Why should I major in math?

Students chose to major in mathematics for many reasons. Some plan to become professional mathematicians or statisticians; other intend to enter some other profession that requires a strong mathematics background; and still others use mathematics as a general Institute major while exploring differing career possibilities.

All these students have some things in common; they like mathematics, they do well in it, and they have the urge to learn more about the parts of mathematics that are only hinted at in the elementary subjects. If you have these qualities, you should consider majoring in mathematics. It is a field of intellectual activity that is both stimulating and challenging, with results that are essential to the world of science and technology.

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What do math majors do after graduation?

After graduation, Mathematics majors do many different things. In recent years the breakdown has been roughly as follows:

• 15% graduate school in mathematics (e.g. MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, Chicago, NYU, Stanford, Columbia, Brown, Univ of Wisconsin, UCSD, UCLA, UIUC, Northeastern, Univ of Washington)
  
  
• 25% graduate school in some other field (e.g. Materials Science, Physics, Computer Science, Statistics, Bioengineering, Philosophy of Science, Linguistics, Ocean Engineering, Business Finance, Acoustics)
  
  
• 25% financial services (e.g. Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Deutche Bank, UBS, DE Shaw)
  
  
• 10% software engineering (e.g. Microsoft, Netcracker)
  
  
• 10% consulting (e.g. Booz Allen Hamilton)
  
  
• 15% other (e.g. lab technician, research assistant, actuary, gap year)

These statistics demonstrate that Mathematics is an exceptionally broad and flexible major at MIT. There are several degree options designed to accommodate a variety of ways mathematics fits into students' plans.

The web offers several good resources to help you explore career options for people with undergraduate mathematics degrees:

• American Math Society
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• MIT Career Office Mathematics Majors Guide

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How good is the MIT math department?

MIT consistently ranks in the top six graduate programs in the country. (The others are Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago.) In 2006, the U. S. News and World Report ranked MIT first and four of the others tied for second.

This excellence at the graduate level is matched by excellence at the undergraduate level, as reflected in many objective measures. The major intercollegiate mathematics competition is the Putnam Examination. Roughly 100 of the nearly 4000 students who take this challenging test each December are MIT students, mostly math majors. MIT always places near the top. It placed first in 2003 and 2004, and while it did not win the 2005 competition it dominated the field: 23 of the top 75 competitors, and three of the top five, were MIT math majors. We also took top honors in last year's COMAP Applied Mathematics competition. MIT undergraduates won the prestigious Morgan Prize for best undergraduate research in 2005 and in 2006.

The MIT Mathematics Department is unusual in the US in that it encompasses both theoretical and applied mathematics, and that applied mathematics houses very strong theoretical computer science and combinatorics components.

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