Cambridge Economics Students and Applicants

If I applied to do Economics at Cambridge during my gap year and were to do AS Further maths in it, having already gotten A*A*A, will Cambridge give me a conditional offer based on further maths or will they give me an unconditional?

Also, don't write your entire application in bold letters to get their attention.

Get 100% UMS in your best 3 subjects and have a genuine passion for Economics and you should get in.

You should definitely think about entering some essay competitions, they really show that you're interested in the subject itself if you're willing to go out of your way to do related to economics in your own time, it's even better if you win or get shortlisted.
If you google economics essay competition, a couple come up. RES run a very popular one and there's one run by the Cambridge Economics Society as well. I'd really recommend those. They definitely gave me something to talk about in my interview.

Holy bump batman, this thread is 5 years old

Ack. Trying to frantically cram for tomorrow's macro exam, but there's just so much material - until last year, the paper was set up so you only had to revise three-fifths of the course - 24 lectures. Now they've introduced compulsory questions to avoid topic-picking and you have to learn all 40. It's just far, far, far too much material and most of my revision for the past week has felt like the material was just bouncing straight off the front of my brain.

Nobody fainted, vomited or died during this morning's exam though, so that's good. (Actually, come to think of it, that's also my idea of a good date...)

May I ask how difficult is the economics tripos? Are there things that are extremely difficult conceptually or is it more the workload? For example, would it be possible for an "average" student to get a 1st with enough hard work and what is the maths like? PM or reply here would be very much appreciated

I thought I already answered this question, but anyway here goes again:
- Difficult, but not impossibly so.
- Concepts, material and workload all quite tough.
- An average student will not get a 1st, by definition (if they did they wouldn't be average). The compulsory maths isn't that hard, if you're comfortable with the stats and algebra in Further Maths it isn't too big a jump to be honest. The technical optional papers are more challenging conceptually.

Apologies if you've also answered this, but how challenging is the 2nd year maths option and what kind of first year background would you recommend to have? I've found the maths part of QM alright (stats has been more confusing).

I think that taking maths next year would be a struggle, but it might be worth it in the long run if it makes my other papers seem comparably easier and keeps my options open.

It's really quite challenging, there is a lot of material and it's the most conceptually difficult of the 2nd year papers. Personally I found that I spent almost as much time and effort on each of the individual components (calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics) of Paper 6 (2nd year Maths) as I did on the other papers in their entirety (i.e. 3 times as much work for Maths).


This is the upside, it does have significant positive externalities on all the other papers, and allows you to do the more technical options (such as the highly interesting Paper 4 ETA) in 3rd year and for your dissertation. Moreover, it is the kind of paper that if you do it right can drag up your average, because it's actually possible to get the higher marks (over 80) if you get the questions completely correct.

My advice is that if you can get a 1st in QM, then go for the Maths option.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2012/may/22/university-guide-economics

Cause for concern?

Hello,

the "Preliminary Part 1 Reading List" seems to be quite long. I was wondering which books, maybe two or three, you would really recommend reading prior to applying.

Thanks for your input.

Okay. Thank you for your answer. What do you think might be useful to read prior to applying?

Thanks for the advice, helpful as always . ETA does look interesting, though I imagine even more conceptually difficult. Yeah that is probably what I will base my decision on, how well I do in the exams next week. I think I would enjoy doing the development paper, but I can do a development option in 3rd year after doing maths in second year, and not vice versa. The workload on that paper is also meant to be quite high, so the issue is going to be whether I can get my head around the concepts in maths.

Advance warning (if you haven't already been told) - I hear they're changing the development course next year so it's India and historical Germany as opposed to India and Africa. At least one supervisor's already pulled out...

The development workload is quite high but it depends on how fast you can read and write for essays. The quicker you can do that, the more time you have to spend on everything else. If you're slow and easily distracted like me, then it can be a huge timesuck.