Help me pick a premed major!

WayOutWestMom
Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:50:12 +0000

Both of my daughters majored in math (and both went to med school). Both chose math because they liked it. One was a natural math talent and the other really had to work at it to do well. Both said that math didn’t get substantially harder as you went further, but it does change in how you approach problems. Both thought it was easier to get good grades UL math classes than Ochem.

There are lots of different branches of mathematics–and not all of them are highly theoretically. Consider applied math which focuses more on the problem solving side of math. You’re not doing hundred of abstract proofs, instead you’re learning techniques to solve problems commonly encountered in business and real world situations.

D2 said probability was probably the most interesting math class she took. It has direct applications in the insurance and risk management industries.

Beside insurance and risk management, math majors are often hired to be data analysts in banking and financial management companies. Math majors are also employed in risk management, data analysis or financial planning offices of city, state and federal governments.
Also by hospitals. A friend of D1’s --and another math major-- was hired by an international telecomm company to plan the optimum way to located cell towers in a region. Still another went to work for an airline doing scheduling and route planning. Electric utility companies hire math majors to manage transmission power load and demand balancing.

Math is also an excellent major for anyone wanting to go into epidemiology (which requires a MPH). Another employment avenue to explore if you want to stay in a healthcare related area. My SIL’s sister is an epidemiologist who works for a regional office of the CDC. Besides, the CDC, every state has a number of epidemiologists working for the state health office tracking outbreaks of measles, influenza and other communicable diseases, children’s vaccination rates, food poisoning reports, animal health reports, death and cancer clusters, etc.

If you’re willing to get a MS or PhD, you can go into healthcare-related field like nuclear medicine technology (making radio-isotopes for cancer treatments), medical physics (oversee the the facilities and equipment for radiation therapy and develop the treatment protocols for individual patients).

So math isn’t a dead end, unemployable major. And math is not all abstract proofs.

But, as one my daughters lamented: Alas there is no math (besides statistics) in med s school. (Though having higher level math can be useful for anesthesiologist.)

P.S. One of my son-in-laws is theoretical mathematician. He’s a professor who used to work in the computer industry. He finds ways to make quantum computers work reliably by compensating for randomness of quantum uncertainties.