Undergrad/grad in engineering to grad school in economics

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>So, I'm currently enrolled as a master's student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, studying bioengineering, having just completed my first year. I completed my undergrad in computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign several years ago. I didn't do well at all during my undergrad (below 3.0), but I was fortunate enough to get a position at a major telecom company, where I worked hard and received plaudits from management, and was a key part of several major projects. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to challenge myself further and go to graduate school in a slightly different field. And luckily my work experience, letters of recommendation, and GRE scores were enough to overcome my poor undergrad performance, allowing me to be accepted to UIC.</p>

<p>After I complete my master's (should be in spring 2011), I'm thinking of an even bigger change, and that would be going to graduate school to obtain a PhD in economics. I have been really happy with the challenges of graduate school thus far, and yet at the same time I feel somewhat limited in terms of research opportunities because of the short length of my master's program. </p>

<p>Over the past couple of years I've become really interested in studying economics, and I think it would be a good path to combine it with my engineering background (I'm specifically interested in the effects of technology on the economies of various countries). I'm told that getting into a good econ program requires a lot of math, and hopefully the math I've studied as an engineer is something they are looking for.</p>

<p>In addition to that, I'm wondering whether my current graduate GPA of 3.83, along with, of course, solid letters of recommendation from my adviser and professors, and a persuasive statement of purpose, would be enough to at least put me in the running for a top economics program. </p>

<p>My GRE scores were 640V, 730Q, and 5.0W--would I need to improve these? And as I mentioned, I've taken a ton of math as well as engineering courses which were math-heavy, since that's all required in pretty much any top ECE program. I just wouldn't want to spend the time required to put together a good application if I didn't have a reasonable chance of getting in somewhere I would have a good chance of finding interesting research.</p>

<p>Thanks very much in advance!</p>

2

<p>Have you taken any economics courses?</p>

3

<p>Only Econ 103, macroeconomics. :)</p>

<p>Guessing they may want to see more?</p>

4

<p>^^ My guess is yes, they will want to see more, although you won’t have to have a degree in economics. Right now, you don’t have the hard proof that you know the field you’ll be studying. You’ll be competing against other applicants who have a solid background in economics.</p>

5

<p>So it sounds like my best bet may be to get in touch with schools and find out what sorts of courses they may recommend that I take.</p>

<p>I assume then that it’s not very common to get into economics coming from a different major?</p>

6

<p>Lack of Economics background won’t keep you out. A lot of grad students in Economics were pure Maths majors.</p>

<p>Having an engineering background is helpful, but take some theoretical maths like Real Analysis and maybe even Topology.</p>

7

<p>Hello, my wife is a Phd Candidate in Economics at a UCI and did her undergraduate in Economics at UCD. From dealing with her and all her friends I have learned a fair deal about economic phd programs. </p>

<p>Basically the number one thing you need is math and more math. I myself am a MS Civil Eng student and the math we did is not nearly enough for a phd in economics. You need more than the simple 2 years of calc/linear algebra/ diff eqs, that generally only are required for engineering programs. She took all of these before entering into her program and a few more and was significantly behind in what was required of her. She has been taking many additional math classes including abstract math and other upper division undergrad statistical courses to help better understand the advanced economic papers, theories, and models.</p>

<p>Being an econ undergrad does not really help for an econ phd program, as I have a BA in econ and would be total unprepared for it. The best major undergrad to do econ at the phd level would simply be math. </p>

<p>Also after speaking with many people after being admitted into her UC program, she learned that she had been declined from some more highly ranked programs due to not having as strong of a math background as they would like. Ironically she was declined from the school we attended for undergrad, where she completed all the ‘recommended course for graduate studies in econ’, for not taking enough math courses.</p>

<p>Also in today’s world where tons of people are going back to graduate school making it much more competitive because they cannot get jobs it would not hurt to get that math score up on the GRE.</p>

8

<p>Thanks, maybe I’ll add in a math class or two. Among what I would consider “abstract math” (which to me means pure math), I’ve taken some courses like pattern classification, which really combined stats, calc, and linear algebra. I should also clarify that I’ve taken a pretty good chunk of engineering courses like Digital Signal Processing which are really math-based classes (Fourier transforms, etc). But I’ve had just a few classes which were stats-specific, so it seems I may need more there.</p>