I’m a 17 year old male, and I have been admitted into the University of Delaware. Contrary to (what) most students (say) in my HS, I enjoy learning. My dad is well educated, as he received 8 years of education in the field of chemistry, and my 5 years senior brother is on the track to do the same.
I am undecided as to what to pursue in college. Math has always appealed to me; its objectivity is neat. I also enjoy the classroom-end of science classes (chemistry was most captivating), but I dreaded lab reports. Of course my dad is encouraging me to study chemistry in college, but considering that I loathe labs, I doubt it would be wise to do so.
Off the top of my head, certain engineering fields catch my attention by their sheer appearance and name. For example, aerospace or ballistics or electrical sound like interesting fields, however I don’t know if, once I get knee-deep in them, they will retain their attraction.
As of now, I lay a heavy (but not primary) consideration on an occupation’s potential salary. Some adults, mostly young teachers, claim that as I grow older, a job’s salary will be less significant to me. On the other hand, I admire how I have been brought up and my family’s well-to-do’ness.
You don’t have to decalre a major during your first year in college. I suggest taking a broadly balanced selection of courses (including whatever math and science courses the first-year engineering students are required to take) and seeing what you enjoy most. That will put you in a good position to choose an appropriate major at the start of your sophmore year, when you have a better idea of what you’d like to do.
The best advice I can give is to comment that from personal experience, I learned that potential income should not be such a major factor. It is very little consolation when you go to work every day, despising the thought of another day there.
Not to say you should discount it, but if you can find what you really enjoy in life, then the money will seem less important. I only wish it hadn’t taken me the first 28 years of my life to learn that. But once I did, I have never had less income, and never been happier.
Focus on what most interests you, and then decide if the money is enough to live with.
I’m going to have to second RotorHead - from my 37 yo perspective, it really isn’t about the money. Choosing a career is a huge decision (at 17, I don’t know how anybody is supposed to have the tools to make a decision like that). At the end of the day, if you’re working at a field you love and are enthusiastic about, chances are you will be successful anyway, because it shows when people work at things they love. You have to go to this job and work at it five days a week, 50 weeks a year - if you hate it, you’ll end up leaving it anyway.
Oh, one other thing I’ve learned, and is becoming more accepted - most people don’t have just one career now. I’m on my third now, and I’m not unusual at all. If you love learning, chances are you will find yourself going back to school a couple of times after your first go-round, or upgrading, or branching in a different direction. Nothing’s set in concrete anymore.
… My advice is to pursue what you like, without considering too much how it will translate into a job. I just went through the whole ‘choosing a major’ thing, and now I’m a freshman majoring in English. I have no idea where i’m going, but I do know that I love all my English classes, and studying something I love makes me happy; I’m having a great time.
In your case, I would suggest maybe a major in Math, pure and simple. (Assuming such a major exists… maybe they make you narrow it down; I’m not sure.) It is kind of a neat subject… and a simple major like that is broad enough to cover a lot of subject material. It’s also a great springboard into any other math-related subject you want to pursue. So don’t worry about job prospects or salaries, that’s four years away. I think college is a good time to live for the moment, not the future.
Any higher education of the sort you’re describing will give you the education needed to get decent paying jobs. Once you graduate, every passing year will make the specifics of your education less important, but the simple fact you HAVE one will always have the potential to open doors. As long as you have an education, your hard work and cleverness at work can be used to get ahead. It’s not having an education at all that cripples you.
That said, everyone who tells you the money’s not very important is generally right, within reason. It’d be hard to raise a family on $30K. But above a certain limit you really can’t buy anything else that it does you any good to have, and what really starts to matter is not what you make, but how intelligent you are with your money. My wife and I are hauling in good coin but some stupid spending early in our marriage is making it hard to get ahead, at least until we get it paid off - we’ve learned our lesson the hard way. You may not believe this now but please take it from me; it is entirely possible to be comfortable on $60K a year, or be living paycheck to paycheck of $100K. If you are stupid with money no job will save you.
Just take something you know you’ll enjoy and won’t flunk out of. Trust me, you really can’t predict what job you’ll end up with, but you can safely predict any education will give you more opportunities than no education.
I’m a senior in college, WarlokElf, majoring in chemistry. For the first two years of college, I had nearly all of my classes with engineers and fellow scientists. In fact, as a junior, I briefly thought about changing my major to math, since I already had nearly all the required classes. So it is possible to explore math, chemistry and engineering.
Also, I hated labs in high school as well. A college chemistry lab is a whole different ball game, where you choose your own experiments, play with some wicked cool stuff, come and go as you please, and learn to write.
One of the things I’ve heard about a math major is that it gives you incredible flexibility to move into just about any career. Most people who come out with a Math BSc end up not working in the field of maths. I’ve heard that med and law schools love math undergrads because it teaches them analytical thinking.
Do what interests you. There are TONS of us who have jobs completely unrelated to our current careers. If you study something just because you think it will make you money, you will be in for a long four years.
Admittedly, U of D is known for its sciences, but if you like math, go for it. Math skills will always be needed in any job you have. (Maybe not quite to a great extent, but it certainly won’t be wasted knowledge.)
You’ll have a great time at UD. I did. For both of my BAs.
My first degree is in Biology, and I can tell you that the sciences there are fantastic. Engineering and Chemistry are tops (and extremely well-funded, from DuPont and Gore).
Business is also quite big (if you’ve got a head for math, hey, why not?) The MBNA business school there is also quite good.
If you’re thinking more liberal arts…well…there I have to disagree.
My minor during the time I was pre-med was Irish studies. Which suffered greatly from the fact that there were dwindling staff resources. Fifteen year ago, the programme was as good as it could possibly get. Now all the lecturers have died or left. The only remnants are a stellar collection. (I was heartbroken to miss the Beckett festival this past fall, because they managed to get some very important actors to speak)
The history department has some real stars- bright, enthusiastic people.
The English department, however, is moribund. Not to say I didn’t have fabulous experiences. I can personally reccomend the Chaucer. Even if you’re in Science. But too many of the lecturers who I considered life-changing experiences are no longer there- like my lecturer for Shakespeare. The recent hiring freeze has made certain they aren’t replaced.
There’s plenty of time to figure out exactly what you want to do. And there’s a great amount of variety to be had there.
Don’t worry about the salary. I’m one of those crazy people who says that no amount of money in the world can make up for not wanting to face your life.
Economics is fun and once you get into graduate school, it is highly mathematical. Here is an example of something you might see in economics once you start working on your Ph.D.: http://greywww.kub.nl:2080/greyfiles/center/1994/doc/84.pdf
You can also go into finance which is interesting and pays well. Being an actuary is also very mathematical and ranks as the most rewarding, least stressful job there is.
Then you can just be a mathematician.
Regardless, if you like math then just plan on studying it. You have plenty of time.
First about money. I echo the sentiment that whatever job you have should be one you enjoy, but, given a choice between two fun professions, it isn’t wrong to take the one that pays better. Not having to worry about money has some benefits also.
I agree about not rushing into a major. Go with the major where you find yourself doing your homework first, because it is fun. When I was a high school senior, 35 years ago, the chairman of our math department bugged me to major in math, but, though I was quite good at it, Calculus didn’t thrill me. We had a primitive computer, and I learned how to program it, and that did thrill me. Even today I find ways of writing code, because it is still fun. So, you’ll know what to major in when you see it.
js_africanus - my daughter is majoring in economics at the University of Chicago. There is penty of math there, even for undergraduates.
Just a note on engineering - be prepared for A LOT of work. Engineering is really about how much work you can cram into a limited time span.
Oh, and I disagree that University labs are better than high school labs. All my lab techs have terrible english skills and yell at you for daring to try something slightly different from the lab procedure. In high school, labs were fun and you could play around, experiment, etc.
My advice is to take both freshman writing and the basic Journalism 101 course. The freshman writing is required, but Journalism teaches you to write in a much tighter, clearer, more descriptive way. I no longer follow the rules of college writing, and have yet to get anything below an “A” on any paper I’ve turned in. Most professors appreciate not having to wade through a paper that is loaded with transitions, conditional statements, and the passive voice.
I second MsRobyn about the writing skills. Too many hard science/math people are content to settle for writing in an incoherent, garbled style, and even seem to pride themselves on it. I would suggest that you look on writing skills as another tool in your toolbox - you never know when a job decision might come down to you and some other engineer who can’t write his way out of a paper bag.