I'm a junior in college planning on applying to PhD programs in economics this fall (I graduate in Spring 2025). I have a friend who is applying this year and watching his process is making me shake in my boots. I want to pursue a career in research and academic and I know that pretty much the only way to get a job in academia is to go to a top program, but those programs have like 3% acceptance rates.

I go to a highly ranked college, but the program I'm in is not super well ranked (I go to Northeastern, so good school, but not incredible econ program). I have work experience in data science and worked as an RA for about a year, I'm taking grad level coursework and high level math, but have no quantitative publications (I have 2 non-quantitative publications in undergrad journals, one in history and the other in economics and film analysis) and none of it feels like enough, no matter how much I rationalize that I have strong aspects to my application.

How do you guys maintain any sense of confidence through this process? This feels way different than when I applied to undergrad, where I knew I was a strong student in high school and that was enough to get into a solid school, but it feels like im the bottom of the barrel when it comes to PhD apps and anything short of a T10 is failure, and I feel like no matter what I do, I'm going to fail and be left in the dust. Maybe I'm exaggerating and please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I've been told more or less.