Hello,
I am a current sophomore at the Univ. of Rochester entering my 2nd semester in a few days.
I decided, before entering this school that I was confident in taking the pre-med track and later entering med. school.
However, with my tough courseload last semester with organic chemistry and genetics as well as 2 other courses, I had kind of lost my interest in pre-med, and was burned out.
I ended organic chemistry with a C+ and genetics with a D+ which I had to pass or fail, in which I had passed because D+ was the minimum cutoff.
Back in 1st semester of Freshman year, I had taken Math 162 (Calculus 2) which I genuinely enjoyed and liked - the feeling of working on a problem for a long time and finally getting the answer really brought joy and happiness to me. I feel as though I did not really achieve that last semester and my Freshman year with the pre-med courses. It was more of one of my parents being a doctor, and the word “medical school” being shoved inside my head for all my life.
I still enjoy medicine though, the topic of health and especially neuroscience and how all that works still fascinate me to this day, but as mentioned above, I am burnt out at this point, and I really need to raise my GPA as it is around a 3.0.
Thus, that is the reason for me taking a few math courses this semester (multidimensional calculus and math modeling in life and social sciences. I hope that I can pick up right where I left off from my 1st semester Freshman year.
Now, the dilemma is, if I do choose to persuade the rest of my undergrad in mathematics, what career opportunities can I expect after college? And, is it possible to choose a career later that combines mathematics and medicine later in life?
I feel like I hit rock bottom, and I do not know what to do with the rest of my time at college to be somewhat successful later in life.
There are lots of possibilities as a math major! One very lucrative career is that of an actuary. If you enjoy math, go for it!
If you’re looking for careers that let you blend your interests in math and medicine, you should consider bioinformatics or epidemiology/public health. Tons of statistics, and you’ll need an understanding of biology/medicine. Most of these jobs require at least a masters degree on top of a solid math background. Keep taking applied math courses - you might be surprised what your math professors work on for their research. There are probably some who spend their time solving very medically-relevant problems.
Rochester actually has an epidemiology major that you may want to look into. You might even have the opportunity to take advanced biostatistics classes at URMC as part of your undergrad coursework if you go that route.
If you want to stay with pure math. The math majors that I know of have who have graduated from UR have gone on to world-renowned grad school programs like CalTech and UChicago. You would probably have to look into the 170 calc sequence rather than the 160 courses as a math major, however. (I’m not sure about that, but it’s something to think about.)
Good luck…honestly, you can’t go wrong with math, though!