<p>I am a rising senior at Drake University (IA) majoring in actuarial science and economics. I have decided that I want to pursue a terminal masters in economics and I have a few questions. I basically have 4 options for the type of school:</p>
<ol>
<li>Try to get into LSE, Cambridge, or Oxford (1 year financial economics)</li>
<li>Try for Duke's MA (1.5 years)</li>
<li>Get an MA in Canada (Queen's, UBC, etc) </li>
<li>Go to UCSB for MA<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Background:
I have a 3.92 GPA w/ some research experience in financial economics, but I have not taken the GRE yet. I have 3 actuarial exams passed with one more coming (hopefully) this year (most have 2 passed at graduation). Also, assuming no disaster happens in the next year I will graduate with about $25,000 in the bank. But heres the catch to this dilemma, I want to be an actuary not an economic consultant/researcher. </p>
<p>Basically my longtime gf still has a year of college after me, and I want to go out for a year and enjoy some time to myself while I still can. I have an enormous passion for economics but honestly I don't want to be a professor so the PhD path won't work for me. </p>
<p>So basically my question is should I even bother with trying to go to the more prestigious (and expensive) schools if I don't have any big plans for the degree, or should I just go to UCSB and enjoy the Cali sunshine for a year while delving deeper into economics? Or am I stupid for considering the masters in the first place when it is not directly related to my career, only for my own pleasure?</p>
<p>While not answering your questions…
“I want to go out for a year and enjoy some time to myself while I still can” – if I was the gf, I don’t think I would want to hear this.</p>
<p>So… wait, you just want to take a year off? Your messages seemed mixed to me. You want to go straight to a grad school after you graduate. But at the same time, you want to take a year off to enjoy yourself… Honestly, if I was the GF, I’d rather that you did a one year MA and wait for me to graduate and we’d take some time off together. She may resent you a bit if you go out and have <em>too</em> much fun while she has to take on her senior year classes.</p>
<p>Sorry I wasn’t very clear, basically I just want to delay going into the workforce for a year, not actually take the year off. </p>
<p>Also, after my gf graduates she will go to law school but she’s not sure where yet. I figured that if there was one good time to get out and do a one year MA, it would be once I graduate. And unfortunately, MA econ programs are very rare in the US so I can’t just find one in the same city that she decides to go to law school in. </p>
<p>Lastly, I want to be clear that I don’t want to do this so I can party 5 nights a week and get wasted all the time. I just want a place where I can enjoy the outdoors and fresh air while learning more about economics.</p>
<p>Bluntly put, you don’t do an MA in economics (or any kind of MA) just so you can “enjoy the outdoors and the fresh air while learning more about economics.” You also really don’t do an MA program just to enjoy some time to yourself. You will actually have far more time to yourself working a full-time job than you will as a graduate student. At a full-time, you may work 8 to 5 five days a week but all of those other hours are yours. Graduate programs, on the other hand, are not like a extra year of undergrad. They take a lot more time and hard work - they can be very rewarding, if that’s what you want to do and it enhances your career prospects in the field, but they are very time-consuming.</p>
<p>You say you just want to be an actuary, and you have the degree that will enable you to do that. It makes very little sense to spend lots of money (a year at most top MA programs will probably cost you around $60K-70K including living expenses - and that’s assuming a pretty low standard of living) when you already have the degree to do what you want to do. Added to the opportunity cost of losing a year of work as an actuary (from which I assume you can make around $50K) we’re talking about a total combined cost of around $110-120K. And that’s assuming you only go for one academic year.</p>
<p>I understand that you have a passion for econ - but having a passion for something is different from studying it full-time in a graduate program. You can satisfy a passion for economics by reading books on economics, attending lectures at a nearby university offered by economics professors and researchers, and perhaps taking a few classes as a non-degree student in your spare time.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I may be misinterpreting your statement from your last comment, but it’s generally not a good idea to use graduate school solely to delay entry into the workforce.</p>
<p>Assuming that you are actually serious about going after an MA in econ, however, this isn’t a zero-sum game. You would apply to all of the places in which you are interested. You may not get into all of them, so there’s not really much chance in selecting now. If you are interested in all of those programs, apply for all or most of them, and then choose in the spring when you find out where you are accepted.</p>