School: top40. Major: math. GPA: 3.5. Current Salary: $16/h

College Confidential Community
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<p>Hello fellows. I know some of you are still high school students, but from reading some of the posts on this forum it's evident that some of you have already figured out what I still haven't.</p>

<p>In short: I went to a top 40 school, majored in math, graduated with a 3.5 GPA, and currently earn less money than some of my high school friends who went to second rate state schools, studied subjects that only require decent memorization skills, and had GPA's lower than 3.0. One of them was a sociology major. He currently works at a bank where he earns at least $10,000/year more per year than I earn.</p>

<p>You might be wondering what job it is that I do that pays $16/hour. I do quality assurance at a startup IT company. My job doesn't have anything to do with math and there is not even arithmetic involved. I've being doing that job for 2 years, and I would have transferred to a higher paying job a long time ago if it weren't because nobody seems interested in hiring someone with my qualifications</p>

<p>I've read hundreds of job postings, and I don't seem to be qualified for anything. Either they want someone with X years of experience in some specific programming language or they specifically ask for people with degrees in physics, computer science or electrical engineering.</p>

<p>So it seems like decent computer science jobs are out of my league. (If it weren't because I was specifically told that I could still go into computer science jobs with a degree in math, I would have been a CS major.)</p>

<p>Actuary? No. Statistics are not my cup of tea and I don't want a job where I have to do presentations in front of people.</p>

<p>Teaching? No.</p>

<p>Math Grad School? Umm. What for?</p>

<p>I don't know what to do with my degree math. I feel like I wasted my time in college. If anyone knows of any job that I might like, that I might be qualifed for, let me know. I don't care if the pay is low (I'm used to living on a budget), as long as I enjoy what I am doing.</p>

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<p>What do you actually want to do?</p>

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<p>I want a job doing math, preferably one that involves programming, but not statistics.</p>

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<p>

Both you and the person who told you this are idiots for believing it. It is well known that a math degree by itself, like a philosophy degree by itself, is quite useless career-wise out of the teaching profession.</p>

<p>Either go back to school and get a better degree, or sit it out in the teacher's lounge.</p>

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<p>Go to professional school. ie law, medicine. Your gpa is high enough.</p>

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<p>Not a bad idea, except</p>

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<p>Someone i know is a math major and wants to be a teacher. she is absolutely brilliant...not in the "omg our valedictorian is brilliant he has the highest GPA on record" or "my kid is brilliant but lazy so his grades suck" way....but truly, absolutely GENIUS...
i think she is wasting her talent</p>

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<p>Just go back to school, quit whining about a math degree being useless... hell a bachelors is basically useless. Go into a masters engineering program or something, make something happen for your life instead of sitting around in a job that pays not much more than my summer job in the factories.</p>

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<p>you could be an actuary, or do you need a masters for that?</p>

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<p>Finance. Go get an MBA with a focus on finance. You'll have money shooting out of your ears if you get good grades.</p>

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<p>i'm assuming you did pure math? anyways, shouldnt you have known that a pure math major is useless in employers' eyes?if you like pure math, why not go for grad school since youre gpa's pretty decent?</p>

<p>if you did applied math, then i guess you got bad luck as i thought they should have no problem findign jobs</p>

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<p>If you liked computer science, I find it strange that you did not pursue a minor or a double major in the subject. It is common for mathematics majors to do so.</p>

<p>Still, I have been bemoaning the deficiencies of America's undergraduate mathematics program philosophy for years, and nobody wants to listen. Academics never change (I'm one of them, and it's a sad reflection) and students don't want to believe what I'm telling them. Still, your situation is a very common one. I wish you all the best in finding a job.</p>

<p>Just out of curiosity, what was your main interest in undergraduate mathematics? What courses did you particularly enjoy? If your answer(s) are limited to things like abstract algebra, topology, and, God help you, real analysis, then you are pretty much in trouble.</p>

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<p>
[quote]

Just out of curiosity, what was your main interest in undergraduate mathematics? What courses did you particularly enjoy? If your answer(s) are limited to things like abstract algebra, topology, and, God help you, real analysis, then you are pretty much in trouble.

[/quote]
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<p>What, you've never hard of research?</p>

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[quote]

In short: I went to a top 40 school, majored in math, graduated with a 3.5 GPA, and currently earn less money than some of my high school friends who went to second rate state schools, studied subjects that only require decent memorization skills, and had GPA's lower than 3.0. One of them was a sociology major. He currently works at a bank where he earns at least $10,000/year more per year than I earn.

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<p>Whole post smells of absolute troll, so not sure if it's worth a response.</p>

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Teaching? No.</p>

<p>Math Grad School? Umm. What for?

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<p>You go to grad school so a) you can spend time doing what you enjoy doing, that is, mathematics. 6 years of it, for a doctorate. You don't mind living on a budget? Perfect.</p>

<p>b) Then, you can become a professor. You don't like teaching? No problem, you have to teach at most one class a semester. Suck it up and enjoy working on research.</p>

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<p>Not everybody is willing or able to perform academic research in the discipline they enjoy most. In fact, IQ correlates fairly well with ability to become a professor at a research institution.</p>

<p>Does that mean that only people who plan on being professors should major in math? No, it means that the mathematics programs should be revamped to be more competitive.</p>

<p>I may be putting my foot in my mouth, but mathematics may be the single major which teaches the least directly applicable material of any major out there. What's not blatant academic pandering is too broad, diluted, and too "pure" to be of any real relevance in industry.</p>

<p>Engineering and science majors learn all the math they need in their own classes as well as in relevant mathematics classes. Why? Because mathematics classes are taught as introductions to the material. Sad, maybe, but ultimately true.</p>

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<p>i think this site should help you:</p>

<p>Why</a> Should I Be A Math Major?</p>

<p>there are some encouraging statistics there, keep your head up!</p>

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<p>If you believe this, you are truly not very well informed. While a math degree with a low GPA from a crappy school might be pretty useless, demonstrating the kind of incredibly strong quantitative skills a math degree requires makes one very, very attractive to any number of employers. It won't ever replace a degree in the specific subject area (so you're probably not going to be beating out CS majors for jobs in CS, unless it's in theoretical algorithmic development or something), but it is certainly far from useless.</p>

<p>For that matter, philosophy majors (at least from well-recognized schools) are in fact very well-regarded and often have great success both with employment and grad/professional school.</p>

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<p>Those statistics are all very misleading, bordering on blatant propaganda.</p>

<p>First off, mathematics appears at the top of every list on that page, although any mathematics major can tell you that the odds of that happening are very low.</p>

<p>In the first chart, a smattering of disciplines were selected to make mathematics look good. If there is a complete list, I would not be surprised to see several disciplines edging out mathematics on that list. In fact, barring some miraculous overabundance of math, philosophy, and economics majors, there <em>must</em> exist majors which do better than anything on that list. What are they? Might they not be better options than mathematics?</p>

<p>The next chart is absolutely preposterous. The average salary for English majors with a bachelor's degree is $43,600. That means that the article has it that the average salary of all mathematics majors with a bachelors is $60,037. A quick glance at the BLS tells us that engineering and computer science majors earn closer to $80,000 on average. That's $20,000 dollars more, and would put such majors at about +%90. That's not even counting those who went into law, medicine, business, or started their own companies.</p>

<p>For my next trick, let's see the unabridged list of the top 25 majors by job satisfaction (from the same source they site in the article):</p>

<ol>
<li>Web site manager</li>
<li>Actuary</li>
<li>Computer Systems Analyst</li>
<li>Software Engineer</li>
<li>Mathematician</li>
<li>Computer Programmer</li>
<li>Accountant</li>
<li>Industrial Engineer</li>
<li>Hospital Administrator</li>
<li>Web Developer</li>
</ol>

<p>Of those, 5 would be best done by CS / IT majors. 2 would be best done my mathematics majors. Next come the business majors, and then comes engineering (industrial). Also, these rankings are by no means "objective": other rankings exist.</p>

<p>Another fun page:
The</a> Ten Hottest Careers - college graduates - fastest growing occupations</p>

<p>As far as the job opportunities:
Mathematical modeling: any job in modeling that a mathematics major could do could be done by a major in the discipline trained in mathematical modeling. Financial companies can hire finance majors who have minors in math, or who have taken a few classes in math. Physics laboratories can hire physicists with experience or who wrote a paper on modeling in the sciences. The point is that telling mathematics majors that they can compete for jobs in other fields with people who have been studying those disciplines is fundamentally flawed; modeling is how mathematics is used in other disciplines, and that's what other majors learn... the only difference is that it is more targeted.</p>

<p>Finance: what about finance majors?</p>

<p>Statistics: fair enough.</p>

<p>Computer science: "Beyond mere proficiency in computer programming" this is the sort of haughtiness that makes math majors hard to employ. They consider other majors to be less rigorous by comparison, and thus assume they are overqualified for positions. That whoever wrote this article sees CS as "mere proficiency in computer programming" is very telling. In reality, a healthy percentage of mathematics majors never do any substantial work with "algorithms", in the modern sense of the word.</p>

<p>I could go on, but you get the idea.</p>

<p>The implication is that mathematics is the best major; I believe that mathematics should be presented for what it really is for most people: a pre-professional program for future academics.</p>

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<p>Moire,</p>

<p>You seem to be of the mindset that just because you have a bachelors degree from a decent university that you're somehow entitled to a high paying job doing what you want to do. Well in short, the answer is no.</p>

<p>There's a lot more to having a successful career than just a degree and the job market is about making yourself marketable. Maybe you need to get some more schooling... these days a bachelors is almost the norm in many fields so you need a graduate degree to really set yourself apart. Also, just a bachelors in pure math often isn't as appealing to many employers as those that come from other highly quantitative majors but also posses advanced training in other areas. </p>

<p>Obviously it's impossible to know all the details from a forum post, but you do come across as if you have a bit of an 'entitlement mentality' that you somehow 'deserve' to be paid more or have a different job because you have a bachelors in math. That's not how it works. Everyone's career is essentially a 'competition.' Everyone has their own metrics (influence, salary, lifestyle...) for way constitutes 'winning' in that competition. If you don't feel like you're winning then you need to go out and work to make yourself more competitive in whatever areas necessary to get to where you want to be... be that more schooling or something else.</p>

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<p>You sound tremendously uncreative. There are plenty of business jobs that hire from all majors, but particularly value quantitative skills in applicants. You have a strong GPA from a strong school. Look into management positions at major fortune 500 firms. Government and defense contractors are a good place to start. Additionally, consulting firms would also be a good place to look. Don't confine yourself to some specific set of careers that you think a math major should go into.</p>

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<p>from Burgler: Just go back to school, quit whining about a math degree being useless... hell a bachelors is basically useless. Go into a masters engineering program or something, make something happen for your life instead of sitting around in a job that pays not much more than my summer job in the factories.</p>

<p>yep, that basicly sums it up for you... so listen to burgler and quit whining :)</p>