Previously I mentioned the importance of including many supercurricular activities in your personal statement.
I discuss supercurriculars more in my economics personal statement guide. To access my economics personal statement ultimate guide, click the blue button here:
Now in this article, I give an overview of possible supercurricular activities to add to your personal statement.
Note supercurricular activities are activities undertaken outside of normal school lessons or syllabus, that are directly related to the university course you want to apply to. This includes activities like reading an economics book or watching a lecture.
These are the most important part of the personal statement.
Why? They offer evidence to universities that you are engaged in economics and are more likely to be a well performing student. Also if you plan on studying economics for three years at university, then you may find some interest and enjoyment from doing these activities.
Note that this list of activities is not exhaustive. In other words there may be other activities you could do that are not on this list.
Books
First of all, I have some book recommendations which I have split by topic. I would recommend focussing on topics you are interested in, though not all topics are covered here.
Note some of these books appear quite frequently in personal statements. Consequently I have denoted very frequent books with two stars (**) and somewhat frequent books with one star (*). Some of the top universities may be bored of seeing the same books again and again, so this is something to bear in mind. However popular books may be popular for a reason, for example because they are just good books or because of the authors’ popularity.
Macroeconomics
- Austerity: When it Works and When it doesn’t by Alesina et al.
- Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and its Lessons by Bernanke.
- The Resilient Society by Brunnermeier.
Income Inequality
- The Price of Inequality by Stiglitz.**
- The Race between Education and Technology by Goldin and Katz.
- The Working Poor by Shipler.
Behavioural Economics
- Nudge by Sunstein and Thaler**.
- How Change Happens by Sunstein.
- Who Gets What and Why by Alvin Roth.*
Game Theory
- Thinking Strategically/The Art of Strategy by Dixit and Nalebuff*
- Coopetition by Brandenburger and Nalebuff (business applications of game theory).
Macroeconomic Perspectives
- Economics: A user’s guide by Ha Joon Chang.**
- The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh.**
Environmental Economics
- Environmental Economics: A Very Short Introduction.
- Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist.**
Globalisation
- The Globotics Upheaval by Baldwin (about globalisation and robotics).
- Globalisation and its Discontents by Stiglitz*
Development
- Poor Economics by Banerjee and Duflo (A classic about development).**
- Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson (longer run perspective on why some nations do well and why others fail).**
- Banker to the Poor by Yunus*.
- The Elusive Quest for Growth by Easterly*.
Econometrics / Statistics
- Mastering Metrics by Angrist and Pischke
- The Drunkard’s Walk by Mlodinow – mostly about statistics.
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling and others.
- The Signal and the Noise by Silver*
Economic History
- Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond*
- The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Ferguson*
- A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World by Clark.
- You can find other possible books here.
Other
- The Power of Creative Destruction by Aghion et al.
- Economics Rules by Rodrik*
- Economics in One Virus by Bourne
- An Economist’s Lessons on Happiness by Easterlin
In addition I would strongly recommend if you have a particular interest, you try to find books or other activities on that topic. You can try finding books on a particular topic using search engines, Amazon, Goodreads, recommendations from others and so on.
Essay Competitions
Below, there is a list of essay competitions for economics. I would recommend picking one or two competitions where you find questions that you find most interesting.
Pay attention to the deadlines – a few of the deadlines are earlier in the year and you also want to pick a competition where you actually have time to write an entry. Indeed you may wish to attempt these competitions in the year before you apply to university (year 12, for most applicants).
Some examples of essay competitions include:
- RES: https://www.res.org.uk/education/young-economist-of-the-year.html
- Marshall Society https://marshallsociety.com/essay-competition/
- FCDO https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fcdo-next-generation-economics-competition
- John Locke Competition https://www.johnlockeinstitute.com/essay-competition
Furthermore, there are other competitions too including the IEA and LSE Student Union Economics Society competitions.
Online Lectures
You can find individual lectures on various economics topics online. For example you can look on Youtube for: LSE’s public lectures, Cambridge Marshall Society lectures, the University of Chicago channel, or just search for a topic you’re interested in and see if you can find a lecture.
In addition, you can find several series of lectures online. For example MIT’s Principles of Microeconomics course, Yale’s Game Theory course, and so on. You can search a topic and see if you can find a lecture series on that topic, preferably from a university so that it comes across as more credible.
Podcasts
Podcasts include Econ Talk, Macro Musings, and The Sound of Economics, though you can search for other podcasts online. You can find lists of podcasts for example here.
Pick a particular episode you are interested in for discussion, rather than just name-dropping the podcast without further information.
Student Economics Societies or Magazines
If your school has an economics or debate society, you could mention participating or taking a leading role.
Alternatively if your school does not have one, you could set one up. This could also apply to writing an economics magazine or newsletter with the help of other students in your school.
A Note on Work Experience
Note that work experience is typically not required for personal statements. The reason for this is that universities often see work experience as an indication of connections rather than an indication of ability or interest in economics.
However work experience is usually more useful for your future career, i.e. trying to get a job.
Even so, if you want to mention some work experience in a statement, it would be best to find experience that is directly related in economics. This could be involving some kind of economic research or economic journalism, for example.
Other Ideas
There are also online courses on sites such as Coursera.
Also you could find blogs from academics or economics journalists.
If you are attempting an EPQ relating to economics, this could be mentioned too.
There may also be other ideas for supercurricular activities that I have not mentioned here.
How to use supercurriculars in your personal statement
For more information on how to use supercurriculars within your economics personal statement, check out the link here:
Other Posts
For more articles on economics university applications (personal statement and Oxbridge economics interview tips), click the link here.