<p>I have a desire to pursue a career in math, physics, or engineering. However, I realize that obtaining a degree in either of these fields will lead into different pathways when looking for a job.<br>
From researching, I have learned that I would feel most comfortable in math or physics, but getting a job with an engineering degree is much easier than with a math or applied physics major.
Can anyone give me some advice? Thanks :)</p>
<p>If you major in math or physics, chances are very good that you’re going to be a high school teacher unless you obtain a Ph.D. If you major in engineering, you will be able to get a real engineering job even if you only have a B.S.</p>
<p>I love Math and Physics but I think knowledge is useless unless you apply it. So Engineering was the obvious course for me.</p>
<p>By no means does taking math or physics limit your career options. </p>
<p>Engineering is more of a job-guarantee, but the long lab hours and tedious number crunching was a dealbreaker for me.</p>
<p>Math is one of the most versatile majors you can take you will be taken seriously for most introductory jobs, and for the rest (hard-core engineering), you can always spend 2 years on an engineering MS after you graduate. Math majors have the highest average LSAT scores. Math majors also frequently end up in financial companies. A friend of mine in physics was offered six figures right out of college by financial companies. </p>
<p>You may also want to consider computer science (i.e, CS/Math double major), because it offers you a backup plan, and it usually has enough intersecting classes that it’s not hard to pull off. A double major with engineering is tougher (more requirements usually) but also very possible.</p>
<p>Well, if you’re a math/physics type of person then you probably don’t want to be doing an engineer’s job anyway, right? If you DO want to be doing an engineer’s job, then it only makes sense to pursue an engineering degree. In other words, you want to ask yourself what you really want to do. Do you want to do what a physicist or mathematician does (research/teaching)? Or do what an engineer does? Or somehow combine the two? Combining two fields means, of course, that it is harder to find jobs that apply to both fields. I am certain there are jobs that are most applicable to people with backgrounds in both engineering and physics, or engineering and math, but they are harder to find.</p>
<p>Math, physics, and engineering are all difficult and time-consuming studies. It is not suggested to pursue any one of them if you don’t really like it… if you feel most comfortable with math or physics, then go with that. You will have a much easier time in college that way, and it will be easier to keep your grades up.</p>
<p>If things don’t turn out too well as far as jobs go… you can always go to grad-school and re-align yourself. This will be much much easier to do if you have good grades.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! I think will double major math/physics pursue a EE MS. Do you guys think this is a good pathway?</p>
<p>I think if you take a healthy dose of electives in EE (especially the fundamentals) then this would be fine. I think you’d be doing yourself a disservice going for an EE masters if you didn’t have some exposure to EE undergraduate work.</p>
<p>So a EE BS would be better, then a EE MS?</p>
<p>No, but if you haven’t taken any EE undergraduate courses, it would be no mean feat to do well in an EE master’s program.</p>
<p>I would say you’d want at least the equivalent of a “minor” in EE… which means between 10 and 20 credit hours of courses in the major.</p>
<p>Can you tell us where you go to school? Maybe we could recommend EE undergraduate courses to prepare you for an EE grad program.</p>
<p>EE is a hella broad major. We’d probably have to know what you are interested in studying before we could give you good course reccomendations. </p>
<p>If you want to study semiconductor devices or electromagnetics, then it may serve you well to take EE courses/labs pertaining to those things, although physics courses in E&M, solid state physics, and quantum mechanics would go over a lot of the same material.</p>
<p>If you are interested in control or communication systems or signal processing, then you’d probably want to take some classes in those areas. Applied mathematics courses will help you out in this area as well.</p>
<p>I’m still in high school(11th grade) 
But its never to early to prepare for your future. I plan on going to a UC, such as UC Irivine or UC San Diego. If all turns out better than expected I probably will end up at UCLA or USC.
I’m not so sure what emphasis in EE I’m most interested in. silence_kit, can you explain communication systems and signal processing.</p>
<p>Most schools will have an “introduction to EE” type course. If you take something like this, that hits on many subjects in EE, maybe that will give you a good idea of what you might like doing.</p>
<p>Yeah, often you really can’t tell if you’d enjoy a subject until you actually start studying it. However, my school offers an introduction to EE type course for freshman, and a lot of the more advanced subjects, actually all of the subjects I listed above, aren’t really covered in any worthwhile detail. </p>
<p>I was just saying that if you want to study math and/or physics and dabble in EE, you’d have to be a little careful about choosing courses because it is a really broad major. I think you should see if you enjoy physics or mathematics more and then decide on an area of EE that exploits those ideas. Although really, you are still in high school and have a lot of time to figure this out.</p>
<p>
Haha, I’d get it wrong because I haven’t taken courses on those subjects yet (next semester I will!) : ) Maybe someone with more experience could give you a summary, or you could just browse the wikipedia pages.</p>
<p>Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind when I enroll at university.</p>