Super-Curriculars for Economics and PPE: Take a Side on a Live Argument

Economics attracts a particular kind of weak statement: fluent, current-affairs-literate, and completely devoid of economics.

The tell is that it could have been written by someone who reads the news. It mentions inflation, or inequality, or a crisis, and it expresses concern. What it never does is make an economic argument — a claim about a mechanism, with a reason, that another economist could dispute.

Fixing that is most of the work.

Maths matters more than applicants expect

Economics at a selective UK university is a mathematical degree. First-year courses assume calculus and move quickly into statistics and optimisation. Several of the strongest departments require Maths A-level and prefer Further Maths, and the TMUA is used for economics admissions at a defined set of universities including Cambridge, LSE, Warwick and Durham.

Applicants consistently underestimate this. If you are choosing between reading another economics book and improving your mathematics, improve your mathematics. UKMT challenges, Isaac Science and admissions-test preparation are all legitimate economics super-curriculars.

PPE is less mathematical but not unmathematical, and Oxford uses the TARA test.

Read the institutions, not the commentary

The single best upgrade available. Instead of reading what a columnist thinks about a policy, read the analysis the columnist is reacting to.

• Institute for Fiscal Studies — independent analysis of UK tax, spending and inequality, published as short readable briefings. This is the reference point in British economic policy argument, and reading one properly puts you ahead of almost every other applicant.
• Bank of England research and speeches — working papers and MPC speeches from the people actually setting rates. A single speech usually contains a live disagreement you can take a side on.
• The OECD and IMF publish country reports on the UK that are readable and specific.

These are free, they are current, and almost nobody your age reads them. That is the opportunity.

CORE's The Economy deserves its own line: a free, university-grade introductory economics textbook, used by several UK departments. Working through one unit properly is a stronger claim than reading three popular economics books.

Competitions worth the effort

Economics has an unusually good set:

• Marshall Society Essay Competition (Cambridge) — open since 1927
• Young Economist of the Year (Royal Economic Society and the FT) — a 1,500-word research paper
• IEA Dorian Fisher Memorial Prize — sixth-form essay on economic policy
• John Locke Institute — separate Economics, Politics and Philosophy questions, which makes it ideal for PPE
• Fitzwilliam and LSESU competitions

For PPE specifically, the John Locke format is useful because you can pick a question that spans two strands and write about the connection — which is the actual intellectual content of PPE.

PPE is three subjects, and the interesting part is the joins

The most common PPE mistake is writing three separate paragraphs: here is my interest in philosophy, here is my interest in politics, here is my interest in economics.

PPE exists because the three interact. A question about welfare policy is simultaneously an economic question about incentives, a political question about legitimacy, and a philosophical question about what we owe each other. An applicant who can hold all three on one problem is demonstrating exactly what the course is for.

Pick one policy question and write about it from all three angles. That is a better PPE statement than three good separate paragraphs.

What the numbers say

Across the Economics courses we hold official outcome data for, fifteen months after graduating: 40% are in finance and accounting, 21% in business, research and consulting, 15% in business and public service roles, 6% in software and IT.

For PPE: 19% finance, 17% business/research/consulting, 14% business and public service.

Two things worth taking from that. First, finance is a real and large destination for economists and there is no point pretending otherwise. Second, it is a third — the majority go elsewhere, and a statement that treats economics as a route into banking is both narrow and, for most graduates, inaccurate.

More importantly: do not write about where the degree leads. Admissions tutors are selecting for interest in the subject, and a statement that argues from career outcomes reads as instrumental. Know the numbers for your own decision; keep them out of the statement.

Writing an economic argument

Weak:

"The 2008 financial crisis sparked my interest in economics and how markets can fail."

Everyone writes this. It contains no economics.

Strong:

"The IFS briefing on the freeze in income tax thresholds argues it is a tax rise that avoids being called one. What interested me was the political economy of that — the freeze works precisely because its incidence is invisible to the people paying it, which suggests the constraint on tax policy is salience rather than magnitude."

That has a mechanism in it, a claim, and a reason. It is disputable, which is what makes it worth reading. And it obviously generates an interview question you could answer.

What goes wrong

News summary. Describing an economic event is not analysing one.

Naming economists as decoration. Citing Keynes or Smith without engaging with a specific argument is transparent.

Confusing economics with business. Interest in entrepreneurship is not interest in economics; they are different degrees.

Career-first framing. Writing about investment banking in an economics statement is a common and costly error.

No maths. A statement with no evidence of quantitative thinking, for a quantitative degree.

Common questions

Do I need Further Maths? Not universally, but it is preferred at the most selective departments and it makes first year easier. Check every course.

Is Economics A-level needed? Rarely required, and several strong departments explicitly do not prefer it. Maths matters more.

Should I follow the financial press? Useful for currency, insufficient on its own. Pair it with a primary source — an IFS briefing or a Bank of England speech — so you are reading the analysis rather than the reaction.

Economics or PPE? Different degrees. Economics is more mathematical and more specialised; PPE is broader and more essay-based. Choose on what you want to spend three years doing, not on prestige.

Is an EPQ worth it? Yes, especially if it involves handling actual data rather than summarising a debate.

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Writ coaches the new three-question UCAS statement with rubrics written separately for Economics, PPE, Philosophy, and Politics & International Relations. It never writes a word for you — it pushes on the mechanism behind every claim you make. Try it free.