Okay, as a chemist, I only have a vague idea of what math majors do when they graduate from college. My roommate’s boyfriend is a math major and doesn’t really know what he’ll do when he grows up, ie when he graduates in 2007. What can you do with a math degree? Knowing this will make both me and my roommate, laurelann sleep easier.
I’d think it depends what kind of math major . . . at my college we had various concentrations within the math department, such as “education”, “actuarial”, “graduate prep”, etc.
At any rate, I’d say some people go to grad school, some people become math teachers, some people go into a job where a strong math background is helpful, like accounting, some people probably go to law school or med school or something else not particularly math related.
The truth is, it doesn’t really matter what you major in in college. Sure, if you plan to go to grad school in a certain field it can help to be an undergraduate major in that field, but it’s not always a necessity. (One of my friends is a grad student in physics who majored in electrical engineering in undergrad, for instance.) If you aren’t planning to stay in school after college, it matters even less. I mean, what do you think history majors do if they don’t want to become historians, or philosophy majors do if they don’t want to become philosophers? They have to find jobs doing something else. My uncle majored in history and ended up becoming a computer programmer. One of my friends from college majored in English Literature and ended up working for a bank. Another majored in urban planning and became a web designer.
I’d say most employers care more about where you went to school and what kind of grades and recommendations you have (especially recommendations) than they do about what your major was. But I’d say they care the most about what kind of skills and what experience you have – so my recommendation to current college students would be to figure out what you think you’d like to do and then try to get a summer internship working for a company that does that. For a guy like your roommate’s boyfriend, who’s not sure what he wants to do, actually seeing what the job is like can really help him make up his mind. And who knows, if he does really well he might even have a job waiting for him when he graduates. (That’s the other thing that matters when it comes to getting a job – networking.)
Among all high school subjects, school districts almost always have the toughest time filling math posts. Among those going into teaching there simply aren’t enough with the appropriate level of education in math.
I assume we’re talking about a bachelor’s degree, right? Well, you can’t teach without more education. But there are quite a lot of jobs out there for someone with a math degree. For the most part, the jobs require logical thinking and quantitative aptitude – skills that a math major should have. Jobs such as in systems analysis, actuarial, computer programming, even sales and marketing. Note that most jobs will usually require some additional skills besides just knowing math. So I’d recommend that between now and 2007, your roommate’s boyfriend also take other courses that particularly interest him, as well as do some internships in the real world. With only a bachelor’s degree, any job will be an entry-level position that should afford some on-the-job training. Check out the following links:
http://www.coolmath.com/careers.htm
http://www.maa.org/pubs/books/careers.html
I would recommend doing a graduate degree because that’ll open up more doors. If you want to work in the business world, having an MBA to go along with your math degree is a strong combination. And certainly a graduate degree is part of the requirement if you want to go into academia.
Heck, if he’s the entrepreneurial type, have him come up with a good idea and start his own business!
Tim’s post is somewhat inaccurate in one area. Suggesting that math majors will go into accounting because of the math focus may be true but it should also be known that to legally be an accountant there is often a required number of accounting hours that must be taken. The U.S. Federal guidelines are set at 24 hours, each state is also different.
Anyways though, accountants without CPAs or CMAs are very restricted when it comes to moving up the food chain as you’ll eventually hit a glass ceiling in most public corporations where non-CPAs cannot move up.
And to take the CPA exam you need 150 hours of accounting in college so it’s extremely prudent to be an accounting major because 150 is a lot of college hours to collect if it’s outside your major.
I work in IT. I have both math and comp sci degrees.
A job in accounting pretty much requires a degree in accounting, as I understand it. But there are plenty of other jobs in finance that a math degree is adequate preparation for. What other areas does this guy have training in?
How do they calculate 150 hours of accounting in college?
The typical careers for the math grad, in roughly descending order of popularity (at least as of 2000, which was the last time I was around a lot of mathematicians):
[ol]
[li]Education (that is, secondary school teacher; requires special education-oriented curriculum or else postgraduate work)[/li][li]Academia (most commonly in mathematics, computer science, or physics; less commonly in economics, philosophy, or linguistics; post-graduate degree required)[/li][li]Actuarial science (basically, predicting how long people will live and similiar such statistical feats, largely for the insurance industry; requires statistics-heavy curriculum)[/li][li]Other statistician (such as economic analyst)[/li][li]Computer software developer [/li][li]Cryptographer (Interested? Send a note to your mother, and someone from the NSA will contact you. High pay but very few positions available.)[/li][/ol]
Frankly, if you want to be an accountant, don’t bother with a math degree unless you specifically want to do actuarial work. Very little of what you get in a pure math program will help as a general accountant.
At my school - where I’m a compsci major who wishes he were a math major - it’s done with a 121-hour bachelor’s degree and a 30-hour master’s degree.
http://gatton.uky.edu/Academic/Accounting/Home/index.html?section=0
That’s the program’s web site.
Not necessarily - a friend of mine has a degree in natural resource conservation management, and has worked in accounting for the past few years. But it’s low level stuff, and I doubt she’ll go very far without further training.