Hello I’m currently a junior in Economics with a minor in math and I would like to continue through grad school and gain my masters in economics. I am wondering if anyone can tell me if internships are needed for this? I am doing a virtual market research internship this summer and I plan on doing more senior year but are they really necessary? I would like to eventually be an economist so I don’t know if I just need to find the right internship or if it won’t really matter for grad school. Thanks for any help.
Hi. I don’t know if this advice will still be useful to you but I’ll give it anyway. For one thing, terminal masters degrees are pretty bad choices if you want to be an economist. These days, government agencies and think tanks will hire only Ph.Ds for economic work. With a masters, you will be facing a strongly uphill battle, especially because American economic masters are often just cash cows for universities and will not make you a true research economist. That said, to answer your question, only internships at government agencies and think tanks matter. Grad school is to make you into a researcher/academic, so they don’t care if you do anything that is not directly related to the field of study. Marketing research is entirely different from economics research so it’s not going to be seen as anything valuable.