Advice for Applying to Grad School in Economics

Disclaimer: These are just opinions, and some people may disagree with the claims here.

Choosing classes

Graduate schools care much more about what hard classes you've taken and how you've done in them than about overall GPA.
If you have taken difficult classes its probably a good idea to point this out in your application essay because schools might not know what the math classes are, which economics classes are the advanced ones, etc.

Recommendations which are not from economists are essentially worthless.
Get recommendations from people who know you well.
Give professors every possible opportunity to say they don't feel comfortable recommending you to the school you're applying to. If they express any hesitation don't have them send it. One bad letter hurts much more than any good letters can help.
It's fine to have a letter from someone you worked for even if they didn't teach you in a class.

On your graduate school application its very important to write an essay saying what kinds of areas of economics you're interested in, what questions you think are interesting, what papers you've read that you've liked etc. Be as specific as possible. Its not necessary to have a specific thesis proposal, and odds are if you try to pretend you have one when you really don't you'll come off as sounding very naive which is a bad thing. Mostly schools just read these to see what field you're interested in and to get a sense whether you have any idea what you're getting yourself into.

Application essays for NSF fellowships have typically been judged differently. They seem to want a specific thesis proposal and value clear brief surveys of the existing literature, a clear statement of what you'd like to add to this, a discussion of datasets you might want to use etc. They don't like vague statements about liking economics, and don't seem to mind that people aren't really going to do what they say.

Every student applying to graduate school should apply for an NSF fellowship. Winning one gives you a much better financial deal than any school will offer. Even if you don't win just the fact that you applied will increase the probability of your being accepted by graduate schools.
Don't be surprised to find that the fellowships are only weakly influenced by grades and GRE scores. The essays matter a lot.
Even if its questionable whether your eligible go ahead and apply. The rules seem to change a lot.

As long as its in by the deadline it doesn't matter. It is an advantage to have your folder be complete very soon after the deadline, which means making sure your recommenders get their letters in.

Though the test is not necessarily a good predictor of success, it matters a lot (especially the quantitative portion). Studying for the GRE dramatically increases your scores so you should definitely practice.
The economics GRE doesn't usually count for much, but it does give a chance for people who haven't taken much economics to make a positive impression.

Its hard to generalize on what you should do on these. At Harvard, for example, its always best to make it seem like you have money because their administration has a rule that they can't accept people without offering them enough money to come. As a result they often reject people who at the end of the process they would have preferred to people they give money to. At other schools, if you seem to have a lot of money it may reduce the size of the fellowship offer you get. It may also, however, increase the probability of getting accepted because a school with a few partial fellowships to offer will give them only to people who seem to have the resources to accept them.