<p>Well DS did take Calc, in highest group and scored 700 on math SAT, 740 on verbal. So he definitely can do it; it just makes him nervous. Emotionality and math skill often seem in inverse ratio.</p>
<p>My daughter and I have been discussing these issues lately. She's a passionate math girl, it's like you can hear her brain pop and sizzle when she talks about math. But what to do with that? She hasn't had any exposure to engineering in high school so she's not thinking tech schools. She's done pretty well in science but hasn't been particularly inspired to go that route. Right now she's thinking math major at a LAC, and hopefully she'll figure out where to go from there. I'm fine with that. I've seen the children of friends decide all of a sudden to pick a vocation, culinary school for example, after seeing a career presentation senior year. Sometimes that works out, sometimes they crash and burn and waste a lot of money.</p>
<p>MomofFour what year of high school is your girl in? There are some great summer program to give kids a taste of what engineering is like - some of which are geared specifically at girls. Girls are in big demand at most tech schools.</p>
<p>Proud Dad's post is one of the most provocative I have come across. I will start by confessing that I have not read carefully all the posts on this thread. Indian by origin, whether I have a preprofessional bias or not I will leave it for you to judge. Have a freshman in Columbia engineering.</p>
<p>The well-roundedness/Conrad/Auden issue: the best of the best seem to be autodidacts. When people didn't go to college the autodidacts did what autodidacts usually do. College will not help those inclined anyway to be autodidacts. College can help others become autodidacts by fostering love of reading. Reading is endlessly generative; it can transport us to different times and climes and help disenthrall ourselves from the merely contemporary. In my mind, that is the sole objective of a college education: almost the last opportunity to experience the "otherness" that Shakespeare offers or to tap into the authentic sorrow that Sophocles dramatises. Other than a few mostly small Catholic colleges much of American academia is a wasteland where this is concerned. </p>
<p>Practical vs pursuing impractical majors: I like to believe that employers employ both those who have finance majors and those who have art history majors for banking jobs but they look for different things and the initial hurdle may play out differently. An art history major who has a tremendous grasp of her field (erudition) and comes "alive" in the interview( and can explain the whys of the interest in banking) would perhaps trump the pedestrian business major but may have greater difficulty getting a foot in. In reverse, a finance major with similar erudition who can convince the art museum why she is now interested in art will trump the ordinary art history major. </p>
<p>To Proud Dad's point: erudition will probably trump everything so become erudite in something. You can also become erudite in math!</p>
<p>Certain subjects, ancient languages like Sanskrit, Greek or Latin, or math or physics will give you some rather erudite skills which will have greater applicability.</p>
<p>Paragraph two about the wasteland academia is except for {a few mostly small Catholic colleges" is not true at all. Sophocles and Shakespeare have a pesence in many, many college classrooms all across the country. Right now my CC students are comparing Greek and Latin ideas of fate, heroism and morality.</p>
<p>Autodidacts run the risk of being cranky and self-enclosed and also self-congratulatory for having invented the wheel. Some are brilliant; many ae pompous.</p>
<p>Shakespeare himself was certainly not an autodidact. Although he did not attend university, to the best of our knowledge he did attend a local school that offered and Latin and read many works in Latin. His Latin translations demonstrate his schooling. In addition, he operated in the community of the theater, which I'm sure was quite an education in itself.</p>
<p>I am a bit of an autodidact myself in that I'd read more by seventeen than I would ever read after. However, many of the ideas I treasure are not original, and my professors were able to let me out of the cell of my own point of view to entertain others.</p>
<p>Am not quite sure I could have mastered Derrida and deconstruction on my own; maybe, but I'm glad I had people to discuss it with, even Derrida himself who I was fortunate enough to meet because of my academic program.</p>
<p>Well, I think math is way important. I mourn over the stampede going on among our youth to the softer, more emotional field of inquiry. Whether we like it or not, we indeed live in a material world. Kids had better be good and comfortable with math. Someone somewhere has to actually figure out how to make something, ship it, figure out if the financing is available to make it happen. Yes, it's also really important to speak and read with great precision but all I can say is that running from math ain't smart.</p>
<p>Math is certainly important, but understanding how to use math in a practical context and make it accessible is probably more important.</p>
<p>I mean, I can do tons of econometric analysis that most people can't do. It doesn't mean that my bosses or coworkers have any idea what it means if I can't explain it properly.</p>
<p>Well, with math through Calculus I think both my kids understand enough unless they are pursuing a technical field.</p>
<p>I do all the financial planning for my family and a family business without math. I'm actually quite good at it, but haven't studied in many years. I am very intuitive, and my plans have worked out. DH was a business major with strong math skills and no common sense. He can't run the financial end of his business, so I have had to (kicking and screaming I might add. I am an irrelevent ivory tower type.)</p>
<p>A basic skill set in all areas is essential. We all need math skills, communication skills, computer skills, survival skills, basic science understanding and a rudimentary understanding of history and govt. We go on from there.</p>
<p>ProudDad--math is really important in what I do (marketing). Finding inflection points is huge--at what point do we quit pouring money into an ad campaign? when do we saturate a market? When should we change our pricing strategy? Interpreting our market research requires a good understanding of statistics. </p>
<p>In some ways business is MORE quantitative now than hard disciplines like engineering--the laws of physics never change; consumer behavior is fickle and it takes pretty sophisticated modeling to understand what you are dealing with, and a really good fluency with statistics to sort out what is relevant from what is coincidence.</p>
<p>Mombot,</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, what kind of software do you use? Stata? R? SPSS?</p>
<p>Well, going back to majors and careers. It looks like there are three major undergrad degrees that lead to careers in biotech drug discovery: chemistry, biology, and... English. I had two bosses who majored in English and then moved on to get Ph.D.s in biochemistry or chemistry. There are many scientists whom I've encountered in my biotech career with undergrad majors in English, too (not all of them went on to get advanced degrees in scientific disciplines). It is very easy to tell those from the rest of the scientific crowd -they can write and speak well. ;) Not a statistically proven yet interesting observation.</p>
<p>And three of our most interesting novelists had science backgrounds but went into English because as one said, it doesn't force us to specialize. I am referring to Kurt Vonnegut, degree in chemistry, Cornell, Thomas Pynchon, degree in engineering, Cornell, and Richard Powers, degree in biology I believe, University of Illinois, Chicago.</p>
<p>I agree math is important but up to a point. I had math up to Fourier series and never use it ever again. We use Excel for all the math stuff now, especially the count function. LOL!
However, I don't regret all the studying for my undergraduate degree, I loved it.</p>