<p>What kind of job prospects does someone with a Pure Math Ph.D other than teaching (assuming one only took pure math classes)?</p>
<p>Are the pure math classes at the graduate really just useless for anything other than academia? Are there any pure math classes that can be applied to other things? (I know Number Theory is one, but are there any others?) For example, I have an interest in PDEs, are they really just worthless outside of academia if one does not focus on the numerical analysis aspect of it?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>There is potential for some degree of compromise in likely a very few research-heavy careers outside of academia. But those careers are probably tough to find. </p>
<p>PDEs are very important in various settings, including the financial world. That’s a more applicable form of pure math, and no, pure math isn’t all useless. Core pure math fundamentals are essential to application. But that isn’t to say the most advanced, crazy research a lot of professors do has immediate application. It’ll be important to someone at some point in the future, but there’s plenty of application to be done without researching a whole new branch of math, and so most jobs will go along with that.</p>
<p>You could go into the financial market for sure. If you like computer science and algorithms, that’s another haven for mathematics lovers. But remember, a PhD is a very narrow thing, and it is unlikely that exactly what you study in the PhD will end up being what your ultimate career is about. Those with only a bachelor’s degree or such can stomach the idea that their career may have less to do with their degree than they’d like a bit better, perhaps because they studied around 5 years less than the PhDs! </p>
<p>Anyway, things like relatively advanced analysis, PDEs/ODEs, number theory do have applications. Whether it is feasible to find a career that uses the level and character of pure math you’d like outside of academia is another story. My unfortunate hypothesis, as one who has the same question as you, is that the answer to your question is mostly negative.</p>
<p>However, I am looking to be enlightened on this subject myself, and will not make any hasty judgements or assert that I know a ton on the answer to this question, though I’ve tried to answer it for a long time.</p>
<p>Thank you for responding!</p>
<p>So, if I don’t plan on becoming a teacher, I should try to take as few Pure Math classes? The way I have most of my undergrad set up is to take a mix of both Pure and Applied Math classes. I’m just getting the bad feeling that most of these math classes will be nothing more than ‘electives’ if I don’t go into Academia. Things like Real/Complex Analysis and non-computational methods seem to lead nowhere outside of Academia…</p>
<p>I suppose I’m just wondering if I should cut some of the more theoretical stuff and fit in more applied stuff…perhaps some Stochastic processes class or something. </p>
<p>While I do hope your hypothesis is terribly wrong, I fear for the worst.</p>
<p>Ultimately the thing is that an applied math major needs to find a job in some applied field, or presumably that’s the intention. So it matters more what courses you’re interested in – how much pure or applied stuff you do won’t matter too much, unless you’re an applied math major with almost no knowledge of mathematics outside of pure math. But in my opinion, a lot of pure math is fundamental to applications, so foundations in real analysis (at the level of some measure theory), linear algebra, PDEs/ODEs, etc, can be very useful; one notable field where you’ll see these things come in handy is economics. </p>
<p>When a job wants a math major, they probably want someone with good grounding in fundamentals, and the ability to pick up things they need you to know. Some stochastic processes, numerical analysis, etc, are healthy for you, but my humble opinion is that a math major is only what you make of it. One must figure out what jobs are most interesting and/or meet one’s needs, and then get background that is suggested. This is why an applied math major is usually tremendously free in terms of electives (s)he is allowed to take in order to satisfy the major requirements.</p>
<p>Friendly advice: if you like pure math, take plenty of it. Just take a few applied courses and sample what you’re interested in, so you have some idea of what it’s like, and what you might do with it. That is, unless you’re certain of going into pure math academia.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m thinking of following that advice. Thanks.</p>
<p>Anyone else?</p>