[career]

Im going to WBS and have looked at the amount of pre reading I have to do and it is insane!!!. I come from an econ background but some of the maths they are asking me to do practice questions is well out my league. Just wondering are they asking you to do this because they wont cover it or just to get you really prepared.

TBH its really putting me off doing a Masters, I know it was going to be hard but not this hard!.

[poohat]

It depends what course youre doing, economics at research level has high maths requirements. Finance is also quite high, although slightly less so unless you are doing something like asset pricing. Other b-school degrees shouldnt have especially high requirements.

You can see the lecture notes for the LSE econ MSc here: http://www.chesnes.com/notes.html. I have no idea whether Warwick will be similar though.

This thread may be useful: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/show....php?t=1941495

[Ghost6]

(Original post by career)
Im going to WBS and have looked at the amount of pre reading I have to do and it is insane!!!. I come from an econ background but some of the maths they are asking me to do practice questions is well out my league. Just wondering are they asking you to do this because they wont cover it or just to get you really prepared.

TBH its really putting me off doing a Masters, I know it was going to be hard but not this hard!.

Well, it is hard to say if that knowledge is really required or if it will be reviewed anyway. That being said, in my experience, lectures are much more enjoyable when you already have some knowledge of what is being taught so that you can understand not only after you fill in the gaps but also during the actual lectures. I assumed the "reading list" is given to achieve this goal.

Also, one can be easily impressed by stuff found in notes and books at the beginning, but a second look at e.g. the notes available in the above link show that what is being used is nothing more than some relatively basic (multivariable) calculus. Really only economists think the math they are using is hard. Real math is just in a different league.

[career]

Thanks for the replies guys. Also not sure how how many textbooks to buy, they recommend 3 per module but I was wondering if I could get away with buying 1 and use the library for the bits of the course my books won't cover.

[poohat]

(Original post by Ghost6)
Also, one can be easily impressed by stuff found in notes and books at the beginning, but a second look at e.g. the notes available in the above link show that what is being used is nothing more than some relatively basic (multivariable) calculus. Really only economists think the math they are using is hard. Real math is just in a different league.

This is wrong for two reasons. First, those are introductory (graduate level) lecture notes so they arent going to be too advanced, theoretical economics at research level obviously requires a deeper grasp of mathematics (here are two papers from the last issue of Econometrica for instance: 1 2, scroll down to the Appendices). The amount of math in non-theoretical and empirical papers is of course a lot lower, so this is very subfield dependent. Second, as in physics, the point of the courses isnt the math as such, but learning how its used. The focus of those courses is economic modelling, and they assume that you are somewhat familiar with the math used. If you are not comfortable enough with the mathematical background, and need to learn it as you go along, then it will be harder to learn about the economic part since you are basically learning two things at once.