MA Program

Graduate School Guidance on official transcripts can be found here. In short, for application purposes, you may submit scanned copies of your official transcripts with your application from institutions where you have earned a degree. Scanned copies of unofficial transcripts or web-based academic records do not satisfy this requirement. If you are offered admission, you will be required to provide an official copy of your transcript(s) to the Graduate School.

Official score reports optional. If you wish to submit scores as part of your applications, please submit directly from testing agency to Virginia Tech – ETS code 005859 prior to deadline. You may also include scanned copies of your official report as part of your application.

The department strongly prefers letters to be submitted through the online system. If it is not possible, paper letters may be mailed to the Economics department (address below).

Submit a current CV or resume detailing your experience and education.

Your statement of purpose should be approximately 500 words and state your goals and objectives for graduate study generally and at Virginia Tech specifically. You can highlight areas of your background or interests that may not be clear elsewhere in your application. It is important to write a clear and concise statement expressing your interest in the program, what you hope to gain and what you will bring to the program.

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university

Minimum cumulative grade point average of 3.0 (4.0 scale) for admission, but that requirement may be waived depending on the applicant's professional experience and accomplishments as identified through a holistic review of your application.

Suggested 155 minimum on Quantitative. No set minimum on Verbal. 

International students whose primary language is not English must submit a TOEFL score with the following minimums:

We provide the standard training in the first year and the first half of the second year (microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics). After the compulsory training, students are mostly choosing courses from our four areas of focus: microeconomic theory, experimental and behavioral economics, labor and development economics, econometrics, and macroeconomics.

Most of our alumni work as economists and analysts in the private sector and NGOs, and some start their career as tenure-track or non-tenure-track faculty members at liberal arts colleges. An increasing number of our alumni get tenure-track positions at research universities in other countries (e.g., China). Occasionally, our more research-oriented alumni manage to get tenure-track positions at universities with a master or Ph.D. program in the US. Have a look at our Job Market page for more details.

i) Microeconomic Theory & Game Theory, ii) Experimental & Behavioral Economics, iii) Applied Microeconomics (Labor, Development, Industrial Organizations, and History), iv) Econometrics, v) Resource & Environmental Economics, and vi) Macroeconomics and Finance. For more information, have a look at our Faculty page.

We emphasize interdisciplinary work with subjects that Virginia Tech is strong at (e.g., Neuroscience, Psychology, Statistics), and we are also developing the field of big data that is also inter-discipline in nature. We also encourage collaboration between faculty members and students, and it is quite often that students have coauthored papers submitted or even published before they graduate.

The Virginia Tech Economics PhD program is a certified STEM program. This allows eligible graduating students to apply for a 24-month OPT extension.