The Economics | Events Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘the economics’

Why Take Up Business Economics?

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

If you’re considering a degree in economics, then you’d better be prepared to spend about ten years in school. Most economists begin their educational odyssey in a four-year undergrad program, where they learn the basic building blocks of microeconomics and macro economics, while concurrently drowning in math courses. If you have survived the onslaught of numbers, figures, data and philosophy, then you’ll need to get your master’s next. Over the next two years, you’ll take more advanced course work, you’ll do some field work and you’ll begin to hone in on what interests you most, within the department of Economics. Lastly, you’ll be ready to begin your four-year intensive PhD study, which will be two years of courses and two years of independent study on your thesis.

Stanford University is considered one of the best economics university institutions in the nation for both undergrad and graduate students. In February, the department reviews more than 700 graduate applications each year to choose the 50 best students for admittance next fall. Another school with a highly-regarded Economics department is Princeton University, which admits 25 students per year out of 800 applicants. To be considered, students will need a GRE score of 780 to 800 and above. The University of Wisconsin (Madison) will admit 25 to 30 students to their graduate school. Other prestigious schools in education economics include MIT, the University of Chicago, UC-Berkeley and Yale. If your grades weren’t top-of-your-class caliber, then you may want to try a middle-ranked school like Penn State.

When choosing classes from a school’s department of Economics, the best advice is to take more math courses! It can be easy to fall behind in your studies if you aren’t crystal clear on the statistics, calculus and mathematical concepts. When you were trying to get your bachelor’s degree in economics, you were likely scanning the course options for “easy electives” and ways of pulling your GPA up. However, graduate schools care most about what hard classes you’ve taken and how well you did in them, rather than your GPA as a whole. Be sure you take real analysis, calculus and econometrics, as these classes will be vital to your understanding.

As you know, most students seeking PhDs love school and wish to continue working in academia at an economics college or university. According to the Job Openings for Economists (JOE) job board, as of June 2009, there are full-time positions open at John Hopkins University, Kansas State University, Lebanon Valley College, the University of Santa Barbara, the University of Austin Texas and West Virginia University. NYU, Lake Forest College, Saint Benedict’s, the University of Cincinnati and the University of Vermont also offer adjunct/part-time positions. Internationally, there are positions in Australia, South Korea, Germany and the UK. You’ll need to contact the department of Economics of these offers through the JOE website at www.aeaweb.org/joe.

Beth Kaminski is the co-author of Curing Your Anxiety And Panic Attacks which detailed panic attacks help as well as tips on the various medications for panic disorder available at www.anxietydisordercure.com.