Information About Fall & Spring Term Courses for Prospective Economics Concentrators

Fall Term

The standard starting point for students considering concentrating in Economics or taking upper-level Economics courses is Ec 10. Students considering the concentration are strongly encouraged to enroll as freshmen. It is possible to concentrate in Economics if a student takes Ec 10 as a sophomore, but course sequencing becomes more constrained.

MORE>>

Spring Term

If you took Ec 10 during the Fall Term:

Most of you will continue in Ec 10 for the spring term. The important curricular planning issue is the calculus prerequisite for the intermediate theory courses. Concentrators ordinarily take Economics 1010a or 1011a during the Fall Term of the sophomore year. Math 1a (or the equivalent) is the prerequisite for Economics 1010a. Students planning to take Economics 1011a should be comfortable with multivariable calculus at the level of Math 18 or 21a (partial derivatives, total derivatives, implicit differentiation, and constrained optimization). If you have not already taken the math course that you will need for intermediate theory, you should do so this term.

Students who have achieved a score of 5 on the macro portion of the Economics AP test may divide Ec 10 with credit for the first half. Student who skip 10b must replace it with an elective  to meet the overall number of required courses. If you have the appropriate mathematical background, you may enroll in Economics 1010b or 1011b, or another course for which Ec 10 is a prerequisite. Neither Economics 1010a nor 1011a is a prerequisite for either Economics 1010b or 1011b.

MORE>>

Fall or Spring Term:

If you are thinking about concentrating in economics, you should also consider fulfilling the concentration’s statistics requirement in the fall or the spring of your first year (by taking one of Stat 100, Stat 104, Stat 110 or Applied Math 101).