Economics Applicant Thread UCAS 2012

Under cover economist was a good start for me, wasn't that impressed with Freakonomics though...

I was thinking of starting in the summer with the easygoing economic books such as Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist and then progress and start to read more in depth books by Keynes and other well known economists

The books by Keynes and economists like Adam Smith which I think you're talking about aren't generally that good to read I think.
They tend to be very long winded and you can find other books which will be much more use to you really.

Ah cheers for the heads up mate, any certain books you would recommend? (Apart from Freakonomics and the Undercover Economist)

You live in London so it's quite simple: Go to Foyle's bookshop. As you can tell, I love that shop Go downstairs to their Economics section, where they have tonnes of books on all aspects of Economics, at all levels: from popular economics (which I would personally avoid) to Postgraduate textbooks and, of course, everything inbetween

The staff there are very knowledgeful about their range of books, so they'll be able to point you in the right direction if you can't find anything through browsing. I'd recommend picking something that maybe you haven't heard of, but is about a topic in Economics you like, for instance: Development, Game Theory, Trade, Economic history, Behavioural Economics and so on. I think that the only way to find the a book which strikes a balance between popular and textbook styles is to do some browsing, so have fun

Ah cheers for the heads up mate, any certain books you would recommend? (Apart from Freakonomics and the Undercover Economist)

What do you expect to get out of an insight day?

It's not something to put on a personal statement or a CV.

And everything you learn from them can be found on the internet...

EDIT: And an insight day at one of the 'Big 4' isn't even relevant to Economics in any way. I mean, IB has at least some relevance what with M&A and so on.

Joseph Stiglitz has a few books, all worth a read. As I mentioned before A truth about markets (John Kay) is good. It pretty a lot and explains it all quite well.

Any idea which sort of thing in particular you want books on?

I would be quite interested in all areas of Economics. I'm quite fond of markets and economic history if you know any that fits into those agendas

I have quite a long list of books I was going to get but I can't find it atm.

I'd suggest:

"The Roaring Nineties" - Joseph Stiglitz
"Butterfly Economics"- Paul Ormerod
"Reinventing the Bazaar: The Natural History of Markets"- John McMillan
"The truth about markets"- John Kay

I haven't really looked at economic history much so maybe someone else can help you on that.

So glad to hear i'm not the only one applying for economics without having done it at school! Will probably apply to Warwick, Nottingham, Cambridge, St Andrews/Edinburgh and Bath..
I enjoyed the Undercover Economist and have just started another book by Tim Harford called The Logic of Life which i'd recommend.

Reckon us 2012 lot have any chance of someone doing a TAELT '12?

Hopefully, but it will largely remain the same in the top 10 which I assume is where most people in this thread will be applying. The top 10 will always be made up of Oxbridge, LSE, Warwick, UCL, Bristol, Bath, Nottingham, Durham and then the 9th spot can change quite a lot

I think it's 2013's that would see big changes.. Mainly for admission statistics, surely our year's will differ quite a lot from last years due to fees and blah blah blah.