At Brown’s 247th Commencement, which takes place Sunday, May 24, Brown’s Economics Department will by marking the awarding of degrees to what is coincidentally the same number of undergraduate concentrators in Economics and its joint concentrations with Applied Mathematics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. 185 will earn the AB in Economics, 46 will earn AB or BSc in Applied Math – Economics, 10 in Computer Science – Economics and 6 in Mathematics – Economics, for a grand total of exactly 247!

Economics has been one of the most popular undergraduate concentrations at Brown in recent years, with more than one-in-seven students graduating in its solo and joint concentrations each year. The 1/7 and 247 numbers may somewhat understate the role of the discipline by not including the dozens of graduates in the popular Business Economics track of BEO (Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations), and also not considering the numbers of economics courses taken by concentrators in International Relations and other social science concentrations.