<p>//I am sorry if I put this into the wrong section, this looked like the best choice </p>
<p>Hello there!</p>
<p>Long story short, I am graduating from high school in two months, I am expected to get straight A’s (we don’t have A*) and I am going to take a gap year. I was applying to UK universities this year for Computer Science, I have got accepted to all of my choices (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Aberdeen) except Oxford, because I did not have enough time to prepare for MAT and I scored just an average score, which clearly is not enough.</p>
<p>So during this gap year, I will prepare for SAT. Maths on SAT is really easy, compared to Oxford’s MAT, but anyway, I still study tons of it, basically first year college stuff, because I think that it will surely help me on next year’s MAT (as I will apply to UK as well). As I did not have Physics on high school, I will have to study that as well, but as I found out, the difficulty is just about the same as Maths, so I am not worried. Main problem is going to be Critical Reading & Writing, I have a private native American tutor and he says that my only problem is vocabulary, but with nearly 1 year of preparation, I should be fine.</p>
<p>So I will apply again to Oxford for computer science, I hope that with such a long preparation I should be able to get in quite easily, but mainly, I will apply to US colleges. MIT, Harvard and Stanford are the most obvious choices, I am not sure yet where else I will apply, but I guess that mainly to need-blind admission colleges.</p>
<p>What I am worried about, even though it is really soon to talk about such things, is that I am not sure what should I study. </p>
<p>I really like Maths. Since elementary school, I always had excellent grades from Maths and I never had to put any effort into it. Things changed on high school, I still had straight A’s but as I realized, I had no chance to score highly on MAT, as our education syllabuses are totally different then those in the UK. (we don’t have calculus on high school, instead, we have, excuse me, ****loads of geometry). So I took a two months break from school and basically, I spent 10 hours per day studying maths from British textbooks. What I realized was that mathematics is the only thing that really entertains me, together with computers, so choice was obvious - Computer Science. I even took an online course from Harvard - CS50x, so I get to know some fundamentals. </p>
<p>I always …ok, not always, but since the moment I started to care about higher education, I wanted to get a PhD. I never really cared about the salary, it was never my priority and it still isn’t. Getting a PhD means, at least I think it does, that you are smart, that you made some effort and that you have self-respect. I have been told to study what entertains me, and that’s what I am going to do.</p>
<p>However, over the time, I started to check what salaries look like. And frankly, salaries on Wall Street are much more interesting than those in IT companies. I still like Computer Science, Maths and let’s say even Physics, but I started to wonder if finance wouldn’t be a better choice. It involves maths, but it would hurt me to leave CS. </p>
<p>So currently, I have no idea what to study. Maybe get a bachelor in Applied Maths and PhD in Computer Science? And work as Quant analyst? Or forget PhD and get MBA instead? Or take CompSci for major, maths for minor and get into finance like that? Or study just applied maths? Or maybe CompSci for major and finance for minor? Or maybe double major? (tho I am not sure if it is possible on top10 university, workload has to be crazy) I really do not know. There are many “combinations” and I am not sure which path should I take. Only thing I know that I do not want to go straight into Economics, I would like to “keep in touch” with CompSci. </p>
<p>I would really like to have PhD, but as I discovered, many people say that it is not necessary to get into “high finance jobs”. MBA would be a better choice, but getting a MBA means that I have to work for at least two years after graduation and it would cost me tons of money to get it, especially from Harvard or similar graduate school. </p>
<p>Or should I just forget all of this and get bachelor, masters and doctorate in Computer Science and work in research?</p>
<p>Any advises will be much appreciated.</p>