My HS junior has expressed an interest in actuary science. I have no idea about this field. Is there a major for this? Do people typically major in stats or some other math related subject? What are 4 year colleges with this program in the southeast?
There is a professional major - actuarial science - but most colleges don’t offer this major. The ones that do are usually large state flagships (I know UGA offers it for example). Generally speaking, students will major in math, applied math or statistics instead.
Two professional orgs - the Society of Actuaries and the Casualty Actuarial Society - put together a website aimed at edcuating students with an interest in becoming an actuary (http://www.beanactuary.org/). They have a list of colleges with actuarial programs. These aren’t just colleges with actuarial science majors, but also colleges that may not offer an actuarial science major but have departments and/or classes that prepare students well for actuarial careers. For example, Columbia is on one of these lists because their statistics and applied math departments have lots of coursework and advising for students interested in being an actuary.
https://www.soa.org/Education/Resources/Actuarial-Colleges/actuarial-college-listings-details.aspx
There are many in the Southeast, including Auburn, University of Georgia, Georgia State, University of Florida, Florida State, Louisiana State University, Appalachian State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, Clemson, and USC. (Remember, again, that these are mostly schools that offer actuarial sciences as an area of study - but that you don’t have to major in that to be an actuary and most actuaries actually haven’t.)
Actuarial science is a somewhat competitive field, but not with others - with your own abilities. Actuaries have to pass several different exams in order to keep their jobs, and the exam process is long and difficult. However, since the process is so arduous and the study of math is required, the field doesn’t have a lot of entrants relative to the number of positions it has - and so salaries stay high. Actuaries make an average salary of around $100K, which is pretty good considering that most only need bachelor’s degree training.
(I wanted to be an actuary when I was in high school, too. I ended up going a different route, but I did a bit of research on it before that.)