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What Jobs are Available for Math Majors?
Asmor asks: "I'm currently a CS major/math minor in college, who's strongly considering a role reversal. I like working with computers as a hobby, but I'm not so sure it's what I'd want to do for a living. On the other hand, I love math, especially in its pure and abstract forms. I would like to get a doctorate some day, but ideally I'd like to find a job as soon as I get my bachelor's. I've expressed this interest to important people in my life (like my parents and such) and the general consensus is that there aren't any jobs for math majors. I can't really disagree. Aside from teaching it, something I'm not sure I'd want to do, I can't think of any jobs for math majors. So, what options are out there for me if I did decide to switch? Would my future consist of high school math classes? Also, how much work is involved?"
But only if you're REALLY good at math. I'm told that the exam is a extremely difficult.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I took an Intermediate Calculus course this Spring as an elective, and I was the only non-Math major in the room (I'm Computer Science)... I asked around and I'd say 99% of the people in that class planned on getting a teaching certificate to become grade school math teachers.
I suppose the other 1% goes on to get a Masters and PhD in Math and stays at the University forever.
I'm a high school teacher, but there are plently of community colleges in the same fix (I do them part time on occasion as well). I know the community colleges around here allow their teachers to also work tech if they desire. This way, they can keep their skills sharp and up to date.
Search back issues of the Wall Street Journal. A few months back (March-to-May timeframe I think) there was a front-page article (might have been on the front page of section B or C) that mentioned a specific teacher, a specific statistical class, and the 6-figure incomes that graduates of this class got in Wall Street finance firms. Basic subject of the class was how to calculate the value of each part of a transaction and figure out the risk/reward for it as an investment. Derivitives and how to calculate them are big now, it is what Hedge Funds are doing.
Here a few possibilties
1. Actuarial Science
Lots of probability and statistics if that's your thing. I've heard the qualification exams are pretty tough, and since you haven't really devoted study to it as an undergrad, you'd have to get some graduate education before you could even hope for a job.
2. Biostatistics (and other things like this)
Again, this would require some more education, but there's a good chance of you getting a job. Biological research is only going to continue to grow, and there's always room for someone to do the important mathematics.
3. Computer Science
I'm sure other people will point this kind of thing out, but places like Google, etc. definitely don't mind having mathematicians with CS background for things like algorithm development and the like.
4. Mathematics
Stick with it and get your PhD in pure (or applied) mathematics. Get a post-doc, and then a professorship, and enjoy a rewarding (intellectually) life in academia. If you really love it, this is a great way to go.
I think the main theme of this post is probably that the best way to ensure that you get a job (that does not involve teaching minors) is to keep going in your education. That is not to say that you can't get a job with a BS, but I think you'll find there's a lot more open to you in today's world with at least an MS.
I was rather like you when I was in undergrad (in the late 90's). I started out as a Math major (Operations Research) which required certain CS classes. As I learned more about CS, I found that there is a very rich mathematical basis for Computer Science -- from the theories of computation to graphics to algorithm analysis. Almost any serious PhD in CS involves a heavy dose of mathematics in one form or another. Think of it as applied mathematics, in a geeky twisted way :)
:)
Part of what I'm saying is that you can do CS and not end up as a programmer, per se.
The other half of the equation is that there *are* significant (well-paying) jobs for mathematicians. Now, I doubt that you'd want to (or could) seriously pursue any of them with just a BS, but a PhD need not be a requirement. My S/O's employer has several math/statistics majors on staff who perform marketing analysis, trending, etc... some of it rather high-powered stuff. If you look into the Actuarial or Operations Research fields (if that floats your boat), there are awesome opportunities.
Whatever direction you choose, I strongly encourage you to go past a BS -- at least stay in school through an MS program. For one thing, it opens more doors down the road (I've gotten at least two jobs partially because I have an MS/CS). More importantly though, IMHO, it makes you a better professional; you learn a heck of a lot more in grad school than in undergrad -- at least that was my experience. You study your subject in far more depth and with far more rigor than in undergrad and you're treated more like a colleague than a student. It's an awesome experience, particularly if your're more of the geeky theoretical type
Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it. Of course, you can always go back and get a second degree in underwater basket weaving or Anthropology, but it's a heck of a lot easier to get it right the first time. The sooner you identify a career path (at least vaguely), the better choices you can make in courses, internships, research focus, etc.
Good luck to you!
The NSA is the largest single employer of mathematicians in the world. ... Or you could do finance.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
I was a math/history double major, and am now doing neuroscience... but that's besides the point.
With a pure math BA you can basically go to any engineering, physics, biology, neuroscience, finance, econ, cs, etc masters or PhD program and do just fine. The important part about a math degree, is that it gives you the background and experience required to learn specific applications really quickly. There's a huge demand out there for people who are talented at math, although most of this demand isn't 'pure' math per se, there are a lot of interesting applied problems you can work on that do have theoretical interest to a mathematician.
You should really have no problem finding a job or getting into grad school in almost any tech/science type field that you're interested in coming out college with a BA in Math. The great thing about a math major, against a more specific applied major, is that you learn how to think about many of the applied problems in a deeper way, and since you're aquainted with the underlying theory, you can much more easily link various ideas that are only taught at a plug and play level in the applied fields (for example, most IOE curriculum is just rather narrow subset of graph theory & combinatorics).
Personally, I was interested in a lot of things as an undergrad, and decided to major in math since it basically kept all my options open on a grad/job level, and I certainly haven't regretted that decision.
... of all! -- National Security Agency, or NSA (for short) -- really, the largest employer of mathematicians of all...
Paul B.
I think you'll find the bioinformatics field to be broad enough to meet just about any interest that you may have - work ranges from programming pattern recognition/alignment software (for protein or DNA work) to mathematical modeling of protein networks. Don't worry if biology isn't your greatest strength as you'll be working as a programmer/mathematician solving a biological problem, not as a biologist working with computers (in fact, graduate level programs in bioinformatics tend to recruit computer science majors as the biology/biochem/etc majors don't have the required background).
Some links for further information:
International Society for Computational Biology
National Institute of Health
UCSD
Stanford
IBM
"Quite a few people end up making a living doing something not directly related to their major."
Exactly. Math was one of my majors. I am in charge of IT where I work--never had a comp sci class in my life. There are a lot of career opportunities in business/management for Math majors--ever test your logic/reasoning skills against an MBA (outside finance or econ concentration)? Most business school graduates lack quantitaitive analysis skills.
My advise--make sure you have a well rounded background. Take some literature classes to improve your language/analysis skills. A couple econ classes would be useful--I never took them, but read through macro and micro economics text books and found my knowledge of how the economy works to be on par with the typical business major.
When I hire people for the tech department for the ISP I run, I look for smart, well rounded people who have the capability and self motivated interest to learn. If someone is uncanny enough--like me when I learned economics--to learn a field/skillset on their own, has proven their logic/reasoning skills with a math major, and is a well rounded person with good communications skills, then I would hire that person in a heartbeat. I would not care what job they were being hired for--that person would be capable of being agile and competant in nearly any role they were in.
I was going to say it differently: {jobs for the otherwise uneducated} U {math teacher}
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Look into jobs at utility companies. There's a lot of math that goes into predicting how much power, natural gas, etc. that will get used in the next hour/day/month/year so that appropriate load values can be purchased. Also, look to insurance companies. I've got a friend that's a math major, and she's studying for a certificate in actuarial accounting while working for a large insurance company. In either case, wages are about what you'd expect to get in the computer field.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
I thought engineering degrees open up engineering jobs. What engineering jobs at NASA are available to 4 year math majors?
The poster is talking about a 4 year degree in math, and probably doesn't yet have an area of specialization. Specialization would determine what areas a mathematician might go into, which are basically teaching, crypto, Wall Street, or some branch of science.
With only the basic math knowledge from a typical 4 year degree, the guy could be looking at getting some entry level science job, getting a job in an area where he has some other interest or skill (such as a double major in bio or hobby programming, etc.), or going to grad school.
Basically, a math major is a weird sort of liberal arts major. It's not really science and it's not really a Humanity major. It's sort of like being a linguistics major, i.e. math:$science as linguistics:$language. Speaking of language, If the student has good English language skills, he or she might even consider law school. I don't mean being an expert in Elizabethan Poetry, but the ability to read and write. (However, just the fact that he is a slashdotter makes me less hopeful that he has these skills.)
Another possible job that, while teaching, is different from teaching in the classroom, is that of a private tutor. I have a good friend who is now a math professor. He made huge amounts of money tutoring rich Asian kids during and after his Master's work and even after he got his doctorate. Partly, it was the prestige of the parents being able to tell other parents that they had hired someone of his caliber and credentials that brought in the dough. But we're talking $50 -$75 an hour! He got his start right after college working for a tutoring service, which got him plugged into the Korean community here in Los Angeles.
Anyway, all of this is to say that he's fucked if he wants a "math" job straight out of college. Without any further qualifiers, he's got just as good a chance for a job as an Art History major.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
as other posters have pointed out becoming an actuary is one career choice - its quite a big committment in terms of working your way through the exams (lots of people are quite pleased to see the end of them when they finish university) ;) and in some specific cases extend from there a little bit. But its by no means hard abstract math - more applied specific math.
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My experience is that the math in the exams will probably start at about what you could comfortably do at 18 (but may have forgotten since
The key requirement for the job (aside from passsing the exams) is IMHO enjoying working with numbers all day
if the exams put you off, consider "quant" work in the finance field
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/047
I think traditionally they've picked up people with PhD's in Math and Physics who didn't want to continue in those fields (or wanted to multiply their earnings subsatntially). Hedge funds, investment banks, etc are the potential employers.
Bullshit.
the degree is worth more than you think.
Math majors get hired all the time. The major appears more esoteric than electrical engineer but there are lots of jobs out there where a variety of degrees can meet the requirements. In addition to that alot of fields prefer job candidates with more applied math skills like machine learning, computer vision and medical imaging. And, like mentioned above, financial companies have math heavy positions to look for credit card fraud and market modeling (but to work on wall street you will probably need an advanced degree).
When I was getting my degree (computational physics) I too was worried about my qualifications and felt I had to "specialize" or else I wouldnt be marketable. I am glad I did it but in the end what mattered more is I could show that I could do decent work by having a senior paper. My first job was doing semiconductor device fabrication in a research lab and I had almost no experience in the field. Now I am doing machine learning and work with mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers. We all have our strengths but we all do very similar work.
And, for what it is worth, if you go to http://jobsearch.usajobs.opm.gov/ and search for jobs with the keyword AST (aerospace technology), the qualifications say
"Basic Education Requirement: A bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with major study in an appropriate field of engineering, physical science, life science, computer science, or mathematics (not engineering technology). "
Those are the NASA jobs avaliable to math and engineering majors
I have secretly hidden some mispelled words in this post. Can you find them?
About the Wall Street job: actually, math modelling doesn't take much, maybe a book or two on financial math and you're set. I've been told I could pick it up in a month or so. The hard part is being good.
I used to work at an international bank that had a room full of serious math heads who used various heavy duty software packages and insane Excel sheets to perform complex analysis and prediciton on share prices. This, along with the last 5 years' prices for the various stocks were fed in to the bank's modelling systems running on a Cray to predict their exposure on the markets in real-time to ensure they didn't close the day with balance ratios that broke the banking regulations. They earned insane money but IMHO they deserved it. I sat in on a presentation they did that was supposed to be a high level overview but frankly I was lost after the 'Good morning ladies and gentleman' bit.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Without the story poster giving us information about who he is and what he is interested in, we can't really tell him what he's good for. And as far as your career goes, you wouldn't have gotten in if it wasn't an area that you were at least interested in, let alone prepared for.
The part about his being fucked and that his degree is "as good as an Art History major" was a joke. I forgot to follow it with a smiley for the humor impaired. Forgive me.
But I think you took exception to my comparing a Math major to the so called Liberal Arts. Do you consciously or unconsciously look down on the various humanities and social science majors? Maybe I'm wrong about this. Correct me if I am.
By the way, I checked that link. I don't know if this was intentional or merely carelessness on your part, but you left off some of the requirements for those jobs:
(Emphasis mine)
I think that gives a bit of a clue as to what they're looking for. Sure, you can apply if you're fresh out of college. But lets face it. Aerospace is not really a growing field and it's highly competitive, even for entry level jobs.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
USAJOBS is a great start. I'm an engineer at NASA and we always need people with strong mathematical backgrounds. All engineering research these days requires in-depth math to connect such projects to complicated science objectives. We've hired several math types to do analysis for us that do not require a large engineering background as many tough engineering problems often reduce to math problems that we can hand over. Linearizing non-linear detectors, flowing measurement uncertainty through a system, turning science requirements into engineering requirents, bla bla bla.
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
Of course, it takes quite a few years and a lot of work to get a Ph.D, so take that into consideration -- make sure you like it.
Another option that a few people have mentioned is financial services. A lot of brokerage firms on Wall Street love to hire math majors with CS knowledge. The math is needed for financial modeling and the CS is needed in order to implement those models in actual trading programs. Out of all of my classmates who work at companies, about half have chosen this route. Contrary to what a lot of the comments here have stated, it is in fact quite possible to get a job in a trading firm with only a bachelors degree, but of course your salary will be lower than if you had a Ph.D.
It is definitely not true that math majors have no jobs. If your parents need convincing, look up the recent Business Week cover story from a few months ago about the exploding number of job opportunities for math majors in the current information driven economy. The myth that math majors only have teaching jobs is something that was maybe possibly true 20-30 years ago when computers were not a big deal and manufacturing was dominant, but it's not true anymore. Nowadays math majors are in higher demand than ever because tech skills are so complex that employers increasingly look for more foundational training such as a mathematics background as opposed to someone who has already specialized in some narrow subject area before even leaving school.