Hello everyone! As the time draws to the last week of the term, I’d like to share with you some sort of a routine that I’ve built up over the last 2 months. This is meant to give you a glimpse into my life at Warwick, though it can no way represent the many ways students can live their life here! I will also share my thoughts about lectures and course, so if you are interested in learning more about MSc Economics, or MSc Economics and International Finance, this is a post for you!

To be honest, before I became a postgraduate student (to be specific, MSc in Economics), I wasn’t so much of an organized person who likes routine. In retrospect, undergraduate life was so much more slow-paced and un-hectic. I simply cannot say the same about life as a Masters student. There are just tons of things to do!

To be fair, workload is manageable if one is organized and disciplined enough (hence this post about me having a nice routine), however, the fact that it is my last year as a student makes me want to do more things, academically and socially, that juggling all these interests stretch my time really tight. But, it’s been great so far- I manage to stay on top of my work without missing out on the socials! And I believe building a routine and sticking to it has helped me loads, so let’s get started!

Morning

I like to arrive at uni early even though my earliest lecture this term starts at 11am. On most days the first lecture starts at 1pm- you might rejoice at this (I did too!), but after a while I realized it’s not helping. Knowing that I don’t have an early lecture the next day often tempted me to sleep late and hence, wake up late – a bad way to start your day. This also means I couldn’t get any work done before lectures. By the time lectures are over, half a day is gone. I felt inefficient and decided to change the situation- we need to make use of the mornings, when we are the most productive!

At least for me, the time before lectures is better spent when I’m in uni, as I get more focused here.

So nowadays I arrive at uni before 10am to be welcomed by a delicious English breakfast at Xananas. Oh yes, a good breakfast adds the extra appeal to going there early!

This set of English breakfast costs me £2.99. Remember to load up your student ID (also acts as a meal card) in order to enjoy 10% off your bill. If you fancy eating something else, there is Café Library, Costa, Curiositea (just below Xanana), Café in the Arts Centre, which are all open by 9am.

Eating my breakfast at Xananas is a strategic choice. In the next building, Rootes, you’ll find the Learning Grid, which is a multi-purpose study & work area that I like to study in. It has more vacant study spaces in the mornings, so that’s where I head for after breakfast.

This is what you’ll see leaving Xananas and going toward the Rootes Building. The empty space outside the buildings is called the Piazza and we often have vendors setting up all sorts of stuff here: food fairs, charity events etc.

This is the Learning Grid - when it’s empty. Though of course it’s the opposite most of the times, as it’s the closest to all the ashops and eateries. Finding a space in the afternoon is tough!

There are project rooms available for group work at the Learning Grid. Simply book online in advance! As a postgrad student I have the option of using the project room at the PG Hub in Senate House, so I use the Learning Grid just to study.

It is open 0800- 2200 Mondays to Sundays so it’s a good option if the library gets full.

Noon

After a couple of hours of work, I like to do some exercise to give my brains a good break before the lectures. Swimming is the most ideal because unlike other sports such as badminton and squash, there’s no booking required J. I leave my swimming essentials in my locker in the PG common room, which is in the Economics building, and I try to swim at least once a week. Lockers are provided to us free of charge, for the whole year! Though different schools may have different policy on this.

Phones are not allowed in the changing room and beyond it, so couldn’t take a photo for you guys!

Swimming is free for me, as I have bought the£60 sports membership, which also allows me unlimited access to: the badminton court, sauna, table tennis and squash. How fantastic! It also gives me discounts for classes. I check the swimming pool weekly schedule before turning up, so to avoid running into water polo training or something like that. On most Fridays we the MSc Economics course people will book the entire badminton courts and have a friendly play off!

So far I’ve gone for two Zumba classes and am loving it, many more to come in the future! I

That’s me there shaking away doing UV Zumba. Its just soooo much fun!

Me again! (photos credit to Warwick Sports Facebook Page)

I feel this is a good time to take stock because teachings have ended, and I’m halfway into revision so I can say something about how effective the lectures or seminars have been in preparing us for the exams.

For the autumn term, I was reading:

1) Microeconomics Analysis

2) Macroeconomics Analysis (The most challenging of all three)

3) Econometrics A

In the first semester, we the students of MSc Economics course study exactly the same thing as those of MSc Economics and International Finance. What differentiate the two course are the optional modules which we’ll read in the spring term.

Lectures

On average, we have a total of 12 hours of lectures every week, two of which are “Openhouse” (one hour each for Micro and Macroeconomics). The open house idea is worth explaining because that’s something we didn’t have in my undergraduate uni. As the name suggests, the lecturer doesn’t give a lecture but instead opens the floor for questions concerning materials covered in the past. You can ask question on any topic, so it’s very much oriented to students’ needs.

Now moving to actual lectures.

Overall I’m satisfied with the teaching. I believe the professors delivering the lecturers are really one of the best in their fields. For example, our macroeconomic lecturer used to work in the Bank of England and now serves as an advisor for the government. So her expertise become really valuable when we study topics such as how central banks conduct monetary policy.

Nevertheless, as a student, how much you benefit from that depends if the lecturing style suits your tastes and how you like to study in general. In fact, the general consensus among students is that despite having a highly qualified lecturer, macro is the hardest and almost unfathomable. I think there’s little the lecturer can do to make things better given the breadth and depth of the topics-- we simply need to rely a lot more on independent learning. The material for the topics we studied is simply very dense and hard to navigate, no matter how you present it. I would suggest doing lots of reading (various books including the textbooks, and journals), getting help from seminar tutors, booking consultations with them etc---basically make use of ALL the resources available.

Macro lecture delivered by Dr Jennifer Smith. Both macro and micro lectures are two-hour lectures.

I try to do readings for econometrics and macro, as I find these two modules to have the fastest pace. I really need to familiarise myself with the lecture slides in advance so that I won’t be lost during lectures.

Given that topics can be challenging to study at this level, it really helps to have the material presented in a light-hearted and interactive way, like our Econometrics lecture slides. It almost feels like the lecturer is talking to me when I read his notes, which makes it a lot easier to study and understand.

Lecture slides for econometrics J

All lectures are recorded automatically by “LecutreCapture” and stored within the module’s webpage along with many other resources like tutorial solutions, past year papers and solutions etc. They will be your best buddies during revision periods.

Seminars

I scheduled all my seminars one hour after the last lecture of the day. This gives me some time to do the tutorial questions if I haven’t done so (which is usually what happens, so I came to appreciate this one hour gap!).

If I were to give one suggestion about seminars, it would be to do the problem sets beforehand. This seems so obvious but also it’s very easy to neglect it! I for one, was not disciplined to do that, which resulted in me having patchy understanding, participating less actively and having to take extra time to go through the questions again

One thing I like about the seminars is that, the tutors not only go through the questions in the problem set, but also go through many key concepts that underpin these questions. They’ve turned their seminars into a mini lecture with their own slides! It’s also more effective because I can really benefit from going through the key material again but in a smaller class size. This means no doubts will be carried over to the next lecture J

Our seminar tutor Giulio, a very patient and intelligent guy.

So there you have it, MSc Economics at Warwick so far, from my perspective. Before I go off, I’ll give you a list of things which I recommend anybody considering this course to do, before or during the course.

Things I wish I could have done:

1. If you don’t feel confident in maths and statistics, it’ll probably help to do some preparation during vacation and before the course commences. The two weeks maths and stats course covers broad range of topics at quite a fast pace. Students who failed the maths and stats test need to go for extra revision classes, which is a drain on your time.

2. Mark the lecture slides with dates, so you can easily match it with the recordings on Lecturecapture.

3. Come to the seminars prepared.

4. Be more active during seminars, ask more questions during open house.

5. Form a study group with a couple of students. I met people from our course who have been doing this since the Maths and Stats days, needless to say, they are more efficient at studying and struggle less with macro.

Thank you for reading my post and best of luck for conquering macro! (if you would read my course next year). Finally, happy new year everyone! Have great celebration J

One thing you will soon start to notice when you get to university is that lecture attendance dwindles after the first few weeks. Generally people from either side of the question (to go or not to go) are pretty entrenched, however I may as well give this a crack as it’s getting pretty cold in the lecture halls!

To keep this open, as I mentioned, I personally go to pretty much all my lectures. This means I am about as pro lecture as it gets. However there are some pretty convincing arguments for why not to bother going, I’m going to try and pick them apart;

1. Most lectures are recorded - Warwick Economics are babes, they lecture capture almost every lecture. This means you can watch in your own time a lecture you have missed. Personally I have used this for all sorts of reasons; going to London for interviews, going on a long weekend and simply just being too hungover to understand what was said. And that is all great. HOWEVER, I find it a non perfect substitute to the real thing. The picture quality isn’t great for handwriting (i.e. when the lecturers write equations), it’s very tempting to go on Facebook while watching, you generally don’t pay as much attention and the decision to upload the video is at the lecturers digression (if turn out is too low, they’ll hold back the video until the end of term). Sometimes there is a glitch and the lecture doesn’t record too.

2. Ask the lecturers questions - This is a big one for me. In every course there will be at least one topic that is hard. Warwick Economics is high up in the rankings for a reason, prepare to have to think. Part of this means asking questions and critically analysing the lecture’s reasoning. 99% of the time the professors are happy to answer your questions at the end of the lecture, and you can clear your thinking up there and then. Now this is something that is very hard to do if it’s midnight and you are watching a lecture in your pjs. Far better to sort out your doubts immediately than having to then wait, possibly leave it a bit to long then have to go to ask a now old question in the office hours anyway.

3. See everyone else - The Economics intake is something north of 350 students. There is no end of people to sit next to and get chatting too. As I said in a few of my early blogs, everyone here is interesting, you’re missing out if you don’t get to find out why.

4. You have to watch it sometime - An hour is an hour is an hour. If you watch it at 2am or at 2pm, 60 minutes takes just as long. It’s not that you are going to save yourself anything by not going, you are just postponing it for later. (Discounted future value of time!). And if you don’t even watch the lecture then you are missing out on something that - a) is probably interesting & b) you are going to have to sit a test on anyway.

As always you are going to have to find the balance that works for you. I personally know I learn far better having a professor explain it to me as opposed to a textbook, but others are the opposite and that’s fine! Hopefully though you are now more persuaded to plonk yourself down and start listening to lectures, you never know you may even learn something and enjoy it!!

Coming to Warwick I spent a lot of time trying to get my head around what modules I would/should do in first year. So I thought I would just put a brief framework of the modules down to help any prospective students make up their mind.

First thing first, you don’t need to decide before coming to Warwick. Warwick (for the last two years at least!) has its module choice deadline at the end of third week, so when you get here, there is a remarkably long time to mull it over still.

In first year you take 150 CATs. I can’t actually remember what CAT stands for but you have 120 of these core and you have 30 CATs to play with. This can be one 30 CAT module or two 15 CAT modules. Do these however you want, but avoid doing both in Spring term.

Core modules (the ones you have to take, these are 4x 30 CAT modules)

EC104 - This is the Economic History, I personally loved it and it gives a thorough grounding in the major economic events of the past

EC108 - As it says on the tin, a solid grounding in Macroeconomics

EC109 - See above, but for Microeconomics!

Quantitative Economics - This is where most of my confusion came from. I took it as EC120 is a 30 CAT module made up of two 12 CAT modules and one 6 CAT module (I think the framework has now changed but the modules are the same). In a nutshell you have to take one Math and one Stats, and then everyone takes EC125. Math B and Stats B are the more rigorous modules, and you will almost certainly do these if you take Economics L100.

EC121/123 - Math A/B

EC122/124 - Stats A/B (Both the ‘B’ courses require attention but are well worth it for later years)

EC125 - Everyone does this, it’s primarily in second term and is well worth paying attention in to get to know the ropes of STATA for Econometrics in second year and the RAE module in third year.

Optional modules

These are the ones you get to play around with, and find out more about the area(s) of Economics you are interested in.

What’s within the Economics Department (you can take outside optionals, but I won’t go into that now!)

EC112 - The Industrial Economy (History)

EC119 - Math Analysis

EC132 - The Industrial Economy (Strategy)

EC133 - Linear Algebra

EC134 - Topics in Applied Economics (1a)

EC135 - Topics in Applied Economics (1b)

There may look like some others but those others are (as far as I know) only for WBS students.

In effect this boils down to;

Autumn term

1. EC119 - Math Analysis

2. EC132 - The Industrial Economy (Strategy)

3. EC134 - Topics in Applied Economics (1a)

Summer term

1. EC112 - The Industrial Economy (History)

2. EC133 - Linear Algebra

3. EC135 - Topics in Applied Economics (1b)

   
   

Topics in Applied Economics

I took the EC134 and EC135 the Applied Economics 1A and 1B courses. This was new for first years when I took it. Each Applied Economics Module is effectively three mini lecture series’. The topics covered change depending on the lecturers research interest. For instance when I took it some of the topics covered were the Economics of Happiness (by Andrew Oswald), the Economics of Crime (Mirco Draca) and an excellent series on Debt in the Eurozone (by Nick Crafts). I would definitely recommend this module if you are more of a generalist/want to keep your options open.

Industrial modules

Lots of people take these, I especially have heard a lot of good things about Sgroi’s module. Sgroi’s is essentially game theory and EC112 covers Economic History from the Industrial Revolution at a greater depth than EC104.

Math modules

These are meant to be challenging but are well worth it if you are considering a Masters. Sadly I am not really in a position to give informed comment on them, but they are meant to be especially helpful for third year.

Hopefully this makes more sense than it creates confusion! And as always feel free to ask any questions below.

n.b. This is just from my experience taking the straight Economics L100 course