<p>I'm a rising second year at UVa and am looking for a backup to the COMM school. I tend to think I am a quantitively competent person (got a 5 on the AP calc AB exam) and was wondering if any math majors could tell me about the major. I'm pretty interested in finance and the financial math tract looks like a nice alternative to the COMM school.</p>
<p>Could any math majors talk to me about that program? What's the workload like (compared to Comm or engineering)? How are the teachers? Are they competent English speakers? I'm really not concerned about the strength of the program in terms of going to graduate school for math, just looking at it as a means to a financial career. Thanks for any help.</p>
<p>workload is less
teachers are good if they speak english
i think that answers your next question
program is great for actuarial, math 310 will prepare you well for those exams (at least when i looked at the 1st two tests it was exactly what i had learned in my class)
it’s not so bad of a major, and no one will give you a hard time for majoring in financial math haha. it could be worse. but it’s not a “fun” major like, i dunno, aren’t there fun majors? maybe there aren’t.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if the workload is less. I think it really depends on how well you grasp the concepts in your classes, because you could be spending hours and days on a problem set, pulling your hairs out. So in this instance, commerce might be a better choice because you would be working with teams on projects. </p>
<p>The graduate-level classes such as math of derivative securities and time series modeling aren’t easy. You are competing with math graduate students who are already knowledgeable and have taken classes where materials overlap. The track is good though for actuarial work, trading and ibanking.</p>
<p>Basic RA, Elementary Linear Algebra, ODE, and Survey of Algebra list calc II as the only prerequisite. Do you recommend taking them in a particular order? </p>
<p>I’m currently in calc II, planning on taking calc III and one of the above courses next semester.</p>
<p>You can take any class you meet the prerequisites for regardless of year. UVA Math in particular lists all of its requirements for its math classes so you shouldn’t have any questions about what you need before you take a specific class.</p>
<p>I would say ODE then Real/Linear, then Survey. Although I did ODE then Survey then Linear then Complex (instead of Real). I would try not to take Calc III with any of them but if you do that’s your choice…</p>
<p>Well I’m teaching full time. BUT I do check every day or 2. I just haven’t seen a lot of posts requesting info I know much about lately (I don’t usually reply to chances threads because I’m not an admission official so I don’t particularly feel qualified you know what I mean). It’s also the post-first-year hush…</p>
<p>Thats great your teaching full time! If I ever can’t get into my first job choice (leaving the U.S. to work in business) I hope I can become a macro teacher. Are you teaching in a middle/high school or as a TA in college?</p>
<p>That is fantastic Hazel. Maybe next year at UVA I’ll have you as a teacher. Do you know If you want to become a professor at a college or stay at the middle school level. However teaching as a TA definitly shows your love for the school.</p>
<p>Sorry Euro I’m on the train ride home from the city right now and it is very hard to use a touch screen keyboard while the train is shakin very much.</p>
<p>To all who have been worried about UVAorBust’s grammar/spelling, I read one of his application essays and I thought it was excellent in terms of form and content.</p>
<p>My primary certification is actually elementary so that is where I want to be. If I get tired of all of the crazy shenanigans/politics, I might consider teaching at a community college, but definitely NOT a huge research university like UVA.</p>
<p>I’m contemplating financial math as a second major. I am just unclear about one thing: there are equivalent courses in STAT and APMA departments…is there a limit to how many of these classes you can take instead of the math ones? The description of the math major in the substitutions area confused me a bit. Thanks in advance :-)</p>