Hi, I’m a high school junior who is wondering about math majors
My school does not offer many advanced math classes (I’m currently taking the highest class offered to me which is precalculus) and although I have a good grade in my my math class and genuinely love learning about math, I’m afraid that if I major in math I would be far behind other students who have already taken advanced courses
If there’s someone who has taken a math major or is well knowledgeable in that area- do you know if the workload be overwhelming and whether math is a good path to pursue?
Thanks!
It was a long time ago. However, I attended a high school that did not offer calculus. The most advanced math class that I could take was precalculus, and even it was only about half the size of most of the other classes in my high school.
I went to MIT and graduated as a math major. Then I worked for a couple of years and then got my master’s degree at Stanford in a related field (Operations Research). I never felt that I was behind in math.
To me the biggest key here is to at a minimum be very ready to take calculus by the time that you arrive in university. I aced all of my math classes in high school and so I was very ready to take calculus.
As a freshman in university, freshman year physics had calculus as a corequisite, meaning that you had to either have already taken it or take it at the same time. They would teach something in calculus, and then use it a couple of days later in physics. This made it quite easy to see the value and uses of whatever they were teaching in calculus. It was very clear that the professors were cooperating.
You probably will want to take some math class during your senior year of high school. Do you have the option to take a math class at a nearby community college or do you have some other option?
I am by the way quite happy that I majored in math. It led to a good career. There are a number of ways that applied math can be used, and I ended up in one of them.
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Wow that’s awesome, and yes there will probably be a calculus class next year which I’ll most likely be taking. Thank you for the advice!
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