<p>I'll be a senior next year and I can't decide if I should take AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. </p>
<p>What exactly are they and what majors in college will they be useful for?</p>
<p>Thanks :)</p>
<p>Just take them, most smart people do. It beats econ honors by a mile.</p>
<p>Do they look better on a college application vs other APs?</p>
<p>They’ll be useful if you want to be an econ major. Macro is economics on a really big scale, I suppose like how you would manipulate the economy on a large scale. Microeconomics is (obviously) on a smaller scale, things like how prices are determined, how a business works. I wouldn’t know about specific subject matter, I didn’t take either. </p>
<p>I’ve heard from different people who majored in econ that either is best to take first. I don’t think it really matters which you took first.</p>
<p>ETA: Actually, they’ll be useful no matter what. Econ courses are perhaps the most real-world applicable for everyone.</p>
<p>^I would have thought the subject to be studied to no effect would be literature.</p>
<p>I don’t think literature should be highlighted as a subject studied to no effect. It builds reading and writing skills, and exposes people to important ideas. Plus, no one really expects it to provide any useful life skills. Everyone realizes that its only direct application is teaching the subject. </p>
<p>Economics, on the other hand, is studied by a million college students who want to go into business. But unless they’re doing high finance, they’re not going to end up applying college level economic theory to predict the behavior of markets. They might use what they learned from the calc classes the major required, but that’s it.</p>
<p>I personally took AP Macro during the first semester of my junior year and had a terrible experience. The teacher had reached the end of her teaching career (she literally retired from teaching right after she was done with my class) and she pretty much “snapped”. Not only did I find the material boring, but the class itself was even more so, and even though I went to school on Saturdays to seek help from my teacher and try to work on problem sets together, she still greatly disliked me for some unknown reason and even told me at the end of the class (rather severely) not to take the AP. The way she made it sound made it seem like I would get either a 1 or a 2, even though I had a decent grade in the class. I ended up getting a 4 on the exam and vowed never to touch the subject again ;)</p>
<p>Some of you guys do have a good point in terms of waiting to take Econ, but if your high school offers an enjoyable and stimulating class, I’d definitely go for it. I’m loving Econ right now. The class is kind of split up into sequences, starting with Macro, transitioning into Micro, then occasionally going back and forth (weird, I know), but it’s nice to have the experience. It’s really helped me understand a lot of things that are going on these days.</p>
<p>PA is awesome, and I’m sure you’re getting great instruction in your econ class, but not everyone can go there for high school unfortunately</p>
<p>Economics is AWESOME. I simply love that course. </p>
<p>My advice: Take it if you know you will get a teacher you like. My teacher makes it extremely enjoyable.</p>
<p>P.S. Economics is useful in all fields and anything you do ;).</p>
<p>I would take it only because it would permit you to skip the course in college. Taking a high-school-ish course in college can be a pain. When the material is really simple, everyone understands the material fully and grading can be pretty arbitrary. However, in high school this is never an issue because students don’t give a ****. Well, that was my high school anyway…</p>