M.S. Applied & Computational Mathematics vs M.S. Software Engineering with math undergrad

Graduate School
1

<p>Hello all :)</p>

<p>I am currently in my last year as a mathematics undergrad at UT Austin and looking into getting a M.S. to work in industry and I'm 50/50 on Software Engineering vs Applied & Computational Mathematics. I've been a little interested in computers and will have taken around 5 CS classes upon graduating. I've been looking at graduate schools in Texas where I plan to be for in-state-tuition and most of the Software Engineering Master's programs have 3-5 pre-requisite classes that I will not have upon graduating. The programs prefer people with a CS undergrad but still accept related fields and then will likely add on a year to my Master's to pick up the pre-reqs. Problem solving is my biggest strength by far and I hate reading and have terrible reading comprehension skills which, as a result, has made half my CS courses so far extremely easy and half very hard. </p>

<p>I would like to ask about the difference in marketability of each. </p>

<p>I have a feeling that S.E. is much more marketable overall than mathematics. The Texas mathematics graduate programs I am interested in are more specifically M.S. in Applied Mathematics with a Computational Mathematics specialization. Both feel very interesting to me. Math is my bigger strength and I'd comfortably meet all pre-reqs and be more likely to get funding for a TA position since I have a math undergrad. Could I get a job in software with a mathematics masters? I'd try to take CS courses as my few electives for a mathematics masters. I'd be very interested in working with software in particular that pertains to high level math so any sort of computational mathematics software or software that requires high level math skills to program. </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>I think the computational math sounds more rare and open up interesting possibilities. You can likely still get a software job if you want it but you could be looking at data science type stuff too, the more scientific or math end, have you looked into that? You could work in tech, finance, scientific areas, if there is a certain domains that interest you or just look at the interesting stuff companies from google to startups are doing. And getting the funding is so huge.</p>

3

<p>Depends what type of job you would like to get in. If you want to do software development/project management, go for SE. There may be some overlap between the two majors. It is the skills you have that will make you make more marketable than the major alone.</p>

<p>The latest buzzword in the IT industry is Big Data/Data Science. Computational math seems more suited for this. If you can add skills in statistics, data mining, predictive modelling, big data (hadoop and hive), you will have great job opportunity out of college starting in six figures. Good luck! </p>

4

<p>Thanks for the helpful responses! I will try to help clear up some things:</p>

<p>As far as probability and statistics undergrad classes I’ve taken so far are: Probability 1, Applied Statistics, Mathematical Statistics, and Stochastic Processes. I did decent in these classes but kinda iffy interest-wise. I’m looking into a few math programs but the one that’s so far standing out to me is UH: M.S. Applied Mathematics with Computational Mathematics option <a href=“http://www.mathematics.uh.edu/graduate/master-programs/msam/index.php”>http://www.mathematics.uh.edu/graduate/master-programs/msam/index.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>As far as CS courses I’ve only taken: Introduction to Programming, Elements of Software Design, Elements of Networking, and this fall will be Elements of Web Programming. This makes me very iffy on meeting some of the pre-reqs. As a result I was looking into Texas State: <a href=“http://cs.txstate.edu/graduate_program/msse.php”>http://cs.txstate.edu/graduate_program/msse.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;