As long as you have the right foundational course work, it’s no biggie to switch fields in grad school. An undergrad major usually only comprises of a handful of classes across a relatively broad perspective.
Thanks for the link.
That would be disappointing. I was hoping to meet other students with similar interests, and maybe even a professor.
Do you speak from personal experience?
Well, what I’d like to do is spend a few years on campus, meet some people with similar interests, learn more about a particular subject, and write a book that brings a controversial economic theory with important pubic policy implications into the public eye. Then I’ll get invited to The Daily Show, where I’ll tell Jon Stewart he’s my hero and I wrote the book to get on his show.
Failing that, maybe I could get a position at a foundation or think tank like this one, or this. Or maybe I could get a position in government.
Failing that, I could always go back to doing what I’m doing now. The same number of years will have passed, either way.
Where did you go to school, and what did you study? Did the professor get something out of making you study his interests, rather than your own?
That’s not an option for me. If that’s how they tell me it’s going to be, I won’t be going there.
I don’t know. I suspect one or more of those schools would let me in, but I don’t know that for a fact.
I do, in traditional economics programs. It doesn’t sound like you have a solid understanding of what grad school I econ is like, and so I would advise that you find some more specialized areas of the web to ask these questions specifically.
It does sound like you’d be a better fit at public policy schools, though that may well ust be my ignorance of public policy schools talking.
An undergraduate degree in the field is not considered a prerequisite, at least in the US. (I’m sure there’s a program somewhere that requires a degree in the field, but I haven’t found one.)
You make some good points. And if you’re the same person I think you are, you’ve made a lot of good points before.
As to the math bit - that is a concern. I haven’t taken a math course since HS, and only scored a 69 on the math section of the GRE. I got a 97 on the verbal, but traditional Econ schools - so I’m told - only care about the math part. That’s one reason I wouldn’t want to do a mainstream economics program. I don’t particularly like math, and I’m not good at it. I don’t want to spend years learning to do complicated equations so that economics can seem more like “real” science, rather than merely a social science. Econometrics - to my understanding - is the fad in economics. That’s not what I want to do.
I don’t think it’s quite true that I want to go merely to validate a theory I already have. I want to learn more about it. I don’t think it’s bullshit, but if it is, it is. I’ve spent the last few years learning as much about it as my spare time allows. You may have seen some of my arguments with Hellestal on other parts of the board - in fact, I think you were here in some of them.
You can get a sense of the academic status of what I’m interested in (MMT, or Modern Monetary Theory) here or here. It’s not great. But that’s why
Seriously or is this hyperbole? I’m sorry if it’s already been mentioned in the thread, I can’t find it, but what is your undergrad degree in again? I went to fashion school for college and I had to take four math classes plus chemistry and other classes which involved at least some math.
Anyway, thanks to those who explained the economics of grad school. I was aware there are grants and stipends, I just assumed that there was a base tuition like with undergrad degrees.
Missing any given prerequisite is generally only a hurdle to admission, not completion. Since a grad student is generally defined by learning a lot, a sufficiently motivated student can, should, and must be able to fill any holes in their education.
Missing a significant chunk of prerequisites, however, will make things much harder. Both in terms of admissions and surviving the early years. When I was applying for Computer Science PhD programs most of them suggested that if you don’t have a significant programming or theoretical CS background that you apply as a “non-degree seeking student” and take classes for a year or two until you’re caught up. They recommend this because not only will you have difficulty passing your courses; you frankly have no idea if you’ll actually enjoy what getting a PhD in your field entails until you’ve actually experienced the subject matter. (This didn’t apply to me so I don’t know the details, but it was in all of their FAQs).
I’d recommend that before you commit to this you at least take a summer community college course in statistics or econometrics 101 or something just to make sure you don’t absolutely hate what you’ll be doing. It should also show admissions boards that you have the initiative to fill in your intellectual holes, regardless of your missing qualifications.
Fashion school offers math courses? Is it a regular college with a fashion degree? Or one that requires off campus classes? That sounds very unusual. I took a math class, but technically wasted my time as the major I ended up with wanted 2 statistics classes, the first of which covered the basic math requirement.
There is a base tuition often, but grad students are usually considered “in state” even if they’re out of state or international.
Some people also register as a “grad special.” That means they have their bachelor’s, but might want to get a head start on some grad courses at the local college while they wait to get into a grad school locally or elsewhere. It’s a good time to get rid of some prereqs.
What they tell you and what ends up happening are often not the same thing.
Don’t do it. I say this as someone who’s been in two of the top grad programs in the field (top 5? top 10?), and was good enough to land a prestigious postdoc.
Grad school as a system is set up so that any problem a student encounters is likely to be fatal, and not something the student has a hope of overcoming. While you’re there, and for many years thereafter (if you go into academia), you live or die by a single person, your advisor. If your advisor arbitrarily decides not to give you comments on your dissertation prospectus, or your dissertation, you are probably hosed. If your advisor decides not to write you letters of recommendation, your career is hosed. The same thing is true for qualifying exams-- if they require specialized knowledge that only a certain professor can offer, and they choose not to offer it, you are hosed. You have literally no recourse. You can watch all of your years of hard work wiped out because of the indifference of a single fickle individual. I have watched each of these scenarios play out multiple times to me and my friends.
If you want to go to gain more knowledge, you may be liable to be disappointed. Many of the professors in both of my grad programs towards students, and teaching, and learning. I wanted to develop close relationships with these people, and learn from them. I tried to reach out, and they ignored me, or didn’t have time for me. One of them went so far as to declare, on the first day of class, that helping students outside of class was not his job.
And that’s even without going into the funding situation…
At this point, I’d only advise getting a Ph.D. if you love the subject so much that you live and breathe it and couldn’t imagine life without it, or if you’re so independently wealthy that it doesn’t matter how long you take to finish, whether you finish, or what kind of financial support you get along the way.
Your will meet people, sure. But all of you will be phenomenally busy, and completely immersed in your own rabbit holes. Think about your workplace. How often do you actually engage in deep conversations about your field? Even though you are knee-deep in it, you have too much to do to really get to contemplative. And when you do get deep into things, chances are your interests are so specific (I studied road bandits in Chad, for example) that you aren’t going to get anything useful out of it.
My point is that if you thing grad school is a good time to finally plow through that reading list and get your writing done, you are wrong. I didn’t read a single book for pleasure during the school year.
All the programs you cite in your OP will require you to spend years learning to do complicated equations and at least one semester of econometrics.
University of Missouri Kansas City: “The Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in economics consists at a minimum of 18 required coursework credit hours in economics including Economics 5506, 5551, 5601, 5602, 5625 and 5688. If the student has not taken the prerequisites to Economics 5601, 5602, and 5625, they will be required to take Economics 5501, 5502, 5521, and 5525.” 5521 and 5525 are econometrics. That’s right, the prerequisites to the required coursework are econometrics. Link here.
UT-Salt Lake: Requires quantitative methods and econometrics: link here. Additionally, on that page you will find a link to the math prerequisites they require for their grad-level classes. I am going to bet that they are past what you are interested in.
UT-Austin: “Students who do not display satisfactory mathematical skills may be required to take additional mathematics courses in concert with the core theory courses.” And: Probability and Statistics, Mathematical Economics, and Econometrics are listed in the schedule here. It does say, “Under exceptional circumstances and with permission of the Graduate Advisor, a student may modify this schedule,” but I’m willing to bet that “I don’t want to do math” isn’t an exceptional circumstance.
Umass-Amherst: " Students must complete the following courses: one semester of Macroeconomics, two semesters of Microeconomics, one semester of Political Economy, one semester of Mathematical Methods, two semesters of Econometrics, and one semester of Economic History." Exercise for the reader: find the link yourself.
I will also say that I have taken intermediate-level microeconomics at the college level (not the grad school level) and it required multiple-variable calculus. I assume, although I have no personal experience, that some statistics will also be required to take graduate-level macro and micro, all of which are required for every program you listed in your OP.
Also: why did I have to do all that research? Why didn’t you? I would think this would be a minimum condition for entering a Ph.D. program, that you be able to perform some independent study into what the program actually required of you.
(I also have to say that my Ph.D. experience was exactly opposite of others’ in this thread: I found it a wonderfully collaborative experience and spent a lot of time talking to other people about really interesting things. It’s the one thing I really miss about academia. But I was in physics, and I had a wonderful advisor at a school that was really committed to that kind of thing. I certainly have friends who did Ph.D.'s who had a much more negative experience; it varies a lot with advisor, school, and field.)
Sorry, missed the window – just reread the OP and realized that you would be applying to public policy at UT, not the economics department. I do think economics is a terrible fit for you if you don’t like math, and maybe public policy would be better. However, the LBJ school also says about its Ph.D. program:
“A basic understanding of methods used in public policy (statistics through multiple regression and/or basic applied econometrics), or a willingness to gain these skills upon entry, is expected of all students entering the program.”
Linus, you’ve said a couple of times that you “want to write a book.” That’s great, but it still doesn’t answer the question of what you want to do to pay the mortgage. Academic types who write books do so either because they’re in tenure or tenure track professorships at large research universities and have some time built into their workload for research (ha!), or they write their books in their spare time. Very few people make money worth mentioning by writing books. I know a lot of people with Ph.Ds, and I know a fair number of people who have written books, and my understanding is that the only person I know who’s making money off books has largely bailed on academia and is writing romance novels.
A few counterpoints to things others have said here: I did grad school with kids and I didn’t find it as horrible as Smeghead says, but it did mean I turned down a lot of opportunities, half-assed a lot of other things, and took for-freaking-ever to graduate. Also, I did enjoy talking to other people about their work and research interests while in grad school, so it does happen.
Whole-hearted agreement with others that any econ grad program is going to involve lots and lots of math.
This is my question too – what do you want to do after you finish. FWIW I’m someone who got a PhD and then did not go into academia or research in the end, so I’m not going to say that you shouldn’t even consider a PhD if you have that mindset. That said, I think that if research is not your plan, you need to have some sort of concrete idea of what you might do instead. Your plan can change, but you should at least be able to answer when you arrive your first year and people ask what you want to do when you graduate.
The advice I gave a friend once, who was considering an MFA, was to go back to the program that had accepted her and find out what jobs their graduates get after they finish. And ask yourself if any of those are jobs you want. I believe in her program a number of graduates went on to work in publishing (this was an MFA in writing). Now, you don’t need an MFA to work in publishing, but she decided she would be happy with that path if that’s how it worked out. And in the end she did get the degree and go into publishing.
So yeah, I agree, you need to be able to explain how you’ll pay the mortgage after you finish. If you want to write a popular press book then I kinda wonder if what you really want to do is go into journalism or financial reporting. I know, not exactly lucrative fields but neither is a PhD that doesn’t meet your needs.