I’m a senior in high school and I’m currently taking Calculus BC. Math is one of my favorite/best subjects, but I’m not interested in going into a math-related career. My math teacher said minoring in math is really good, even if your career has nothing to do with your future job because it looks spectacular on resumes. I’m not sure if she’s just saying that because she’s a math teacher, but if minoring in math does look great on resumes, I’d be glad to do so.
FYI, I’m interested in going to dental school after college.
For dental school, you want to protect your GPA before all else. Upper level college math is very different than high school calculus. I’d be sure that it’s for you - and that you could get good grades in it - before committing to a minor.
On the other hand, if math really is your best and favorite subject, it can be a perfectly good major to do along with your pre-dental course work, which does not require any specific major.
It is rather doubtful that a dentist’s undergraduate major or minor matters in his/her dentistry career.
Upper level math in college (real analysis, abstract algebra, etc.) does emphasize rigorous proofs of theorems.
I started a minor in math, but didn’t finish it, and I do regret not finishing it. Your teacher is right, to a point - a math minor does look good on resumes for a lot of jobs, because so many jobs these days emphasize logical and quantitative skills and many well-paying fields involve data analysis. And even if you think you want a non-math-related career, you’d be surprised how many careers are directly or indirectly related to math.
A math minor is good preparation for that. At most places a math minor is 5-7 courses; at my alma mater, it was 6: one course in computer programming plus two semesters of calculus, linear algebra, set theory, and then an elective above the 200-level (I was going to take the prob & stat sequence). At Columbia, where I went to grad school, the math concentration was the calculus sequence (through calculus IV), linear algebra, and then 4 additional math classes of your choice at or above the 2000-level - you create the program in consultation with an advisor. (The Columbia math department is very flexible.) So that’s a total of 9 classes, although it can be fewer if you have started the calculus sequence before college.
It’s true that if you are interested in dental school the math minor might not matter that much…to dental schools. But students change their mind about what they want to do all the time, especially when they’re 17 or 18. You could decide halfway through college that you no longer want to be a dentist, or that you want to work for a few years in between college and dental school. And even after you get your DDS and practice, you may decide you want to go into a health consulting career or do something else that combines your allied health expertise with something else.