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Originally Posted by vyrospec
=.= sigh...ya it hit me quite hard last semester when i took 301
but on the bright side, it did somewhat help prepare me for this semester. In addition, it really depends on what style of teaching your instructor chooses to format the class.
Right now for 302/305/333, what i found most troublesome are the assignments.
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I blame SFU for having such lax math requirements. Look at any top tier econ department (Stanford, NYU, MIT, the Ivys) and look at how inundated with math their cirriculums are. The holy trinity to become a succesful economist is: Calc (1-3), Linear algebra, Real analysis with a heavy dose of discrete maths thrown in. All those top programs have at least the calc and lin algebra requirements even at the basic UG level, with their graduate students also having real analysis and stochastic calc thrown in. It's no wonder all the best classes that econ has at SFU can only be offered at the grad level due to the low level of maths in the undergrad. How the hell can you teach heavy game theory or general equilibrium without a strong math background? Of course the top programs already teach it at the undergrad level, but not SFU.
If it were up to me, SFU Econ would have a huge quant portion and the 302, 305 will be 2nd year courses with the 3rd/4th year courses reserved for the specialized econ branches: financial econ, public policy, general equilibrium, behavioural and econometrics. That's how MIT and Chicago does it, and look at their programs. It will also make econ even harder than to get into than it is now and the SFU drop out population will go up exponentially...though maybe that's not really a bad thing.