While a bunch of students freshman year are interested in the world of money, not everyone who wants to go into business has a passion for economics. Rather than learning about human resources or corporate administration, economists study the creation, consumption, and exchange of wealth in the form of currency, goods, and services. As a soft science, it combines an understanding of human behavior and history with mathematics, statistics, and accounting. In other words, an economist is more likely to make financial models that project the impact of a national recession on global markets than to make millions running a lemonade stand.
If you’re drawn to economics, it’s because you love the elegance of theory and systems thinking. You grew up wondering why printing more money causes inflation rather than eradicating scarcity and asking your parents what a speculative bubble is because you overheard a news anchor say the housing market is about to crash.
This discipline is vast and cerebral, but you can start preparing to apply to college economic programs earlier than you think — as early as the summer after freshman year. Here’s how:
Read
We always recommend reading because it generally helps answer that fundamental question, huh?! Beyond the fundamental distinction between micro- and macroeconomics (that is, the difference between individual markets and actions taken by individuals and companies versus the behavior of entire economies shaped by governmental choices and international interactions), there are plenty of subfields and approaches to economics.
A fun way to dip your toe in the water is to read a book that explores broad concepts in an interesting, approachable way. Once you know which topics most intrigue you, you can research material that caters to that specialization.
For example, Freakonomics was a pop culture phenomenon that uses narrative storytelling and compelling human-interest questions to teach people about incentives and how they impact daily life. If you love Freakonomics, you might want to dive into behavioral economics, or investigate how psychology influences our behavior and thus economies as a whole. If you found Sapiens riveting because it laid out how humankind got to this social organization, you might want to follow your curiosity about the creation of money to financial economics.
Take Extra Classes
Later in high school, you’ll have the opportunity to take relevant classes — AP economics or statistics, maybe — but these cover the basics. To develop your specialty, and to answer higher-order questions you might have already, you can take college-level courses or enroll in pre-college programs that offer more targeted curricula.
You can look into community colleges or local economics initiatives geared at high schoolers, but there are tons of virtual options, too (and many are free!), available through Coursera, Yale Open Courses, Harvard Online Classes, and more. Here’s a list of Coursera’s top-ranked online courses, for example.
If you’re looking for a short-term intensive, one that’s well-suited to the summer months and specifically to prepare students for college, you’ll find plenty of residential weeks- to month-long programs offered directly by premier colleges. The benefits of an immersive experience like this are multiple: you get a crash-course in the subject of your choice; you meet peers with similar passions from all over; you get a feel for the campus experience; and, ideally, you start developing a relationship with a college you want to apply to later on. Check out the finance and economics programs we recommend here, or read about the summer programs tailored to behavioral economics in specific.
Research
This can be a bit of a long shot, but it’s worth trying, especially if you have access to a research hub in your area. Find out which econ scholars and teaching economists work at local universities, and reach out to them as an aspiring economist. You might get a lot of no’s off the bat, but, even if someone cannot use a student of your age in their lab or think tank, they may give you advice, allow you to shadow them, audit seminars, and become a reputable contact or letter of recommendation down the line.
Choose a Strategic Extracurricular
Obviously, as teenagers, you don’t have a surplus of options that will allow you to work with professional economists or impact the economy directly. However, there are plenty of hobbies and clubs that allow you to practice theoretical application and socially impactful thinking.
The connection might be literal — i.e. you start a blog that makes global economic trends digestible for people your age or that investigates the impact of macroeconomic changes on your immediate community. But the link might be more subtle than that. Model U.N. and debate are actually wonderful extracurriculars for aspiring economists, because students have to analyze current events, consider foreign policy, imagine the consequences of national and international legislation, and weigh logistical as well as ethical implications of executing a plan of action, all of which require an understanding of different societies’ financial status and the relationship micro- and macro-economic trends have on citizens’ quality of life.
Ok, we’ll stop now, because that’s probably enough for your to-do list. Enjoy your foray into the big, bold world of economics, or, as we in the football community definitely call it, the beautiful game.
If you need help identifying a special interest or developing a college admission strategy, reach out to us today.