Study Abroad Information

Here's what you need to do if you think you might be interested in study abroad:

Think hard about whether you want to study abroad and what you hope to get out of it. Think about where you might want to study.

Think about whether you would like to try to get credit for economics courses while abroad. The advantage is that study abroad need not disrupt your academic schedule at all -- you can get credit for economics courses, as well as Core credit. (If you study abroad for one semester and take a full semester of course work, then you automatically reduce your Core requirement by one; for a full year, you reduce your Core requirement by two!) On the other hand, you will have more options if you don't need to get any credit for economics courses -- there are some programs that are more of a fully cultural experience, for example, rather than just studying at an overseas university. If that's what you're interested in, you may want to plan your schedule so as to fulfill your economics requirements with Harvard courses.

Visit the Office for International Programs (OIP) in University Hall, Ground Floor. (They have an entrance on the end of the building across from Weld.) They will help you figure out where you want to study and how to apply. Some possible programs for economics concentrators are posted on the OIP website. Come up with a preliminary plan of courses you might want to take.

Email Jeff Mironduring the summer months. All graduate student advisers will be qualified to give advise and approve/sign study abroad requests and questions for academic year 2007-08 (see Advising tab for a list of advisers by house).

Bring with you the forms from OIP. As the summer study abroad concentration advisor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Jeff will have to sign off on your courses. Your course plan is tentative at this stage. Many students change their course plan while abroad--that's ok. For students who are abroad, OIP and Jeff can approve credit for course changes by e-mail.

If you would like to try to get credit for economics courses while abroad, bring the syllabi (or as much info as you can gather) about the courses with you to our meeting. With enough information, Jeff can tell you in advance whether and what kind of economics concentration credit you will get.

Note: Grades for courses taken abroad are not recorded on your Harvard transcript and do not count toward College or concentration GPA. It is noted whether you pass or fail the course, and you only get credit for courses you pass. However, courses taken abroad do not count toward the limit of two P/F courses that may fulfill economics concentration requirements.

To count as an economics elective, a course must:

Have substantial economic content
Employ primarily an economic methodology (i.e., use the tools from intro and intermediate economics, not primarily case studies, interviews, etc.)
Have mostly readings with economic content and economic methodology

For the most part, any course that sounds pretty much like a course you could take at Harvard (e.g., game theory, econometrics, international monetary economics, etc.) would count, as long as the course is not taught at a much lower level. However, it is great to take advantage of being abroad by taking unique courses, such as The Spanish Economy, Economic History of Latin America, or The Economics of the EU. These will count, as long as they meet the above criteria.

You can get prerequisite credit for a course if it counts as an economics elective and prerequires intermediate microeconomics or intermediate macroeconomics.

You can get writing credit for a course if it counts as an economics elective and requires a 15+ page research paper. To get writing credit, show Jeff the graded paper when you return to Harvard. As long as the paper has substantial economic content and employs primarily an economic methodology, you will get credit.

To count as a related field, a course must be in a neighboring discipline, such as another social science (sociology, anthropology, psychology), math, history, computer science, statistics, etc. Business and public policy courses are always related fields. Also, courses about culture count as related fields.

You cannot get credit for Ec 970 while abroad. Sophomores who study abroad in the spring must postpone Ec 970 until junior spring.

The economics concentration does not grant credit for internships.