MA Econ (NYU, Duke, Boston, Oxbridge)

[desemejante]

Hey,

I'm an economics major (in the UK, which means I just do econ and math) and am trying to choose which programmes to apply to next year.

So far, I found the masters in duke, at boston university, nyu, and oxford (where I'm now) and cambridge very interesting. Having spent the last three years in the UK, I'd be happy to go overseas though. I don't know whether I want to continue to do a Phd afterwards or not just yet.

Does anyone have experience with applying or attending any of these? It's quite hard to determien how competitive they are. Or can someone think of any other programmes worth looking into? I also checked Chicago's MAPSS and Columbia's MQ QMSS, both seem very interesting.

Thanks!

[rising_star]

The only problem I foresee is difficulty getting funding.

[desemejante]

Thanks for your reply!

Do you mean by that it's not too competitive but mainly very expensive?

[rising_star]

Oh, they're competitive I think. But they're definitely expensive. MAPSS offers some tuition waivers but no stipends. MA programs in general are notoriously difficult to get funding for.

[sahil.malhotra5]

Hey desemejante,

I have a similar profile to yours (BSc Economics - LSE). I have been checking out options for a terminal MA economics program in the US (not interested in a Phd at the moment) and have come up with the following choices:

NYU

Duke

Boston

Columbia QMSS

Since iv taken quite a few finance courses, I also applied for the Princeton MFin.

Havent been able to discover how competitive they are either. If you do manage find out, please let me know.

Cheers

[Fellowpigeon]

Hey! I applied and got into MAPSS, Duke, and Oxford. 

The general feedback I got for MAPSS was that it was a sink or swim kind of program -- it's very intense and you mostly have to things on your own. It's hands off and you NEED to be strategic from the start about professors you want to work with if you expect to do your thesis under them. And while they have a lot of flexibility, if you choose the wrong classes you're in trouble. Also, it's 250-300 students. 

Oxford on the other hand seemed to have the opposite problem -- close to no flexibility. It's still fast paced and rigourous, but you get little to no opportunity to explore other disciplines. The MPhil is basically the first two years of the PhD and everyone doing it knows they want to do economics. 

I personally liked the duke program best. It's a good sized class (around 30ish) and you have enough mentoring and flexibility. Duke encourages research and you can get RA jobs if you do well. Funding isn't guaranteed, but if you're a strong candidate they can offer you some need based tuition waivers. Like Oxford it's 2 years.