<p>I'm currently a senior in high school in the midst of applying to colleges. For the past few years, I have wanted to be an engineer. First it was aerospace, then mechanical, then electrical or computer. This year I had a change of heart and decided I want to pursue a degree in good ol' mathematics because I love the subject matter so much. In the last few weeks though, I've started to seriously consider some of the engineering disciplines again.</p>
<p>I'm a straight A student and really put in a lot of work to keep up with the daily grind (I take 5 APs) so I don't know if engineering will be better or worse than the 3-4 hours I spend on homework every night and the 10 hours I spend at school and subsequently out of the house every day. I've also heard first hand from a math graduate student that the workload in that field is slightly less than an engineer. I don't know if this should put me off or not since I'm already well prepared for studying hard.</p>
<p>Now, math has always been my strongest subject area; I'm in AP Calc BC at the moment and I've never averaged below a 95 in any math class in high school. I also am a certified math geek, judging by the fact that I actually enjoy reading things like the nature of pi or watching parts of upper-level math courses from MIT's youtube channel. I'm still not sure though whether this actually makes me anything special for pursuing a degree in math or if I'm still going to be overwhelmed and hate some of the coursework like other students. I also heard that upper level math is totally proof based and nothing like calculus, which worries me slightly and leads me back to engineering.</p>
<p>With the whole abstract-proof-non calculation based aspect of upper level math, I'm sort of feeling now as if the discipline is sort of useless. I don't know any nicer words to substitute for that. Please change my mind. I'm leaning back towards engineering now because it seems way more applied and less "know it for the sake of knowing" but I'm worried about the difficulty of the classes and workload and things like that. I had no problem with physics or chem in high school but I'm still an impressionable high school student worried about choice of a major and that sort of thing.</p>
<p>By the way, I want to hopefully get my PhD in one of those fields and go into research. Again though, math would allow me to do graduate work in econ, compsci, or just math, or I could go into finance with even a 4-year degree. Engineering seems less towards research and PhD level stuff to me, which I suppose points back to math as a better choice.</p>
<p>I apologize for the long post; I just have a lot of collected thoughts that I would like to get some extra opinions on from the people who have done it already.</p>
<p>Looking at the way you describe your math studies, you need to major in math. Proof-based math is different, yes, and you won’t know immediately if you’re able to do it or not, but it’s all logical. If you can get through it, you can get through anything. If you love math, do math. Doing research in pure math, however, is highly competitive and some people just don’t have the mind for proof-based math in the first place, let alone original research in the field. Math will give you lots of options though, as you already know.</p>
<p>Not to “toot my horn”, but why not do both?</p>
<p>Take Math as the undergraduate major, then take up a math-heavy engineering major in grad school (like some CS programs, Engineering Mechanics, Engineering Physics or Systems Engineering).</p>
<p>Stanford has a graduate program which I WISHED was around when I attended grad school (provided that I had the grades) called Computational & Mathematical Engineering.</p>
<p>I’m an EE major and no one in my department gives a crap about the mathematical aspects of the discipline. Get the equations from the textbook, plug in your values, and you’re done.</p>
<p>Of course this is an exaggeration. But I really think you will be surprised how little math is actually applied in many fields of engineering. They are all BASED On math though, but as a student you may not need that much of the creative aspects of mathematics.</p>
<p>I had a friend who started off in aerospace, switched to math after two years, and graduated with a math degree in three years (with summer school). He’s now doing a PhD in biostatistics at Harvard. I think it would be much easier to switch from engineering to math rather than the other way around. Engineering typically has a lot of math in its curriculum while math has no engineering. You might as well take one or two years of engineering classes to see which you like best.</p>
<p>Hmmm… <scratches chin=“”> this is sounding better and better. I am seriously considering switching over to the dark side (math major) from engineering due to scheduling issues with my job. I was wondering how I would be able to leap back into the engineering discipline at the graduate level, now I will have to look into this.</scratches></p>
<p>I must say GLOBALTRAVELER, over the past week you are certainly making pure math for undergrad look better and better to me!</p>
<p>I have not done THAT much signal processing, no.
I have done embedded systems, analog circuit design, etc. There isn’t that much math you need to know…AT ALL. With digital stuff its even less.</p>
<p>And i have worked at both IBM and Intel and would be surprised if those people even know algebra. I’m saying a pure math guy would be very disappointed with an engineering career because its not as math-heavy as one might expect. If that hurts your ego as a “math guru” then its not my prob!</p>
<p>You might look at CS programs at schools more known for emphasizing theory over engineering. A CS degree will give you useful skills for getting a job should you need that flexibility but it will also prepare you for research work in the future. You could also consider a dual major: CS/Math - the majors usually have many courses in common which make it a popular dual.</p>
<p>The math intensity in engineering industry depends on the work you perform. But because of all kinds of software out there, math seems like NOTHING in engineering. Any engineers actually need to come up with new series or formulas at work???</p>
<p>For me writing proofs is a headache, so I don’t want to dive into a math major at all. A minor is perfect. If you are interested in math proof, you can certainly do it. I don’t remember exactly at what stage a math major finally gets to write proof. Well if you count induction as one - fine. I don’t know much about the math curriculum, but certainly in CS, the discrete mathematics course (at our school it’s a semester course) we do very minimal proof. So I guess a math major will encounter them as soon as they take fundamental mathematics. I just know that we have a course called “bridge to advance mathematics” which is proof-based course, before taking advance calculus.</p>
<p>My son took a two-semester sequence in Discrete Math and there’s a chapter on proof in Rosen that covers quite a bit. His Foundations, Algorithms and Graduate Algorithms courses were heavily proof-based where most of the homeworks consisted of doing proofs and a few other things.</p>
<p>Hmmm true, CS is basically applied mathematics.
I am doing hash table (actually I am done with it), but reading those “formulas” and proofs that my professor wrote I am dying. Instead I look for an alternative lecture note, and it makes sense. This is why I am not a computer science major man…</p>
<p>My son lives for the proofs. The rest of his class hates them. I’ve told him that only a small percentage of CS majors are really into the proof stuff - he doesn’t understand why.</p>
man…</p>