Applicant Mentoring Programme (AMP)
In 2020, my friend Arnaud Dyèvre and I started a mentoring programme at LSE that connects prospective PhD economics applicants with current PhD economics students. The aim of AMP is to help level the playing field of competitive economics PhD programme admissions by sharing some of the tacit knowledge about PhD admissions that is difficult for people outside of academia to obtain. As the first in my family to attend university, I can attest to the difficulty involved in learning how to be a competitive applicant for PhD economics programmes when no one in your family or social circle is involved with academia. So I am really happy and proud that through AMP we have already been able to provide one-on-one mentoring to over 400 prospective students and that the programme expanded in 2021 to include four additional UK universities: Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, and Warwick. Below are a few links that explain AMP in a bit more detail and also a couple of links to other economics mentoring programmes.
If you are interested in setting up a similar initiative at your own department, we should talk! Arnaud Dyèvre, Gaia Dossi, and I have prepared a nice note that details the lessons we have learned from running AMP and we would be happy to share it with whomever is interested.
AMP links
Summary thread on Twitter (erm, X?)
Other links
Mentoring programme at MIT and Harvard (scroll to bottom)