How hard is the essay writing bits in an Econ degree

I'm really bad at writing essays and I didn't do Econ at a level so I'm not sure how I'll find an econ degree. How good do you have to be at essay writing to do well?

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 1

cheadle

There is a knack to essay writing and it is something that you can improve on as long as you go into it with a sound strategy.
If you're relatively inexperienced at essay writing as well as having a negative mindset towards it, you might find your grades won't be that great to start with but they will improve as long as you take on board the feedback from tutors and take advantage of the many study skills workshops that unis offer. I would suggest that you tackle this head on and make use of workshops ahead of any actual essay writing that you do.
Usually, essays usually follow a particular structure and use a particular writing style. Most unis use Harvard referencing (so if there is a workshop on that, do it). Assignment briefs will set out the exact requirements that you need to provide and will indicate the criteria by which they are assessed, so it's essential to spend sometime unpicking that.
The other thing is to spread the research and writing out over a period of 3-4 weeks to give yourself enough time to consolidate your work.

Reply 2

BenRyan99

Careers Forum Helper

Original post by Htx_x346

I'm really bad at writing essays and I didn't do Econ at a level so I'm not sure how I'll find an econ degree. How good do you have to be at essay writing to do well?

There are sorta two types of essay-like writing you'll do in an economics degree.

The first is more what I'd consider an essay and is a natural progression from A-level essays. Here you might be asked to discuss the pros and cons of the minimum wage (just an example). So, this naturally splits into some core sections: an introduction where you state what you'll discuss and your line of argument, a section on the pros, a section on the cons, a conclusion/discussion bit, then finally your references. They'll normally be about 1-2k word limited (aside from references). Here in each section (e.g. the pros) you might want three main themes to talk about, same with the opposite. The key difference between this and just a long verison of a-level essays is that at uni you're expected to use arguments made in academic research to back up your points whereas normally in alevel it's more fact stating as evidence. So you might say something like, one reason why the NWM is beneficial is that there's empirical evidence to support the notion that larger minimum wages lead to a more productive workforce, for example X and Y (2013) used X method to research Z and found that A,B,C happened... and so on.

The second type of essay is based on original research. The type above is discussing argunments and what's the academic findings suggest. Whereas original research such as empirical projects, dissertations, etc is where you pick the topic and carry out the statistical method on the data that you've sourced and then write up your findings. This is normally structured as follows. Have a cover page with stuff like title, name, student number, module and your abstract which is a summary. Then you tend to have the introduction where the point is to justify why your research is worthwhile (e.g X is a problem and this research assists policy makers in solving X, etc). Next is the literature review (sometimes combined with the intro), here you discuss what the key findings are in the academic literature on this topic, talk about how your method/idea is similar and different to the past findings and how their research has informed yours. Then normally you'd move onto the model/empirical framework section where you'll explain the method you used. Next you'll discuss the data that you've used, so why those variables, data source, maybe some summary statistics. Then you'll move onto your results section where you present and explain your findings. Sometimes (depending on the type of paper) they'll be a discussion section afterwards where you explain how your results form together, with economic theory and past research, to make your line of argument. Then a short conclusion and references.

As you can see, one is basically an essay where you explain different lines of arguments based on research already done, whereas the second is where you do the research and explain why it's important, how it links to past research and what your results suggest. Normally you do more essays in the first year or two of your degree whereas you move onto producing research in 3rd year and postgraduate level. I wouldn't worry too much as you get taught/pick up over time how to do both types of essays. The main difference between uni and alevel essays is that uni essays rely on you studying the academic literature on the essay topic and using this to support your findings, whereas alevel economics is mainly theory based with no links to literature

How hard is the essay writing bits in an Econ degree

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