/_AlvinChr...

I had a friend in undergrad who was 2 years ahead of me. Her passion was addressing poverty and used to tell me about how she wanted to become an economist so she could do the sort of research she read about in books like "Poor Economics."

But she was a senior in college, and majored in Econ/Poli Sci and didn& #39;t take any additional math. I was only a sophomore, but because my dad did a PhD in Finance he told me to take as many math courses as I could, so I did. I convinced her to take Calc 1 before she graduated.

She worked campaign jobs while she applied to a couple masters programs that provided funding. She ended up doing an Applied Econ MA at a small school in France. After, she couldn& #39;t get RA jobs & kept working on campaigns until she unsuccessfully applied for a couple PhD programs

My friend was really smart, driven, and passionate. She would have made a fantastic economist and academic. But she had to make practical choices at every step of the way because she couldn& #39;t afford to take the GRE multiple times/ apply to 20 phd programs.

I too am passionate about what I do, and am probably also smart/driven. But I had a parent with a PhD who provided advice and money for me every step of the way, so now I& #39;m one of the ones who "made it" and my friend didn& #39;t.

In a way, I believe all science is social science- all science is done by people who can never fully escape their own perspectives. And if our screening process for economists is for people who were raised by economists & had enough money to take the GRE 4 time, we are worse off.