Job Prospects for Math Ph.D

mathboy98
Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:49:11 +0000

Ultimately the thing is that an applied math major needs to find a job in some applied field, or presumably that’s the intention. So it matters more what courses you’re interested in – how much pure or applied stuff you do won’t matter too much, unless you’re an applied math major with almost no knowledge of mathematics outside of pure math. But in my opinion, a lot of pure math is fundamental to applications, so foundations in real analysis (at the level of some measure theory), linear algebra, PDEs/ODEs, etc, can be very useful; one notable field where you’ll see these things come in handy is economics.

When a job wants a math major, they probably want someone with good grounding in fundamentals, and the ability to pick up things they need you to know. Some stochastic processes, numerical analysis, etc, are healthy for you, but my humble opinion is that a math major is only what you make of it. One must figure out what jobs are most interesting and/or meet one’s needs, and then get background that is suggested. This is why an applied math major is usually tremendously free in terms of electives (s)he is allowed to take in order to satisfy the major requirements.

Friendly advice: if you like pure math, take plenty of it. Just take a few applied courses and sample what you’re interested in, so you have some idea of what it’s like, and what you might do with it. That is, unless you’re certain of going into pure math academia.