How would you describe Smith's economics program?

arashic
Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:44:12 +0000

I’m an Econ major, so I’ve taken my fair share of Economic courses. :)

The Econ department at Smith is very strong, and the impression that I get is that most people tend to dabble in the department whether they major or not. The professors are very helpful and engaging, all of our basic classes also have student tutors, often picked by professors from the courses they previously taught.

As S&P noted above, be prepared for higher level math. The only requirement that the department has is Calculus I, however, if you want to continue on to graduate school in Economics it’s highly recommended to take up to Calculus III, along with Linear Algebra. That being said, Smith’s approach towards Economics is much less quantitative than school in other countries say, Western Europe, classes tend to focus more on Economic theory in my opinion (except for Microeconomics).

If you’re aiming to study abroad this is something to keep in mind, since you’ll definitely want a strong background in math if you’re planning on going to a school like LSE. I’m currently taking Intermediate Microeconomics and up until just recently there were certain points in time where I felt like I was in a math class instead of an Econ class, so Calculus is a must (most Econ Smithies choose to double major in Math).

As far as the strength of the program it’s definitely one of the strongest offered at Smith in my opinion (though I am a major). As I mentioned before, many people decide to take a course in Econ even when not majoring, often with professors such as Randy Bartlett or Mahnaz Mahdavi who are both fabulous teachers.

Within the Econ department we often hear of alums who after graduating go on to study either in Business or in Econ (if not working), usually at well ranked grad schools. An recent Economics major graduate I know got called into the final round of interviews for Deutsche Bank, though the job eventually went to an Ada Comstock Scholar who was interviewing at the same time, who I also believe was an Econ major. So, generally speaking, we usually tend to do well for ourselves :).