<p>I was planning on majoring in mathematics and then a field like engineering or economics for grad school. Is this possible? Would I be wasting my time as math major? I REALLY love math and ill be graduating from uc Berkeley (Community College Transfer) if all goes well. I wanted to get a research job, but I also need something to fall back on. I.e. masters.</p>
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<p>Oh come on! Someone comment? Please…</p>
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<p>A math degree, when taken in the applied route coupled with and engineering or computer science concentration is an excellent degree because it is broad and can place you in many job areas.</p>
<p>A math degree can make it easier to be admitted to many graduate engineering programs like computer science, software engineering or systems engineering or even engineering physics.</p>
<p>I think you should get more replies because my undergrad degree is in computational mathematics and I am quite biased. :-)</p>
<p>Haha youve been commenting on a lot of my stuff lately havent you?</p>
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<p>Bumpity Bumpity… will repost if someone doesn’t comment :P</p>
<p>I have 2 sons; one has already started taking math major in NZ and the younger one is about to begin his first year at Duke this fall but also plans to major in math. Our plan is a bit biased towards math as they both studied and complete the entire KUMON course at very early age. I guess our approach is to decide first if you want to pursue your masters or even Phd and what first degree major you tend to excel. We’ve decided obviously to take math as we also believe more choices with clear competitiveness are being offered for math graduates,i.e., MBA, economics, engineering, natural/applied sciences, etc. Our elder son plans to go for actuary or actuarial science to its highest degree and the younger one may go after nanoscience as there are many unexplored areas in the discipline. Besides, they can change their mind after graduation. In a nutshell, if you think you’re good at math, go all-out for it!
Our view is if you do not plan to further your studies after your first degree, the chances for your career might be a bit restricted, as compared to other professional degrees like engineering, accounting, etc. However, unless you work in the US, gaining a master degree is a minimum must in other countries, esp. Asia.</p>
<p>I am a PhD candidate in pure mathematics. I strongly believe that pure math is useless except for a research career. (Unless you graduate from a prestigious enough university that you’ll be hired just because you’re assumed to be a genius.) However, math is tremendously useful as a tool in other disciplines. That’s why I encourage all math majors to have a second area of concentration that lends itself to math applications.</p>
<p>Ideally, you would already do that as an undergraduate. I have met many double majors in engineering and mathematics, for example, because many engineering programs require so much math already that they get the double major almost for free. If you choose engineering, I’d encourage you to complete the full major so that you can be licensed to work as an engineer if desired. If you choose another concentration such as economics or computer science, it’s not necessary that you complete a formal program. You could just take those classes that you care about. (For example, you could ignore CS major requirements like compilers and theory of computation, and take courses on machine learning or graphics instead.)</p>
<p>I am a bit confused by the following statement:
Most students who want a research job in mathematics will enroll straight into a PhD program in math after college. If you paused your math career to get a Master’s in something else first, PhD programs would question your commitment. </p>
<p>Since we have discussed your desire to move to Ireland, I would also like to mention that European graduate programs are generally less flexible than American ones. In the US, you could be a math major as an undergraduate and then get a Master’s degree in economics or engineering (provided you can pay for it, of course). In Europe, you generally need an undergraduate degree in the same field before you can enroll in a Master’s program.</p>
<p>A well-rounded math degree, with a mix of theory and applications, possibly with a joint major or other “useful” minor, is quite useful in a number of fields. And your fallback positions include teaching, business/finance (and other “quant” jobs) and programming, depending on the non-math courses you take. I have yet to see someone with a math degree have to resort to working in a call-center or coffee place to find employment.</p>
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I have seen plenty: students who completed pure math majors with no employable skills who didn’t go straight to graduate school.</p>
<p>Teaching is only a fallback plan if you are certified to teach; consulting and finance companies (who train their associates in house and don’t care so much about undergraduate major) hire primarily from prestigious universities; and programming jobs obviously require programming skills.</p>
<p>I do agree with you that “well-rounded” math majors are quite employable, but I’d be careful to generalize that to all math majors.</p>
<p>Oh okay, that makes sense. So it’s kind of like a boost to some other bachelors degree (including minor, etc.) more than a degree to be taken by itself?</p>
<p>That’s a good way of saying it!</p>
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<p>Well, admittedly, I’ve never seen a pure math major who didn’t want to go to grad school, and those who ended in finance were simply burnt out but otherwise quite talented mathematicians who had at least started a graduate degree in a prestigious school. All math students who did not intend to go to grad school did do applied/stats/CS or other practical subjects in their undergrad.</p>
<p>Yes, I do plan on going to grad school so ;). But I do want to be horable out of college so I can see what my options are.</p>
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<p>Pure math major degree programs typically have a lot of schedule space left over so that you can take some CS, statistics, economics, finance, etc. courses to improve your backup employability plans if you do not go to a PhD program in math.</p>
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It depends on where you go to school. That might be the case at bigger universities. Many liberal arts colleges only offer pure math majors though, and most of their students have no intention of getting a PhD in math.</p>
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<p>Wow, interesting. I guess it’s an american thing. I’m in Canada, where in smaller universities small math departments will usually be math & CS departments in order to reach a decent size and be able to offer some variety of courses, through either joint programs or separate ones with a hefty dose of the other subject. In fact, most math departments are math and stats departments, while in the US they’re often separate, even if that means a really small department (7-12 profs).</p>
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I was actually wondering whether you were American after your previous post. Your description of a “typical” math major sounded very European. I am originally from Germany and there most math majors would take a mix of pure and applied math courses and complete a minor outside of math. That’s the path that makes sense for most students. I wish that more Americans would realize that before they hit the job market…</p>
<p>I had absolutely NO intention of doing pure math as a math major. I ALWAYS has an applied mindset. When I took that one required analysis course (called advanced calculus at Michigan State), I went to the prof’s office to check the final grades and once I saw MY student number next to a grade that was not an “F” or a “D”, that was all I needed to know because I knew I was done with the pure theory courses. I still remember my whole set of math courses as an undergrad:</p>
<p>(In quarters…not semesters)</p>
<p>Calculus I - derivatives
Calculus II - integrals
Calculus III - vectors
Calculus IV - multiple integrals & green’s theorem
Differential Equations
Linear Algebra
Advanced Calculus - one quarter
Discrete Math I - combinatorics
Discrete Math II - combinatorics w/generating functions
Discrete Math III - graph theory
Mathematical Programming - basic optimization/linear programming
Numerical Analysis I
Numerical Analysis II
Computational Complexity - glutton for punishment</p>
<p>The following CS courses were required for the computational math degree:</p>
<p>Programming I - PASCAL (don’t laugh, I am old)
Programming II - PASCAL (don’t laugh, I am old)
Data Structures - using C
Systems Programming - more C</p>
<p>For more marketability, I took more CS electives…had to petition with the CS Chair every damn term because only CS majors were supposed to take the courses, but I got in when there was space:</p>
<p>Programming Languages - Ada, Lisp, Prolog, a few others
Operating Systems
Design of Language Processors - compiler design…MSU always had a $500 name for a course
Database Systems I
Database Systems II
Computer Networks
Computer Graphics</p>
<p>Note: The Math/CS combo degree is the BEST degree out there :-)</p>
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<p>Is this like Analysis of Algorithms?</p>
<p>Analysis of Algorithms is devoted to analyzing the amount of resources needed by a particular algorithm to solve a problem, whereas computational complexity asks a more general question about all possible algorithms that could be used to solve the same problem. Computational complexity tries to classify problems that can or cannot be solved with appropriately restricted resources.</p>
<p>A lot of schools will have a lecture or two or devote a small part of an Analysis of Algorithms course to computational complexity.</p>