How to prepare for Graduate study in Econ.

October 24th, 2009

So, I’m pretty sure about going to grad school for Economics (maybe Masters first then PhD, maybe just PhD). I’ve been doing my research and I decided to do a little writeup on my findings.

First things first, in order to be prepared for good PhD programs it’s nescessary to take a lot of Maths – at minimum:

2 semesters Calc
2 semesters Stat
1 semester Linear Algebra
1 semester Econometrics

In addition… it’s suggested to take

Calc 3
Real Analysis (called Advanced Calc at my school, and it’s suggested to take as much of this as you can)
Probability
Topology (if you have the time, seems to be more of a luxury then the rest from what I’ve read)

Now if there are any potential econ grad students reading this, you may now be feeling that same feeling of despair I felt when I realized this. Like they say, if you know you want to go to grad school for econ you are really better off going for a Mathematics undergrad rather then Econ – as ass-backwards as that sounds. Being an econ major myself it feels kind of wrong, but hey I can always hope that I will have a better understanding of economics then the math majors just starting to learn about econ by way of derivatives and by doing obscene things with matrices.

Above are the required and suggested maths, so now you may be asking – what other feats of intelligence are there for gaining admittance to good PhD programs?

Get as near perfect, 800 out of 800, on the GRE quantitative portion as you can.
Get a good gpa (duh), I’ve seen 3.6 as the average at some schools – but if you are a top 15 type of student then you are looking at even higher average gpas.

*The above info is based on my own research, I am not currently (as of 10/25/09) a graduate student.