Hey,
Guys, I am a rising senior and am planing to double major in CS and Economics. I wanted to know how students majoring in Economics in WPI feeling about the quality of the education they are getting and if they would encourage me to apply for WPI?
Thanks
I would not expect much of a response. I checked the career placement center statistics and there was only 1 Econ graduate in 2014 and 1 in 2015. I suspect there are a number of engineering students who minor in it.
I would check the course schedules to get an idea of how many Econ courses are offered each term given it is such a small major.
The economics major isn’t very strong at WPI. I had a friend who did a double major (or was it a minor?) in economics and had to cross register at Clark and Assumption to get a good breadth in economics.
Undergraduate economics is typically not very challenging at most schools and if you want to go to a good grad program in econ, you will have to take a lot of math, including real analysis and topology.
I’d suggest Harvard, U. Rochester, Cornell U or UMN for Econ/CS. For a school of a similar selectivity of WPI, I would suggest a top 40 LAC like Grinnell.
If you’re interested in going into CS industry and just want to do some econ on the side, WPI is not a bad choice.
Thanks a lot, guys.
Majored in Economics at WPI in 1970. Attended a highly respected PhD program in economics at Boston College for one year before taking a part-time job at WPI for the summer and never returned to graduate school. Family needs and a love of the interdisciplinary studies model - called the WPI plan - had altered my prospective on the real world of problem solving. My only other classmate in economics completed a PhD somewhere in New York.
At WPI, we were working on a federally funded Federal Highway Administration (FHA) project to design a national model to determine the impact of interstate highways on areas prior to their construction. Retail businesses, commercial property values, residential property values, industrial relocation, even land speculation relating to the relocation of businesses were interfaced with traffic flow, noise pollution, air pollution, impacts on social stability in neighborhoods - e.g., younger and wealthier moved out of the highway corridors leaving the older and poorer in the old neighborhoods. Where do people relocate as a result of a new highway? Sociologists needed to talk with economists who needed to talk to engineers … It was a dramatic, real life experience as young, would be engineers practiced there Spanish in neighborhoods impacted by the changes. We learned that the classic econometric modeling taught to economists used a different language than the “path analysis” methodology used by the consulting sociologist. Yes, REAL PROBLEMS REQUIRED INTERDISCIPLINARY THINKING. We need to learn to step out of our own comfort zones.
WPI is one of the best in the world in the small field of system dynamics. Jay Forrester started this field at MIT. One of today’s leaders (Prof. Khalid Saeed) is at WPI. Econometric modeling is not system dynamics, I suggest you research the difference. In any case, you do need to love lots of math and computer science and neither are in short supply at WPI.
Check out the actual course selections at the WPI website and make it a project to learn more about the field of economics. Check out the WPI faculty in economics, system dynamics and psychology as they are all interactive today. You do need mentors to help you reach your full potential… are they at WPI? Will a large undergraduate department supply you with mentors?
Try this question: has the pure theory of economics given way a frenzy of model studies without questioning the underlying theory?