I’m a freshman right now at the college of Idaho and I’m planning to double major in Mathematics and Political Economy and minor in philosophy and Journalism. Is it possible for me to go to graduate school for economics, or would be better to take traditional economics course?
A few courses in economics including Microeconomic theory and Econometrics are probably all you “need”.
That might be a problem for me because my school doesn’t offer any sort of advanced traditional economics classes, only introductory classes for business.
For grad school your math major will be a great asset. Ideally you should add intermediate micro and macro as part of your undergrad studies. If there is no undergrad econometrics course, than a stats course on regression would be good.
If your school doesn’t offer much in the way of econ, I would concentrate on getting really good at math if your goal is graduate econ. The other majors/minors should be secondary to that goal. That includes political economy, which seems to be mostly normative in nature - the program webpage brags of placement in law school and business, not graduate econ. I would take some classes in it but not consider a double major necessary.
BTW: See these posts on double-majoring being potentially considered harmful:
http://college.usatoday.com/2013/05/02/opinion-nobody-cares-about-your-double-major/
http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/000881.shtml
@CheddarcheeseMN Yeah I’m definitely planning on taking a stats course on regression.
@NavalTradition I agree, I’m probably going to have to bust my ass in Math.
I’m a freshman, so I don’t want to start college by heading down the wrong path. But I might see how this year goes with math, see what exactly the political economy classes are like, and talk to my professors before I make a decision on what I want to do.
Thanks for the advice,
If you have anymore suggestions please share
@NavalTradition Yeah I’m definitely concerned about the stress of double majoring. As well my school adds onto it by requiring students to take 4 degrees. One from social sciences, Humanities, Professionals, and math and sciences. If I feel like the stress is too much I will think about changing schools so that I can take Economics.
Well, political economy is essentially the study of the interface between political science and economics. Scanning through the courses in that department at College of Idaho it seems the basic economics principles are embedded in some of the early classes. There’s no econometrics, but the math major should help take care of that. In the math department, make sure you take multiple regression analysis and the probability and mathematical statistics sequence in addition to the standard curriculum recommended for econ majors (multivariable calculus, linear algebra, real analysis, differential equations).
You may consider spending a semester as a visiting student at another university or college and taking some upper-level economics courses while there. Some schools have domestic exchange programs for this.
@juillet Thanks, I’ll definitely check out attending another school for those economic courses.