Admission to Masters programs in Econ?

Graduate School
1

Hello, I am an undergraduate finance major from a top ranked public university who plans to work in economic analysis. I I am planning on applying to terminal masters programs in economics following graduation. Some schools I was considering are:

Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
Tufts
Duke
NYU
Michigan
Wisconsin
Georgia Tech

Can anyone provide any information on the quality of the programs, admission standards and amount of econometric coursework offered? As of now, my top choices are georgetown, JHU, or Tufts, but I cant find any information on admissions difficulty at either of these schools. Thanks.

2

At some of these schools (like WI), the masters exists to make money from the full pay students who are trying to use the program as a stepping stone to a good PhD program. They are not necessarily preparing students for the job market (although some students might get good jobs) and the international students have a hard time getting green card sponsorship with only a masters. So I would look into internship opportunities, placement and percent international enrollment as an indicator of whether the programs are focused on job market outcomes or PhD program placement.

3

You can find out the amount of econometric coursework offered by visiting the programs’ websites and looking at their curricula/program overview and the course catalog.

If the website of the program doesn’t publish admission statistics - like acceptance rate, average GPA and average GRE score - they they’re probably not publicly available. You can try to call the office of the department to see if they’ll tell you, but sometimes they don’t release that information. And frankly, if they don’t, it’s because you don’t really need it - the process is holistic, so someone with a 3.3 and a 168Q/155V might be admitted with excellent work experience and letters of recommendations, whereas another student with a 3.5 and a 170Q/165V might not get admitted because they don’t have the right kind of economics coursework.

Johns Hopkins has some minimum requirements for admission, but as with any competitive program the minimum often isn’t sufficient. Tufts actually has data on the average GPA and GRE scores for admission: 3.61 undergraduate GPA, 157 verbal GRE score, 166 quant GRE score. (https://ase.tufts.edu/economics/grad/faqs.htm).