Economics Course Difficulty & AP Placement

AkLvKk
Thu, 15 May 2014 06:29:41 +0000

Hello,

I was wondering if former/current students give input on how difficult the economics courses are at Vassar. I searched through the forums, so I do know that 1) econ (major) is popular at the school and 2) the department is extraordinary. Some people, though, said that it’d be hard to get a higher gpa in economics than other departments (e.g. english, film media). I was wondering if anyone could confirm this, and how difficult it would be to maintain a high average GPA as an economics major (I’m assuming sometimes it depends on the professors you get… am I right?).

I’m interested in doing a potential double major as an econ/neuroscience(bio) major, and applying to med school later, but I’m worried that the courseload might drag me down and that it might be harder to manage grades.

Also, I was wondering if I could take the placement test to opt out of intro to macro/micro/econ and get into a level-200 course directly. This is without taking the AP test, and instead studying over the summer or something. Is it advisable that I take the intro courses anyway?

I feel like I’m over-eager for college and reality’s probably going to set in after a few weeks at Vassar, but there are still so many fields that interest me (A LOT), including Hispanic Studies and Music.

In any case, I’ll probably get things sorted out once the matriculation packet arrives in the mail, but I feel like it’s taking forever, and I’m still not sure my question regarding the placement test for econ is going to be answered by the packet.