What are the least useful courses for the phd admission?

[econyun]

I found that quite a lot of people discussed what kinds of courses we should take.

What about...what kinds of courses we don t need to bother (relatively)?

[asquare]

Art history.

[asquare]

(Ok, sorry, here is a serious answer.)

The undergraduate "field" courses -- labor, economic history, etc. are interesting and may inspire you to want to study economics, and they can demonstrate your interest in the subject, but they do little to establish your credentials to an admissions committee. They aren't useless, they just aren't strong signals. You get other things out of those courses than "points" with an admissions committee.

[tangsiuje]

Oh let me see. From my transcript, the completely useless courses for admissions purposes would be:

1. Descartes and Locke
2. Ethics
3. Principles of Political Economy: Topics in Philosophy and Politics
4. Intermediate Mandarin Chinese

Now, someone pointed out to me that since a good amount of my future TAs at Toronto are likely to be Chinese, (4) might turn out to be beneficial after enrolment. I doubt it would make a difference for admissions purposes though.

A question for asquare: if you don't take these field courses, then who will be your letter-writers, unless you're working as an RA outside of classes? Only for field classes have I written papers bordering on meaningful, and to some extent demonstrated my thinking skills. As far as I'm concerned, theory classes at the undergraduate level are mainly about solving problems sets and writing exams. Since they send very few signals about your independent thinking or research skills, doing well in these classes could be considered a necessary rather than sufficient condition for being a promising PhD candidate.

Of course, different field courses vary greatly in quality. Some are utterly useless, whilst some are very good. I think the best ones are those requiring you to read plenty of journal articles and write at least a couple of papers on your own.

[asquare]

tansiuje, I agree that the field courses can be a good source of recommendations, if you go above and beyond the course requirements -- by becoming an RA for the professor or spending time discussing research or other aspects of the course with him/her. I just don't think the courses in and of themselves are useful. An "A" in undergraduate labor economics is not much of a signal, though a LOR from your undergrad labor professor that describes your research paper and potential could be very useful. I guess I was drawing a distinction between the names and grades on the transcript, and other things that might come out of taking the course. As I said, you get a lot out of these classes in addition to a line on the transcript

[TruDog]

Economic history or economic thought. Unless you want to go to George Mason or a heterodox school, this won't be of much use to you in a graduate program.

[asianeconomist]

Originally Posted by TruDog

Economic history or economic thought. Unless you want to go to George Mason or a heterodox school, this won't be of much use to you in a graduate program.

I would beg to differ. I started my Econ MA with a Economic thought course and the instructor tailored the course a bit to give us an up-to-date purview of the economics field. Of course, it was not technical and didn't go into details, but from an intuitive standpoint, it was great to start with a review of the field. Surely mine is a special case and TruDog's comment holds true for general conditions, I guess.

[Canuckonomist]

Field courses from a good prof who can give you a decent LOR are decent, I think.

I'm glad someone posted this, because many people don't believe me when I say that beefing up your degree with a number of second and third year courses is not the way to go. Their averages may be higher than mine (only marginally, in many cases,) but I'd expect that a degree with 60% 4th year and MA courses is better than the same degree with 60% 2nd an 3rd year courses.

Oh, and Tangsuije, likely the TAs you will find in Toronto will speak Cantonese, so it may not help you after all. But it's just good to know another language, of course.

[econphilomath]

I agree with asquare on this one. I have the uncomfortable suspicion that anything that is not math or advanced econ (PhD level courses) is useless for admissions purposes. If you can get a LOR from somebody by acing his/her course then it would be useful of course but I assume most LORs come from being an RA or at least a TA. You will obviously need to ace the course to become the TA and get to know a professor to finally do some RA work but by itself a fun Labor class is useless for the adcom.

But hey, not everything has to be about admissions! Take courses that will motivate you and raise your utility too.

[486hunter]

Field courses may not be strong signals but I'd also bet that with a few exceptions, not taking any field courses may raise a few eyebrows.