 | Teacher: If you like to give back to your community and serve kids,
teaching mathematics at the secondary school level can be very rewarding.
Every year, roughly half of the positions advertised for secondary school
teachers in math go unfilled. Schools are desperate for caring, qualified math
majors.
|
| Computers: Perhaps the most popular and among the most lucrative
jobs for math majors is in the computer industry. Since computer programming
is very mathematical, it makes sense that many math majors do very well in it;
but math majors are qualified to address more fundamental issues in the design
of the project and in creating new algorithms for new problems. Furthermore,
many issues in computers like computer graphics, compression of pictures and
sound for the web, and setting up networks (to name a few examples) involve a
great deal of mathematics, and as a result, many computer companies
specifically hire math majors.
|
| Engineering: Many of the same reasons that math majors end up in
the computer industry also apply to fields of engineering. Engineering
involves a great deal of math, and as a result, many engineering firms hire
math majors. Your training in math will prepare you to quickly learn the
specific issues in a new field, and your creative problem solving skills will
be a strong asset to the engineering firm.
|
| Biotech: There has been a great deal of interest in mathematical
biology because of many recent breakthroughs in studying DNA and proteins.
Many biotech companies hire mathematics majors because of the high (and
growing) mathematical content of the field.
|
| Cryptography: From the U. S. National Security Agency to a smaller
company doing commerce on the web, the demand for mathematicians that can
understand the number-theoretic issues in cryptography is great.
|
| Actuary: Among the highest-paid professions are actuaries, who
compute the statistics behind life insurance tables and other related tables.
More information is at
http://BeAnActuary.org/. You can find listings of actuarial jobs at
http://www.actuaryjobs.com, a site
hosted by D.W. Simpson Actuarial Search.
|
| Statistician More generally, the proliferation of statistics in
everything ranging from business to government has brought many organizations
to seek math majors. Find out more at
http://www.amstat.org/education/careers.html.
|
| Government Most branches and agencies in the U. S. government use
mathematicians, for the reasons mentioned above. Particularly noteworthy are
the Department of Defense,
the National Security
Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the General
Accounting Office.
|
| Finance Most financial companies hire mathematicians to study
financial models and make predictions based on statistical evidence. As an
example, here is a list of jobs for math majors at
J. P. Morgan.
|
| Management Management consulting firms look for individuals who can
quickly find the root of a problem, and find creative and effective solutions,
and critically choose from among many options. As a result, math majors are in
particularly high demand from management consulting firms like
McKinsey and Co.
|
| Others More information can be obtained at
http://www.ams.org/careers. There
are profiles of individual careers at
http://www.maa.org/careers/index.html. |
