Any math majors here?

jpegslayer
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:18:33 +0000

I will be majoring in math next year, but I am not sure if I will be attending UT Austin. Though I’m only a high school senior, I have taken a lot of college math courses such as Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Real Analysis, and Abstract Algebra.

The main thing that I noticed was that it is vastly different from high school math. Differential Equations may be the exception to that, since it is similar to Calculus and is a fairly straightforward computation class (well, this may depend on where you take it). The other classes were more proof-oriented, something I never experience in high school. Though it was frustrating at first, I do actually enjoy the proofs now.

I don’t want to dissuade you from becoming a math major, because really, I think math is awesome. But before you change, you should consider whether you think you’ll like proof-based classes and really thinking about things (for pure math). If you want to be an applied math major, taking a statistics class may help to see if you would enjoy that style of math. Also, if you really enjoy both math and the other major, you should consider double majoring, especially if they overlap (like maybe math and computer science or math and physics), because pure math majors have somewhat limited job opportunities, but combining math with another major will have more opportunities.