MSc Economics @ Essex

you have not provided nearly enough information for anyone to give you advice. Why do you want to do a master's in econ? What career do you want to go in etc?

I quite enjoyed my undergrad course in Economics so I want to do a Master's. Careerwise, hoping maybe something in consulting or may be work as an Economist in Government Economic service / Bank of England or may be one of the think tanks like CEBR. I feel a masters would definitely enhance my knowledge but not sure if uni ranking is important at Masters level too.

Ye i can only rly speak for IB in which uni 'ranking' is very important. Google up what a target masters is for MBB consulting as for IB the uni is very important and consulting often falls into that too.

Rejected by most unis except Essex. Should I go to Essex or wait for a year and reapply? I am hoping I can get a 2:1 if not more at least but most unis said the competition was intense this year. What if it's the same again and I just wasted a year for no reason!

Any comments welcome.

Hi, I've worked in the GES, strategy and economic consulting for a bit if you wanna ask any specific questions about MSc Economics courses and their prospects?

Hi Ben

Thanks for this. I hope you don't mind if I pick your brain.

Can you shed some lights on doing MSc Econ at Essex and the prospects of getting into GES?

Were there many mature graduates (like 30+) at GES?

Do you suggest I wait another year and reapply to get into a better uni for MSc Econ, so that I have better job prospects? or should I just bite the bullet and just get the MSc done at Essex? I was thinking King's College (their new Econ& Finance course),UCL, Warwick (all rejected me this year). I don't think I will get a look in at Cambridge or LSE unless I get a first, which I think will be unlikely.

No worries, please ask away.

In terms of getting into the GES with a MSc from Essex, getting into the GES is actually a lot easier than you'd expect. You certainly don't even need a master's just a 2.1 at undergrad and to pass their tests. The tests aren't tough, I've even passed them haha. So I think you can almost definitely get in with a master's from Essex. The tests don't ask you hard material, they get you to apply 1st/2nd year undergrad material to different contexts.

In my limited time in the GES I encountered a mature person, he was starting the grad scheme in his late 20s. He'd just finished a PhD. Most grads will likely be aged 21-23 but there are quite a lot that join after working somewhere else for a couple years, normally IB or consulting, so they're normally 23-26yrs old. So perhaps you'd be at the upper end of the graduate scheme grade distribution but it's not unheard of and it definitely 100% would not count against you in the application and interview process.

I'm afraid I can only offer limited advice on what you should do next as I'm not sure how good you are haha. As in I can't know whether it's worth waiting to reapply to top unis if I don't know your ability and therefore you're likelihood of acceptance.

For what it's worth, King's College is vastly overrated and their Econ master's is only 1-2yrs old so not really established at all. Are you already at a UK university for undergrad? Unless you do something dramatic, UCL and Warwick would likely turn you down again and so there would also be no chance at Cambridge or LSE. There are quite a lot of good unis between these and Essex for MSc Economics courses which you could apply to such as Nottingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol for example.

Btw Essex's postgrad (MSc's and PhDs) in Economics is a lot better than its undergrad, it actually ranks fairly well for postgrad Econ so it certainly wouldn't be the end of the world for getting in. It may restrict you to the GES tho whereas other better unis would be a lot more likely to open up the options of economic consulting, management/strategy consulting, central banking, an economist in a bank, asset management, HF's, etc than Essex would.

Thanks for taking your time out to provide a detailed reply Ben.

Yes, I am doing my undergrad at a top 40 UK uni and this is why I really wanted to go to a better uni for masters. I feel stupid to not have applied to Manchester or Nottingham at least for masters (although I heard Nottingham isn't a safe place due to high crime rates!).

Someone suggested Birkbeck College/City university's MSc Economics degree- are they any good? Also, what do you think about Loughborough uni's Economics and Finance course in terms of opening up options beyond GES?

Thank you so much and it's great to have someone so knowledgeable on this forum.

No worries, please ask away.

In terms of getting into the GES with a MSc from Essex, getting into the GES is actually a lot easier than you'd expect. You certainly don't even need a master's just a 2.1 at undergrad and to pass their tests. The tests aren't tough, I've even passed them haha. So I think you can almost definitely get in with a master's from Essex. The tests don't ask you hard material, they get you to apply 1st/2nd year undergrad material to different contexts.

In my limited time in the GES I encountered a mature person, he was starting the grad scheme in his late 20s. He'd just finished a PhD. Most grads will likely be aged 21-23 but there are quite a lot that join after working somewhere else for a couple years, normally IB or consulting, so they're normally 23-26yrs old. So perhaps you'd be at the upper end of the graduate scheme grade distribution but it's not unheard of and it definitely 100% would not count against you in the application and interview process.

I'm afraid I can only offer limited advice on what you should do next as I'm not sure how good you are haha. As in I can't know whether it's worth waiting to reapply to top unis if I don't know your ability and therefore you're likelihood of acceptance.

For what it's worth, King's College is vastly overrated and their Econ master's is only 1-2yrs old so not really established at all. Are you already at a UK university for undergrad? Unless you do something dramatic, UCL and Warwick would likely turn you down again and so there would also be no chance at Cambridge or LSE. There are quite a lot of good unis between these and Essex for MSc Economics courses which you could apply to such as Nottingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol for example.

Btw Essex's postgrad (MSc's and PhDs) in Economics is a lot better than its undergrad, it actually ranks fairly well for postgrad Econ so it certainly wouldn't be the end of the world for getting in. It may restrict you to the GES tho whereas other better unis would be a lot more likely to open up the options of economic consulting, management/strategy consulting, central banking, an economist in a bank, asset management, HF's, etc than Essex would.

Hi,

My GES assessment is due in couple of week. I did eco over 15 years ago and im really struggling to revise for the assessment, especially for the saq and specialist topic that we need to choose.

any tips whatsoever will be appreciated. If there is anything you remember from
your ges and can share with me, i will be forever grateful.

thanks

Hi,

My GES assessment is due in couple of week. I did eco over 15 years ago and im really struggling to revise for the assessment, especially for the saq and specialist topic that we need to choose.

any tips whatsoever will be appreciated. If there is anything you remember from
your ges and can share with me, i will be forever grateful.

thanks

EAC questions tend to be quite easy, broadly 1st year content but may cover some A-level or 2nd year stuff. You can find past questions online, they're really not bad at all and there's no maths.

You've only really got to know the basics, but it's broad and you've got to truly understand these basics. Often they'll ask a question where you'll have to apply economic concepts to very unrelated and random examples. I've even seen a question in the past that was asking you to apply the concept of price elasticity of demand to heat being applied to a metal beam.

So they can be very random but they're not tough or mathematical. I think sometimes they can ask an econometrics question but it will only be at the introductory econometrics level such as interpreting coefficients, Gauss Markov assumptions or some very very basic time-series.

There was a report commissioned a while back about why the EAC has a pass rate of below 50%. The main conclusions it came to were that (I'll paraphrase):

A) Candidates accidentally revised content far more advanced than was necessary so then struggled to do well in the questions under time constraints despite them being easy questions.

B) Whilst the candidates were clearly intelligent, they didn't properly understand the basic 1st/2nd year material in a way that allowed them to apply it in various different contexts.

So for the EAC, you're likely to get questions on the basics like externalities, elasticities, market structures, public/private goods, cost-benefit analysis, you know like not very complicated things. Then for macro it'll be stuff like factors that effect exchange rates, BoP, basic growth models, central bank independence, QE, pros and cons of inflation and macro policy conflicts.

Beyond that, just be polite, confident and enthusiastic. Create a good report for the written report section, make sure you nail your spoken presentation, practice some questions on your specialist topic and behavioural questions and you'll be golden

Sorry, I should also add that when I was preparing for the EAC I created a document with all the past short answer questions that I could possibly find on the web (about 60), organised them by micro, macro and metrics, then split them by topic within these. Then I created short answers to them, just a couple bullet points as you'll only get 3mins to answer each one in the EAC. I found that to be quite helpful.

My specialist topic was generally easy to prepare for, I had interned for an organisation where I specialised in an area of economic analysis so picked that. Didn't prepare any answers to possible questions beyond just thinking about it in my head, didn't make notes or revise etc. Fortunately one of the examiners had worked in this specialist field too but for about 30yrs. I thought that might be a bad thing but I actually think it meant she could appreciate my answer beyond what an average economist might have been able to.

The report and presentation isn't that easy. They give you a bunch of sources which tend to be very helpful so I just used those. Gotta remember that the written report is aimed at economists whereas the presentation should be in layman's terms. There's only a week between recieving the question and then doing your EAC so I'd really recommend writing your report and a rough presentation script as soon as possible because then it'll give you a few days to learn it. Because of this, you ideally want to have done all your Econ revision and short answer question notes and practice done before you actually get invited to the EAC because you'll have a week once invited which should really be spent on your report and essay.

Final section is the behavioural questions. I didn't prepare for these as I'd done multiple interviews and assessment centres in the past so was fairly comfortable with these sort of questions. I'd also interned for an organisation for a year so lots of the questions were easy to answer relative to the ease that someone with no experience might have found them. Ultimately just be honest in your answers. This EAC report I read said that there's never been a candidate to fail because of the behavioural questions so I wouldn't worry too much.

Alternatively, is it
Possible for you to share your copy of the questions you found online. Coz i tried (again) and cannot find any

It's certainly possible for me to share them, but I'm not going to. I know that may make me sound awful but it would be unfair on both the other candidates and my past self who all work/worked really hard for the EAC. Ultimately you won't succeed in the GES if you can't pass the EAC by yourself so I wouldn't be helping you by giving them. Plus the questions are mostly A-level or first year standard so you really shouldn't need past questions beyond the topics lists and the example SAQs they provide.

That being said, I do wish you the best of luck during the EAC! I hope it goes well as it sounds like you're trying to do a career change given you did Econ 15yrs ago. My only question is whether the 28-32k salary is enough for someone who's presumably at least mid-30s and whether you'd want to be surrounded by a graduate cohort of 21-23yr olds. That being said, the GES is very inclusive so if you're fine with it, everyone else will probably be. So yeah, I'm happy to provide any advice but I'm not gonna send you past questions etc and I do also wish you the best of luck with it all!

If you believe sharing sample questions that you found online might give me an edge over other students then by all means please dont share it!

Thanks for your advice and kind wishes. All the best to both of us

I feel like you're implying that it won't give you an advantage, thus I should share. So clearly if it won't give an advantage then there's not much point in sharing really, won't help you over the other candidates if it's all easily available online. FWIW it took hours to compile all the past reports and questions so it would take more than a brief google