S24 is in the midst of applying to college and for a few of his schools he needs to identify a major (most, fortunately, don’t admit by major). He is very strong mathematically (800 Math SAT), and in the hard sciences, but not super accelerated compared to others - just taking AP Calculus this year. Since neither his father nor I are math savvy (humanities majors), we are finding it challenging to provide good feedback about potential majors. He is very undecided about his future plans but would like to study something math or math adjacent and we’re having some issues trying to identify what might be best. I thought the hive mind might have some suggestions we could look into further. He is not interested in Engineering or computer science and doesn’t want to be an accountant or actuary so we’ve eliminated some things already.
Math
Applied Math
Statistics
Data Science
Computational Biology
Physics
Economics?
Thanks. He has looked at a couple of those. Not sure the exact difference between applied and pure math and what could be better for him. He’s a creative thinker if that helps.
So first off, just taking AP Calculus this year - that is accelerated. And the 800 SAT - impressive.
So I’d say this - engineering comes in wide varieties - and most engineers (per a stat I read) don’t end up in engineering. My son’s second internship (same company as the first) wasn’t in engineering and yet they wanted an engineer. I asked him why did they want an engineer? He said - they want people that think this way. There’s also engineering technology.
There are many majors that are math heavy.
For the schools that require a major, you might think of it like this. Are there any impacted - he might end up liking the first year courses to be an engineer - so look them up. Why? You can typically easily go from engineering to an arts & sciences but not vice versa.
It’s not uncommon for a 17 year old not to know what they want - but they also don’t know what they don’t know.
My son - in Junior and Senior year in HS - moved from Astrophysics / Astronomy to Professional Pilot to Atmsopheric Sciences (weather) to what he ended up in Mechanical Engineering.
It may take time to find a major, even at a school that requires one - so in those cases, I’d maybe consider the hard to get into ones so you can transition out. On the other hand, typically schools that require a major have an undecided option as well - so why not choose that?
And just because he’s good at math (and science) - does he like them? From your comment yes - but there are so many careers and majors (not just math adjacent ones) that involve heavy quant and/or sciences (which are often quant related).
There’s so many fields where a strong math background can help:
Finance
Supply Chain/Operations
Math - where your career can pivot in so many directions
Data Science / analytics
Any science - from bio to chem to physics to geology to atmospheric, earth, environmental, etc.
Social Sciences - from your poli sci to sociology to geography to Public Policy
Sports Management / analytics
Public Health - comes in both quant and qualitative versions
Honestly, being good at math is an AWESOME thing.
And he can major in most anything - and being good at math will help.
But he needs to ultimately find something he can enjoy. Most majors today have quantitative components.
But if you must choose, I’d pick a hard to transfer into major - just in case that ultimately becomes the choice - easier to leave later than join later.
Good luck.
My brother was a Math major and ended up a dentist.
Of course if you already have a good idea what you want to do with math, maybe a more specialized major could be a good idea too. But if you do not yet know what you want to do but love math, I would suggest a regular Math major is a great choice.
If the schools offer an applied math concentration it affords a great deal of eventual flexibility and can be coupled with a minor or double major. Skills acquired are readily transferable, highly marketable and applicable to numerous career paths.
If not interested in engineering or CS as you say I would definitely avoid them. Last thing you want is your kid arriving on campus surrounded and immersed in subject matter they don’t have intellectual curiosity towards.
Any math related major can be augmented later and conveys a great deal of rigor and applicability to prospective employers.
I was a math major in university. I also took quite a few computer science classes, and had a part time job that involved programming. This is quite a useful combination. In fact, it is sufficiently useful that MIT now has a joint major “mathematics with computer science” (course 18C). I would assume that some other universities probably have similar majors.
https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/mathematics-computer-science-course-18-c/
After graduation my first couple of jobs involved both computer science and mathematics. There are a lot of computer science jobs and they are not all the same. The ones that involve a lot of mathematics were ones that seemed interesting to me, which was fortunate since those were also the jobs that I was qualified for.
At one point I ran into someone I had known from math classes in university. He had gone into acoustics. He showed me what he did. There is apparently a great deal of mathematics necessary if you want your concert hall to have good sound quality or want your car to be quiet. Similarly more recently I had a tour of a major radio telescope. There is a lot of mathematics required to properly analyze the information that is gathered by a radio telescope. In both cases computers are needed to analyze all of this data. There are quite a few jobs that require fairly advanced applied math. Another undergraduate math major who I knew went on to get a law degree.
You son might also want to find out what “Operations Research” is. This is a sub-field of applied math that originally started in England during WW2. They were using math to optimize the war effort. As one example, an early problem that they considered was whether to put the radars into the spitfires or put then on the ground along with the anti-aircraft guns. The point was that if you put them on an airplane then they are more useful, but are also likely to be destroyed if the airplane is shot down. Given limited production which would be more effective? Operations Research can also be used to optimize transportation networks (such as railroads) and the backbones of Internet Service Providers. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are also closely related to mathematics.
As another example of the usefulness of mathematics, package delivery companies such as FEDEX do a very good job of optimizing their package deliveries. The next time that you get a package delivered, there is a good chance that the same truck that delivered your package was also delivering multiple packages to other homes or businesses that were very nearby. Optimizing all of this is actually very difficult from a mathematical point of view.
In graduate school I took a course in econometrics, which is mathematical/quantitative economics. If you want to really understand the impact of economic policies, quite a bit of math is needed. As a math major in graduate school, the course in econometrics had me spending a couple of Saturday afternoons going over the underlying math to make sure that I fully understood it.
There are a lot of things that you can do with a degree in mathematics.
Also, I did not take calculus until I was a freshman in university. That did not stop me from majoring in mathematics.
EDIT: I might add: I would not expect any high school student to know which of these options, or multiple other options, they might end up pursuing. My point is that there are a lot of options for what a university graduate might do with a degree in mathematics. I would not expect a student to figure out what they will do with their degree until after they have a bachelor’s degree in hand and try out a few jobs. We each figure this out over time. However, for a student who is considering getting a degree in mathematics, it might be good to know that there will be multiple options in terms of what jobs will be available at some point in the future.
He doesnt have to decide his entire life path now. Math major sounds fine.
Applied Math is basically what he’s likely exposed to, calculus etc. He doesn’t actually need to decide which part of math to focus on right now. He can take some classes in college to see what he likes.
There are parts of industrial engineering, like operations research, that are very math-y. Also theoretical computer science is very math-oriented.
I have no issues with him being undecided. In any case, kids change their minds all the time. It’s really only an issue for the handful of schools where he has to apply by major.
Pure math would be about proving new theorems and other theoretical work.
Applied math would be applying math to other subjects like computing, statistics, operations research, physics, finance, economics, other social sciences, etc…
Note that undergraduate supply chain majors or concentrations found in business schools are typically relatively light on math (usually just “calculus for business majors”). Operations research majors or concentrations in math, industrial engineering, or statistics departments are much heavier and more advanced in math content and use, so they may be more suitable for those who like math and are good at it.
Similarly, undergraduate economics majors can vary from light math (no calculus) to heavy math (multivariable calculus and/or linear algebra), so a student considering that major may want to consider the math intensity of the economics major and courses at various schools.
With respect to actual college selection, some of the schools named in this topic may be of interest: For Students Seeking a College Strong in Mathematics.
As others have said, a math major is much less about a particular career path (compared to engineering or CS) and more about demonstrating a high level of numeracy that is valuable in multiple fields. For example, it is one of the prerequisites for many consulting firms, even though the math itself isn’t really relevant.
But a question to think about is whether you find math to be fascinating, and even fun. Would you be happy to sit down and ponder a math problem which isn’t just plugging and chugging a bunch of formulas? Are you the sort of person who will dream the solution at night or come up with it when you are in the shower or doing other things? Because that’s what’s needed to be really good at math.
To get a sense of that, try reading “A Mathematician’s Apology” by G H Hardy. It’s old but in my view one of the best insights into how mathematicians think:
“A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns…The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments everyone.
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My son was an applied math major. Please feel free to DM if there are any questions I can help with.
Just a thought… Since your child did not take any advance Math yet (beyond Calc), I would not worry much about major or specialty yet…
I would focus school of Science vs. Engineering vs. Business. Then I would try to take classes in each are to see what he likes.
If he’s being forced to declare a major for application purposes, declaring a math major is totally fine. He had an 800 on math SAT, and has reached Calc, so they know he can do it. It’s not a highly competitive, highly popular major, yet every school has a math dep’t, so he’s not going to be at a disadvantage for having put down math on the app. He can change his major depending upon his preferences once he starts at school.
That is a good point and I believe he is aware of that. My question was spawned by our discussion last night when he was working on one of his apps which required selecting a school and major - he looked at some stuff on-line, but often descriptions of majors are chock full of generalities and I wasn’t really able to provide any insight (when he asked) since my knowledge of higher level math is fairly rudimentary. On the other hand, I knew the fine folks here on CC have a lot of math acumen so I turned here for some answers (and stuff to think about).