Econ/QTM at Oxford

Hi all,

I was recently accepted into Oxford (not main) and I am looking to study economics (along with probably political science or psych). I’ve read that Emory’s econ program is relatively weak, so I was also contemplating by a QSS-Econ track instead (or maybe PPA). However, the QTM offerings at Oxford look extremely limited.

So what is Emory’s economics program like compared to a peer school with perhaps a stronger econ focus (e.g. Rochester or Brandeis). Secondly, how feasible is QTM when double-majoring and especially when starting out at Oxford?

Thanks everyone, and congrats to everyone else who got in this week.

@h0peiambag : I think Emory’s economics undergraduate program has gotten a lot stronger and it wasn’t particularly “weak” before (most problems were really at the grad. level). It’s just that among elite privates and publics, it is/was nothing special and only a few “special” undergraduate economics programs exist. I would compare Emory’s as similar in training to say like…a Vanderbilt or something but maybe more mathematics leaning (which is why they designated it a STEM major).

I wouldn’t do QTM simply because econ. is “weak” (in fact, at Oxford, the courses offered are likely to be done VERY well), but because you wanna learn more data science and make mathematical connections to social sciences. Starting at Ox makes this hard, but what you can do is do the courses they offer (including the mathematics requirements) and then finish the rest at main and then start taking electives at main. One reason to do QTM aside from the technical training is because it is styled like the B-school in many ways. It is an institute that hosts lots of oppurtunities (formal and informal) and networking events specifically tailored towards undergraduates, and they have an excellent capstone oppurtunities. It just makes you more flexible in terms of the career paths on the table post-grad. With the econ. courses, definitely try to get a more “holistic” training. Emory seems to be one of the rare places among its actual peers (BTW, those two you listed are NOT peers despite them being excellent schools. I don’t think Emory lists them, or vice versa. I believe Emory is quite different from them in many ways so it has little to do with quality), in that it often offers two different versions of many of the 300 and 400 level courses in econ. One will be a standard version and another will qualify as a continued writing requirement where extra projects or research are involved in the course versus just a few exams and p-sets (view as like an honors version vs. a standard version of a course).

Writing and formulating a research project/proposal is a useful and marketable skill to employers and graduate schools, so try to take some of those when they are offered. Your background from Oxford will likely make these types of courses seem much easier because Oxford classes, even at the intro. level are much smaller and are thus more likely to include things like writing assignments and just generally more thought provoking assignments. Good luck!

@bernie12 Thanks for your thoughtful contributions (past and present). This is exactly me—in my post I made QTM sound like a backup plan, but it’s actually a primary reason I applied. and something I put in essays and such; it’s reassuring to know that QTM will still be doable if I play it right. The networking aspect is something I haven’t considered before, and I’ll definitely look more into that.

P.S. just b/c it peaked my curiosity: Both schools did list Emory as a peer (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network) but Emory did not return the favor. Honestly though, these happened to be the first two schools that came to mind; There are definitely major differences.

Well, doesn’t the relative size on that thing matters and it was back in 2012. I think Emory takes into account endowment, overlap in applications, and maybe many other factors (like professional schools available, etc). Emory recently (maybe 3-4 years ago) redid its peers to cut out some of the aspirational peers (like Harvard, Yale, and that group I think. More realistic aspirational peers include places like Duke, Northwestern, and some of the lower Ivies I think) because unlike some of its closely ranked peers, it isn’t quite as delusional (most private schools historically below 12 or so in USNWR are merely dreaming when they list HYS as peers, no matter how many programs overlap) at this point. I think it realizes that even if it looked like those schools on paper admissions selectivity wise at some point, it still has to do lots of real (vs. superficial) work to get even close. Others will just show shiny incoming stats and say: “see we’re Harvard now” even when every other indicator says: “No you’re Emory, you just used admissions to game the rankings” lol.

It makes way more sense for maybe even UCLA, Berkeley, and Michigan to do so on the other hand do to the historical overall impact of those schools on highered and how it seems that many of the super elite private undergraduate schools model things such as their STEM programs and such off of theirs, just done for a more selective crowd). The endowment and impact isn’t there, but Brandeis and Rochester make less sense today and may view Emory more of an aspirational peer at this point.

Again, that says less about the individual undergraduate programs and more about overall research strength and money of course. There are peer schools that rank a little above Emory in USNWR, where Emory probably has stronger undergraduate programs in many areas (I think some evidence suggests that Emory hurts in rankings and admissions pull due to lack of an engineering school, but things like the BBA program, this relatively new QTM program, quite a few social sciences, key humanities like English/Creative writing, and many of the natural sciences can clean the clocks of a some of those places because and unusual amount of money is put into those departments specifically for undergraduate education and oppurtunities).