<p>to get a general idea of some of econ courses for a BA, here are the requirements.</p>
<p>Yes, these are the requirements for the BA at Columbia (ranks, what, ~10th?). Very good. </p>
<p>*In response to theghostofsnappy, you're doing people a disservice by misleading them into thinking economics is not math based. *</p>
<p>I think that it is immediately clear to everybody that I made no such claim. However, your claim was this:</p>
<p>
[quote]
most Intermediate Micro courses will require multivariable calculus
[/quote]
</p>
<p>As in a simple majority, as in greater than 50%. You think you're a bigshot economist? Lets see your data, your sources. A link? But of course you don't have one, because it isn't true. Like I said, you don't know what you're talking about.</p>
<p>UCLA and UCSD both have top econ departments, yet only require 2 quarters of calculus. They reconomdend the 1 year sequence to be better prepared with intro to stats.
Math/econ which each school touts as being the prep major for a PHD in econ is different with 1 year of calc, 1 year of advanced calc, modern algebra, several stats classes, methods of analysis and linear algebra.</p>
<p>intermediate microeconomics for an undegraduate economics honour is almost a universal thing, it's the basic course where economics students are starting to understand the mathematics used in economics, almost all the professor I consulted knows this is the case... how can you even say the core of the materials varies largely, such as the quantitative materials, just because one school is ranked very high or low?? This is not a business program you know.</p>
<p>I used these two sites to help me while i did my intermediate mirco courses, you can check for yourselves if they require any multivariable calculus. One is berkely which is regarded as a good school and the other one in UK nobody really has ever heard of. You can see comparable materials in both.</p>
<p>Again, if you feel the difficulty level of the lecture notes compared to what you learn is somewhat higher, don't worry. These are economics courses designed for serious economics students, not business students. Or you're just in a real crappy school.</p>
<p>Jasonx88, ss I said, if you feel the difficulty level of the lecture notes compared to what you learn is somewhat higher, don't worry. These are economics courses designed for serious economics students, not business students.</p>
<p>You will not face this in your business degrees. The economics you learn in a business degree will be somewhat watered down to the level where it usually requires only 1 variable calculus and sometimes even less. They'll give you all the equations necessary, such as taking the derivative for you say Cost Function to make it a Marginal Cost Function, so you really just plug in numbers in calculators. This is to suit the ability of the students.</p>
<p>there is a large difference between taking economics and taking economics with a future prospect of applying to a PhD econ program. And i noted that earlier, 2 quarters only. But take a look at econ/math which obviously is a joint major. This is PhD prep while the other is not.</p>
<p>Again, if you feel the difficulty level of the lecture notes compared to what you learn is somewhat higher, don't worry. These are economics courses designed for serious economics students, not business students. Or you're just in a real crappy school.</p>
<p>Limiting one's scope to the US, it doesn't take much investigation to see that the mathematics requirements decline quite sharply outside of the top ten schools, and even then, they're somewhat varied. So unless roughly ten schools are good, and the rest are crappy, you may want to rethink your opinion. All of the mathematics in the world is useless if you've got no intuition about the theory. You can't differentiate Leontief functions, eh?</p>
<p>ABCboy,
I only looked at the Berkley slides, but I'm confused what exactly, other than partial derivatives, you would need from a third semester of calculus to understand that lecture.</p>
<p>I'm standing by my (and Nauru's) response to the original poster. If you did ok in Calculus in high school you will more than ok to complete a minor in Econ at any school. You'll have to learn how to take a partial derivative but this is very easy. At most, you'll also have to learn how to take Lagrange Multipliers. </p>
<p>Preparing for graduate work in Econ is a completely different animal.</p>