Further Maths required for Economics?

Having done Further Maths, I can hardly see how de Moivre's theorem could help with Economics, so (from my non-existant experience of Economics) I would say that Further Maths would not be a benefit for an Economics application *specifically*.

However, Further Maths is very much rated as an A-level course and I was told, when expressing concerns that a college I was thinking of applying to might be too competetive, by an Oxford tutor that with my GCSEs "and Further Maths under [my] belt" I should "fear no competition at all" - make of this what you will

Oh please, c'mon dont talk such rubbish! If we are all allowed to rely on such facile ad hoc reasoning there would be no point taking any A levels! No not everything you do in FM will be directly applicable, but you will have done more calculus, possibly more statistics modules etc. You also would have done matrices and so covered Cramers rule and Gaussian elimination. Furthermore you also would have become familiar with Lagrangian multipliers (very useful for solving consumer and producer constrained optimisation problems) etc.

I wish i had done FM before i started Econ at Cam - it will help your application, but its NOT the be all and end all. I cannot possibly see how this thread could be drawn out any longer, so to offer the final word...

Do FM if you can, don't worry if you didn't have the opportunity...

i've done FM and not done most of the topics you've listed above.




I dont even know why i'm going to cambridge. infact,this thread is making me not want to.

I'm fairly sure it helped my application as they did mention it at interveiw, however when he asked if I though I would get an A and I said "I doubt it" he really didn't seem too bothered. I did go onto explain that, perhaps, if I did very well in mechanics and D1 i could compensate for my dire (predicted) performance in FP2 and so an A was a possibility. He seemed fairly content with this and we moved on, and it wasn't part of my offer (given a AA offer)

So yes, i'm 99% sure taking FM did help me, but in terms of them seeing it(at Emma at least) as a huge advantage and you needing to be a star mathmo to get an offer, from my experience you don't need to be.

Old thread, but since it's been revived: although they don't say it officially, Oxford for E&M these days almost require Further Maths if it's available to you. Not necessarily for knowledge of specific syllabus content, but for the general aptitude for and interest in Maths that a good mark in it demonstrates.

No. My twin brother does business economics, maths & history. Our school does offer further maths but he chose not to do it cos he thought it would be too hard for him. He has an offer from cambridge. No maths questions at interview inspite of him having only just got an A at AS.

Yeh but not amazing. GCSEs 5A* 3A 2B
PS and ref he was happy with
UMSs maths 255/300 buisiness eco 288/300 history 279/300

So people shouldn't be put off cos they dont have FM
he also got offers from ucl bath n durham but was rejected by warwick

thats good, especially considering he only did 3 AS levels. does he go to a poor school or something??

Loads of kids from brilliant schools with worse gcses get in. 10A*s is not the requirement for entry, just an aptitude, a passion as well as potential for the course is what you need. Further Maths would really help your application as well as help you when you are actually on the course.