I’m currently a freshman at a T75 studying finance and math and am considering only declaring mathematics. I have always performed well in maths but took finance as a compromise for career prospects. However, over this year, I have gotten deeply interested in understanding mathematic relations in my calculus and analytic geometry, and formal logic class and have realized I enjoy abstract reasoning and problem solving.
However, I’m still unsure about switching because of the career prospects in pure math. I’m quite sure I want to pursue grad school, but have seen disparaging posts of people working in unfulfilling or unrelated fields. My current trajectory is towards corporate/quantitative finance, but want to work in an intellectually fulfilling career like research and am willing to sacrifice salary for that end.
So I am considering dropping finance and declaring mathematics at my major. I have to declare next semester, and am still at a point where all the business courses I took would still count towards a mathematics major. Would this help me?
Comments
Can you double major? Minor in math?
I am in medicine but I loved math intellectually so I double majored. I realized I only had this chance to learn math formally but I wasn’t sure if I would give up medicine for it so I added the major later and also minored in physics. This was a while ago so not sure how feasible it is now. I did computational research after undergrad (and still do as an MD-PhD) and the math framework helped me a lot.
My friends that did pure math ended up having good corporate careers even without going to grad school, FWIW. I don’t think there is a wrong decision as long as you enjoy what you do and are good at it, and gain valuable experiences along the way.
Math 100%. The only reason I could think of to stick with finance is if you think you’d take a (big) gpa hit doing math or if certain recruiting pipelines are only available to finance majors at your school.