I am currently attending a low tier university as an applied math major and have a little over a year left of school work. I’m not passionate about math; i’m just good at it. My real passion is electrical engineering. However if I transfer to that program, it require at least 2 1/2 extra years to complete. Thats not including the extra 2 quarters I need to fix my gpa so I can become eligible. My parents are pressuring me very hard to graduate soon as possible to get a job and help them with bills. If I go down this route, theres no guarantee that I can even pay for it. I have looked up the job prospects for applied math majors and it looks VERY boring to me. I’m so conflicted.
Finish your degree.
Even if that means i’ll be miserable with my job?
You can go for a master’s later if you want. Odds are very high that you will never finish at all if you change now. You will have much better options with ANY degree than with none.
My husband works with math majors at his engineering firm. How do you know you will be miserable?
I’m confused. Do you have a current GPA to even begin interviews?
If you graduate now, and your GPA is low, you won’t be getting a whole lot of job offers.
What if you try to do those 2 1/2 years; will you stick to it?
@aunt bea
Well, I said I would be miserable because everyone keeps saying that “oh you’re going to be a teacher or work in some business job with that degree”. I don’t want to do that. I want to work in the science field, closely with engineers and I want to work with electronics as well.
So I transferred to my current university from CC this past January (overall gpa was low for personal reasons). My first quarter, I got a 3.97 gpa. My 2nd quarter i basically failed all classes (again personal reasons). This quarter, I’m expecting to get 2 A’s and maybe a B (-A if im lucky). Once I re-take all the classes and fix my gpa, I should be at a 3.XX for my overall gpa and somewhere around a 3.8X for my University gpa. I have no idea which gpa employees will look at when they see my resume.
Start looking at the engineering companies’ websites. You’ll see the math majors they want. They will train you in how they want you to apply your math degree. At my husband’s firm, the math guys do algorithms for flight predictions (I think that’s what he told me).
If you can prove yourself, they will fund a grad degree in engineering or continued math.
If your love is engineering, make plans for engineering.
My engineering dd used her major GPA on her resume. In the interview, they eventually asked for overall gpa.
I say get your degree the quickest way you can. There are general analytical jobs that for a look for grads from 4 year degree program (“finance, econ. math, engineering, business etc”).
Are you open to grad school?
In my mechanical engineering graduate program, it was not uncommon to see individuals whose undergrad degree was in math. I imagine this was also the case in the electrical engineering department.
Math to engineering is a relatively easy and not uncommon transition.