<p>It's not a skeptism but just a lovely curious query:)</p>
<p>I was checking the rank of universities in some specific fields, and the applied math one caught my attention. I was really surprised, and wondering how come?</p>
<p>Moreover, what can a student with an applied math degree choose for his or her career path? I heard about people touting about actuarial field and even surprisingly IB one. Is that true?</p>
<p>Not sure why it should be surprising. UCLA is top university and has many of its departments ranked in the top-ten, and some of those programs, as I’m sure you saw in the rankings, ranked in the top-five.</p>
<p>Other programs where UCLA does exceptionally well include psychology, linguistics, its hospital, and (from anecdotes I read online) its dental school.</p>
<p>Usually, applied math is paired with something else: economics, physics, finance, etc. So jobs are often along the lines of the specialty. You can do a search for SIAM ( Society of Industrial and Applied Math, or something close to that), and you might get some ideas of career paths.</p>
<p>To beyphy,</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply!</p>
<p>I am fully aware that ucla herself is a prestigious school. What came to me as a surprise was the comparison of rankings between pure math (and its several branches) and applied math, where I saw a somewhat considerable discrepancy. What the old image told me was that Princeton, MIT, Harvard and those on par with should top the math ranking. I am kinda curious about the factor contributing to this discrepancy (btw pure and applied).</p>
<p>You can actually do a lot with mathematics especially since mathematics is the most often used tools in economics, finance, engineering, computer science, statistics, etc. As a result, some of the mathematics students who graduated pursue these different fields. </p>
<p>The reason why UCLA is highly ranked in applied mathematics compared to other schools is because of the applied mathematics professors (Bertozzi, Vese, Teran, etc) and their graduate students. These professors specialize in numerical analysis, image processing, and optimization and they are highly respected researchers in their fields. Bertozzi has done much research in crime modeling, robotics, fluid mechanics, and image processing. Vese has done a lot in medical imaging. Teran specializes in numerical analysis and applies them in virtual surgery and fluid mechanics, and he also does some consulting for Disney by helping out with the animation for some of their 3D movies, such as Tangled. To secure its position as the top ranking school in applied mathematics, Bertozzi hosts a summer REU each year, where undergraduate math/engineering students from Southern California work in groups researching in various projects under an adviser. These projects include image processing, crime modeling, sports ranking, robotics, etc, but they vary each year.</p>
<p>That was really enlightening. Thank you very much jerrry.</p>
<p>UCLA ranks high because Terence Tao teaches here. That’s basically all that needs to be said and if you don’t know who he is then welllllll…</p>