<p>Hey,</p>
<p>I'm a prospective Vanderbilt applicant, primarily interested in Political Science, Econ, and Public Policy. </p>
<p>How are these three programs at Vandy? A concern of mine is that the location isn't conducive to a political environment with internships and such. Is this true? </p>
<p>Also, is the Econ department very quantitative, or does it tend to lean more towards qualitative/theory/policy? </p>
<p>Would a double major in Political Science/Econ be worthwhile at Vandy?</p>
<p>Econ and Political Science are two of the most popular majors at Vanderbilt — you won’t have trouble finding internships</p>
<p>My son graduated with a dual major that included Poli Sci. I wish he had studied at least two terms of Econ because it really is wise to do at least Econ and Stats basic college courses. I can’t comment on Econ at Vandy but I will comment on internships that are public policy/political. Son is in his second DC internship now. The first internship he got via the Vanderbilt VIEW program that puts students in DC internships during a summer term. This summer he has two Congressional internships that he landed himself. That is, he got them himself with the letters of recommendation from Vandy professors who are tireless and generous with their time. He received many many rejections, which means he had to go back to his kind references over and over for new applications. One of his current internships had four hundred applicants. Shocked he got this one.
Vanderbilt’s Public Policy programs is not as well developed as it could be. However through your majors you can easily plan and execute abroad experiences that are highly desirable. Vandy faculty is very accessible and will work to help you. One thing we learned from the experience of Duke son applying to the State Dept…embassy work is not so full of job descriptions for political science people. If you want to be competitive, you have to be able to speak a desired (emphasize desired) foreign language fluently and you will be asked to converse in that language in live interviews OR you should be someone with computer skills that can work on embassy security and is highly trainable OR you can work in an embassy and help run its budget/business, thus skills matter in quantitative courses and it might be wise to take the management cluster in the Econ dept OR you could focus on your engineering degree. All embassies need engineers. For that matter, law schools need engineers.
Vanderbilt is a great place to get a rigorous education with small classrooms and many permutations on how you put your four years together. Be intentional and never skimp on quantitative courses. Seek out on campus research, immersion foreign language options and internships. The GMAT is full of quantitative challenges and the LSAT requires excellent logic.</p>
<p>On the Vanderbilt Economics department, there are both quantitative and qualitative classes available. You can easily circumvent any mathematics in economics by taking the right classes with the right professors, but if you want to take the most mathematics based economics classes at Vanderbilt, take Econometrics 253 & 284 and Game Theory 273. But as a whole, the program isn’t as quantitative as programs at other top schools. Econometrics is not required for the major, unlike other top schools.</p>
<p>If you are interested in quantitatively-based economics classes, there are some math classes available that are relevant: for instance, Math 246a (Theory of Interest), Math 249a (Financial Stochastic Processes), and Math 256 (Mathematical Modelling in Economics)</p>