Hi, I’m Annie and am studying Economics and Management (E&M) at St Catz, Oxford. As well as finding the content interesting I like that E&M involves a balance between more logical thinking, with problem sheets, and argument-based thinking, with essays.
After submitting your UCAS application, the two main stages in the application process for E&M are the TSA and the interviews. My advice for the TSA would be that the main obstacle with it is the time – most people could get a high score if it weren’t for the time pressure. So, start small and build your way up. Give yourself 15 minutes to do 5 questions, then 10 minutes to do the next five, until you’re answering all 50 questions in 90 minutes.
I had two interviews: one for economics and one for management. The tutors are looking for slightly different things in each interview. The economics interview is likely to (although it does depend on the college) be aimed at testing your ability to think mathematically in economic situations.
To prepare for this interview I focused on revising A-level maths, in particular: sketching functions, differentiating/integrating difficult functions, and some basic stats. An area worth looking into a bit is game theory as that is a common interview topic for economics (they wouldn’t assume previous knowledge of the topic, but it could end up being handy if you are familiar with it). The management interview (again depends on the college) is aimed at testing whether or not you are genuinely interested in management. The interviewers won’t assume any specific knowledge of management but to prepare it’s still a good idea to read around the subject. Don’t worry too much about trying to read full academic articles or books – some good places to start are the business section of the Economist and Harvard Business Review articles. You can also find a university suggested reading list here: https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/programmes/degrees/bahons-economics-and-management/reading-list
In your first year studying E&M you take three modules: introductory economics (split into macro and micro), general management, and financial management. A typical week for me involves 3 economics lectures, 1 financial management lecture, 1 general management lecture, and a statistics demonstration lecture every other week. I also have a financial management class, an economics tutorial, and a management tutorial. Like other social sciences and humanities, E&M involves a lot of independent study. In terms of the workload for economics and financial reporting I’m given a problem sheet to complete each week for my tutorial/class which is meant to take around 5 hours (but may take a bit more if it involves extra reading). For my management tutorial I write a 1500-2000 word essay each week, most of the content of my essay comes from my own reading, based on a department-provided reading list. The nice thing about E&M is that after your first year you have a lot of autonomy in choosing modules. The last thing I would say is don’t be put off by the E&M acceptance rate: someone has to get in, why can’t it be you!