<p>I’m not sure if you can call Econ 51 “math based.” It’s obviously “theory” based like any intro econ course should be. I’m also not sure if it is THAT hard compared to other econ courses. It just SEEMS hard because the curve is pretty bad and it’s the first economics course that a student takes a freshman in college- and econ is hard. I came to Duke with everybody telling me how hard and horrible 51 is, but a lot of people who take that class came out with As after putting in the effort. Having said that, however, if possible, I still suggest skipping 51 and going straight into 55. You won’t lose to much from doing that, as you will have two semesters of microecon to finish and an intermediate macro anyways. There is no reason to waste your course credit.</p>
<p>Also about one of the comments above- when they say you can count only two AP scores towards graduation requirements, I think that’s referring to the total 34 credits that you need to have to graduate. I don’t think it applies to AP exams you use to skip intro levels.</p>
<p>As for the statement about Duke econ curriculum being very theoretical and etc., I actually disagree. For some reason Duke econ department has significant focus on finance/accounting (soon they are gonna create a finance minor and a finance concentration within the dept). </p>
<p>As to interestingguy’s ■■■■■■■■ comment on Duke econ being #19- again, that’s graduate rankings. For subjects like econ, it is safe to assume that the “caliber” of the department is pretty much equal to that of the school as a whole, because you learn pretty much everything through in-class instruction and the higher the level of the students, the deeper the course material. It’s not like if you go to U Chicago econ, you are learning the secrets of econ theory that only the professors at U of C know. Of course, if you are super ambitious economics students and is considering taking bunch of grad-level courses as an undergrad so that you go straight to phD (in which case you can take advantage of some of the resources of a “better” economics department), it’s a little different story. If not, it simply doesn’t work like that and otherwise I would have chosen some of other schools considered to be “better ranked” in econ (U of C, LSE, UCB, NU, and Cornell were some of the schools I got into).</p>