Economics UCD

Fuzzmore

Hi I'm doing my LC this year and I'm just wondering what is economics as a joint honours degree like? I would like to do it with French if I was doing it, but if anyone could tell me about the economics course itself and whether they like it or not, and the atmosphere and stuff I'd much appreciate it! Thank you!

gracie.b

Most of the lecturers are very good, but with anywhere some aren't.

Not much choice in 1st year and you can't avoid the maths completely if that's not your thing as it crops up in some form in a lot of modules.

There also are very limited if not no tutorials for economic modules in UCD so it can be hard at first to meet people in your course, but Id recommend going to as many Arts events and just chatting to whoever is beside you in lectures, everyone in first year is in the same boat.


Best of luck if you do start in UCD!

Durz0 Blint

Joint major in Economics and Archaeology here.

First thing, I never did economics for the leaving certificate, but I have heard the course we are studying is completely different to what is taught for the leaving cert.

Second thing is the subject seems to have a very high failure rate, especially for the more mathematical and statistical classes. Not to put you off but if you find maths hard then it may be challenging . I don't think the maths we use is very difficult but the subject draws in a lot of students who may not be the strongest mathematically, compared to say engineering students (I'm not very good at maths but by working hard I have got straight A+'s in economics so it is definitely doable). You can try schedule your modules to avoid the more mathsy ones but TBH if you are in any way interested in postgraduate study (which afaik is very important for a career in economics) then they will expect you to take the more quantitative classes.

Cant say much for the atmosphere: usually there's several hundred people in a large theatre and tbh I only know about a dozen of the students in my economics year. Most people tend to get to know one another outside of their classes through societies and events and that's where I met most of the people I know in UCD.

Check out the undergraduate handbook for economics to see what courses you can take:
http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/ughb2013_14.pdf

You can find more information on the classes (like how they are graded) here:
http://www.ucd.ie/students/course_search.htm


If you want a flavour for what its like to study economics then check out the following books

Macroeconomics (I think this is an older version of the book we use, I havent checked through it):
ftp://dge.stanford.edu/pub/vineety/rup/N. Gregory Mankiw Macroeconomics, 7th edition 2009.pdf

We use this microeconomics book a lot
http://www.solutionmanual-center.com/products/test-bank-for-test-bank-for-microeconomics-global-edition-6e-jeffrey-perloff-isbn-10-0273754688-isbn-13-9780273754688/

Also have a look at a good introductory statistics book (I cant remember the name of the author of the one we use off the top of my head, I think its just called "statistics")

Also here's the math book we use (this class is optional for joint majors but its very useful)
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/mathematics-for-economics-3rd-edition-id-0262015072.aspx


The books are expensive but if you interested in attending UCD then maybe contact the lecturers in the department to see what textbooks they use for their classes to get a feel for what its like and get a UCD library membership over the summer to rent out the books.

GL with whatever you choose to do.

Fuzzmore

Thank you so much these are great answers everything I needed to hear!