economics graduate study

Graduate School
1

<p>I throw this question out to anyone who may be in a position to address it.</p>

<p>I was a humanities major as an undergraduate student. After a few years of soul-searching I've decided that I want to pursue graduate work in economics. I understand that there are a number of math courses need to be completed to be considered competitive for graduate study in economics. My question I suppose is this - how seriously do econ department consider students like myself, who are working (in my case in public policy) and are also taking supplementary math courses? Do I have a shot with any universities, or do they really only want math majors/masters to apply to their programs? I know people who back in the day were English/history/philosophy majors and then went on to successful careers as both academic and business economists. So now I'm trying to figure out why there seem to be so many barriers in the economics field for those with less quantitative backgrounds (although I believe I could pick it up). Do modern economics departments under value students who may display a certain facility with writing that those with more quantitative background tend to lack?</p>

<p>I welcome any and all thoughts regarding this topic.</p>

2

<p>I am am economics minor and am also very into economics. I am going to grad school in IR though, but I think I can help you out.</p>

<p>Most econ grad programs require micro, macro, intermediate micro theory, intermediate macro theory. Some also require statistics. The most math you will have to take is one class of calc.</p>

<p>If you have macro, micro, int.mic, int.mac, stat, and calc you will have enough to apply to any econ grad program. One that I particularly recommend, both job wise and cutting-edge wise, is George Mason University. In my humble opinion, GMU is like one of the best econ grad schools out there. You have Peter Boekette, Nobel Laurette James Buchanan, and many others. The Center for Public Choice is amazing for public choice economics, and they have good Ph.D. programs.</p>

<p>If you look at GMU’s economics site, and UNC Chapel Hill’s, and others, just to pick random ones, they almost all say micro, macro, int. micro, int. macro, then some require statistics and calc. You can take all of this at community college online in one semester.</p>

<p>Online you can find many community colleges in your state which offer online courses for distance education and you can get almost all of this stuff done in the summer. So you should go look it up. After you do it, if you have a bachelors degree already, and do your GRE’s and a personal statement you will be good.</p>

<p>An econ professor once told me that if you want an M.A. in econ prepare for not much math (depending on department of course), but for a Ph.D. tons and tons and tons of math.</p>

<p>I absolutely love econ but I hate and am horrible at math, so I just kept it a minor and won’t go to grad school in it.</p>