<p>Hi. I am a current applicant to numerous colleges and have yet to receive any decisions. On my applications, I put down undecided for all the colleges I applied to. However, I am leaning towards the engineering field. A major reason I did not put engineering as my major is that my math and science grades were low throughout high school due to my own carelessness. Most of the colleges I applied to have an applied math program in the same department as the undecided major. For example, UCLA has undecided L&S and applied math L&S. From what I have heard it is not too difficult to declare, or switch majors within the college you get into. However, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to switch into the college of engineering. I was wondering if applied math has similar courses to an engineering major such as mechanical or aerospace? Will applied math still give me the same opportunities as engineering? Thank you so much for all your help.</p>
<p>Freshman and sophomore level math courses will be the same. Engineering majors will also take physics courses and introductory engineering courses which may not be required for math majors.</p>
<p>Whether applied math has much commonality with other majors beyond that depends on what area of application you choose.</p>
<p>The area of application also affects job and career prospects. Career surveys indicate a decent percentage choose economics, statistics, and finance as areas of application in order to go into actuarial and finance jobs.</p>
<p>Applied math can be some really cool stuff - routing aircraft for a search & rescue mission, determining the location of unobservable military assets, creating the parameters for a quadrotor guidance program. I was surprised the TV show “Numbers” didn’t do the same for applied math that “CSI” did for forensics.</p>