Admission Requirements

Requirements

The Master of Arts in Economic Policy Analysis requires for admission:

  1. The general GRE test
  2. Three letters of recommendation, preferably from former professors
  3. The completed Graduate School application form.
  4. Students who are not native English speakers must also send TOEFL scores.

The M.A. in Economic Policy Analysis has no special deadlines for admission. However, students who wish to apply for teaching or research assistantships during the following academic year must submit their applications to the Graduate School by mid-February. The Graduate School deadlines for applications for the Fall semester are July 1 for domestic students and January 1 for international students. A Graduate School application form is available on-line from the UMBC Graduate School web page.

 

Recommendations

To succeed in the program students will need some undergraduate economics, mathematics and statistics background. We require that, before a student takes the core economic theory and econometrics courses, he or she successfully complete courses in intermediate micro-economic theory and intermediate statistics. We also very strongly recommend that students complete an undergraduate econometrics course before taking ECON 611, the graduate econometrics course, and complete an undergraduate mathematical economics course before taking ECON 601, the core microeconomic theory course. However, students do not need to have completed all these courses before applying to the program. An intermediate microeconomic theory course, an undergraduate econometrics course, and a mathematical economics course will be offered at UMBC each summer for those students who wish to enter the program but have not yet taken such courses. The mathematical economics course, ECON 490, will provide students who have had at least one semester of undergraduate calculus with the mathematics background necessary to succeed in the M.A. program.

For those who are unsure if they have sufficient background in economic theory, mathematics, or statistics, please contact the Economic Policy Analysis Graduate Program Director at econ-masters@umbc.edu.