Interested in Financial Economics
I'm 19 years old and in between a junior and senior credit wise in college (3rd year). I've always been interested in economics and wanted to get a PhD for a while. The length of time and difficulty made me change my mind. I'm currently a double major in Political Science/Econ along with a minor in Philosophy. I plan on eventually getting into public policy but want to get a job in Financial Economics. I know Columbia has a program, but I do not have the comp sci background and have not taken a lot of math classes like Matrix Theory. I want to know what are my best options to place into this field. Should I get a masters in finance along with my econ background, get a masters in econ, or just try to find a job through my econ degree to work my way up? The college I attend places well in Texas for business majors, but is not that strong for econ.
My recommendation is to research graduate programs in public policy and economics.
Many public policy programs have the option to focus on something related to economics. Columbia and John Hopkins could be a good starting point for your research.
I've looked at public policy programs and a few econ programs, but I was interested in the private sector first. I'm not interested in research/academia.
Well you're saying you like Financial Economics, but what do you want to actually do? In the vast majority of economics careers at the government, banks, think tanks and international organizations you'd need a PhD to advance decently. You can do some of those with an econ Masters, but your opportunities would be limited.
Can you use the remainder of your credits to study maths (Linear Algebra, Stats and Analysis preferably)? Ideally you'd also use that time to work with a good prof as a research assistant. You'd be competitive for good doctoral programs then, as well as masters if you choose that. Some (many) US doctoral programs actually give you a Masters after two years, and you can drop out at that point if you don't want to do a dissertation.
Alternatively, many European doctoral programs are only 2-3 years instead of 4-5, but they expect you to be sharp about the methods already and have a clear view of your research plan for your dissertation, ready to jump right in it. Many people in those programs already have a Masters. And they often have problems with funding, so you would need to compete for scholarships or some other way to fund your studies, while US programs usually have financing for you.
You can also look into top MPP programs as well, but those tend to funnel into more professional careers (including some in policy, as you'd expect) rather than straight econ.
Urch.com forum has a lot of information on this subject.
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