...maths/statistics in college..options?

Insert name____

Hiya, Just looking for a bit of advice
Ok, I'll get straight to the point...I loved maths in school, it was the only subject I really enjoyed..however I was a tad bit lazy and didnt put the effort in and so dropped down to Ordinary level (I really regret it)
Anyway, I did a different course in college and have got my degree now, but in a subject I dont like much.
I'm thinking of going back and doing some sort of maths degree...or statistics. I did a semester of Statistics in my course and a semester of Management Science, and loved them both. They were the two sudjects I did best in in 3rd yr of my degree.
Anyway, the thing is, what are my options for courses and what are my career options afterwards, like what kind of job cold I get, apart from teaching?
I really regret not doing a subject I was interested in in college, but I stuck it out anyway. I'm kind of lucky in that I'm still only 21 with my degree, but at the moment I am working in a mediochre job because I cannot see myself working in what I did my degree in.
I read some other similar threads and many people have said that even though they loved maths, once they began doing it in college they changed their opinions and gave up. THats another fear of mine, but I think I should give it a chance.

If anyone has a wee bit of spare time could they give me a quick rundown on the different types of maths courses available.
It's also been a few yrs since my leaving cert so I'm probably rusty which could be a problem too.
And one more thing, would going back and doing higher level in my leaving again be a good idea.

I wanted to do the post grad in ucd in Management Science but I wouldnt qualify as my course didnt do enough of it in it

I'm at a loss as to what to do. The rest of my college friends are progressing really well in their jobs as they all loved the course we did...and I'm still searching to find something I enjoy and something I'm good at. I'm hoping maths is the answer
Any help is greatly appreciated
Thanks

Son Goku

Maths is a great course, if you are interested in it.
The underlined part is greatly emphasised. Many people who did the Leaving Cert and go on to do College Math end up not liking it, because they equated liking a subject with being good at it, not being interested in it.
A Maths degree leads to quite a bit of jobs, such as research, actuary or a general boost starter in most office jobs.

As for Statistics, all I know is that it is a very active area of research at the moment. Maynooth has a dedicated Statistics group and so do many British colleges.

whyamihere?

any maths course is going to require a B3 in higher level at least, its a course requirement pretty much everywhere unfortunately. you wud have to repeat to do one and I agree with the above, its very different from LC.

I think its a great course (im in maths in TCD), and its a very solid degree to have, big financial companies love hiring Maths/TP students. You should sit in on some lectures to see for yourself when deciding what to do.

Id check out things like financial economics, econometrics, and so on because it combines a lot of statistics and youre pretty much guaranteed a wellpaying and (hopefully) rewarding job at the end of it. There is an endless supply of these type of postgrad courses.

maths grads usually end up in further study+research/ teaching/ finance+business.

Insert name____

Thanx for that.
Yeah I ...think...I am interested in it.
Any fool proof method of testing whether it would suit me, or if I would suit it!? I'm desperate to find a course/career I like and I'm good at.
I was really interested in the bits of maths we did in college, all the null hypothesis stuff etc (thats probably very basic stuff to you guys! )

I really think maths is the way to go, but I wanna be definite. I dont wanna do another degree in an area I wont end up working in.

Insert name____

whyamihere? wrote:

any maths course is going to require a B3 in higher level at least, its a course requirement pretty much everywhere unfortunately. you wud have to repeat to do one and I agree with the above, its very different from LC.

I think its a great course (im in maths in TCD), and its a very solid degree to have, big financial companies love hiring Maths/TP students. You should sit in on some lectures to see for yourself when deciding what to do.

Id check out things like financial economics, econometrics, and so on because it combines a lot of statistics and youre pretty much guaranteed a wellpaying and (hopefully) rewarding job at the end of it. There is an endless supply of these type of postgrad courses.

maths grads usually end up in further study+research/ teaching/ finance+business.

Thanks for that.
I have a degree in accounting (why, oh why!?!) at the mo so I'm pretty sure I wont be going down the finance route, but you never know
But maybe that might get me into one of the courses you mentioned. I guess I'll just have to do some more research, and maybe talking to my old lecturer might be a good idea.

So confused though, as you say it's gonna be a total different ball game in college than it was in the Lc.
How did you decide it was definitely for you?
Sorry for all the q's by the way and thanks for all your help

whyamihere?

i did an arts degree in UCD first (absolutely no idea wat i wanted to do after LC) and dropped out within 6 weeks (v boring). in the arts degree i did a maths physics course which i liked and LC maths was my favourite subject so i went along with a friend of mine to a couple of lectures in TCD maths and liked what i saw and here i am now.

i wud defo recommend checkin some lectures out, Freshman lectures and Sophister.

Maths in college is a lot more sophisticated and interesting. LC maths shud be more like college maths.

Misticles

i got a b1 in maths ordinary level, i do mathematical science in DIT. in first year. love it and i loved maths all thru secondary school...
i did Arts in UCD, did maths science there as one of my subjects, left in april, didnt like it at all..i would recommend DIT for doing maths...great lecturers.
courses are broad, i do some computer programming too which is handy.

Son Goku

If you found the Null Hypothesis interesting, I'd say it definitely suits you.
It changes in college becuase it's no longer "Hey, look at this thing I've pulled from thin air, lets learn it off by rote", but rather "lets look at how maths works as a coherent system and build up a knowledge of the basic areas."

There are tons of interesting areas, like Differential Geometry and Topology.
And you won't believe how much of how the world works you would be able to understand after a grounding in Maths.
(e.g. Einstein's Relativity is just applied Differential Geometry)

And a good maths degree will at least give you a decent job, if you don't decide on further study.

Another huge change in college is that you will see that maths is no longer just "Maths", you'll see how massive an area it is.
(e.g. How the people studying Algebra mightn't even understand a geometry conference)
So some area will probably suit you.

Insert name____

whyamihere? wrote:

i did an arts degree in UCD first (absolutely no idea wat i wanted to do after LC) and dropped out within 6 weeks (v boring). in the arts degree i did a maths physics course which i liked and LC maths was my favourite subject so i went along with a friend of mine to a couple of lectures in TCD maths and liked what i saw and here i am now.

i wud defo recommend checkin some lectures out, Freshman lectures and Sophister.

Maths in college is a lot more sophisticated and interesting. LC maths shud be more like college maths.

How would I go about doing that, just gatecrash a lecture or two?
I'm thinking an arts degree might be the way to go, with a bit of maths and a bit of statistics or something.
...and how different is leaving cert maths to college...? I reckon its hard to explain that one. It's been so long since doing any kind of proper maths that if I went into any maths lecture now I might just freak out!

I feel like I'm moaning on about my problems too much so sorry if I am.

If anyone has any more advice though I'd be verrry grateful!
Any advice on UK courses might be handy too I guess

Son Goku

Insert name____ wrote:

How would I go about doing that, just gatecrash a lecture or two?
I'm thinking an arts degree might be the way to go, with a bit of maths and a bit of statistics or something.
...and how different is leaving cert maths to college...? I reckon its hard to explain that one. It's been so long since doing any kind of proper maths that if I went into any maths lecture now I might just freak out!

I feel like I'm moaning on about my problems too much so sorry if I am.

If anyone has any more advice though I'd be verrry grateful!
Any advice on UK courses might be handy too I guess

Yeah, thats probably the best idea, at least that way you won't be screwed if you don't like it. If do go through with this make sure you come back here with the maths options open to you, I'll give some advice on what to pick.

Misticles

in UCD they dont notice non UCD people in lectures cos they sre soooo big. if the class is small they might notice though. in the course i do, ya do statistics. il be starting it when i go back. check it out...
http://www.dit.ie/DIT/study/undergraduate/courses/dt205.html

Insert name____

Son Goku wrote:

Yeah, thats probably the best idea, at least that way you won't be screwed if you don't like it. If do go through with this make sure you come back here with the maths options open to you, I'll give some advice on what to pick.

Thanks so much

Another thing though, the whole Null Hypothesis and similar stuff...what kind of maths would this fall under?
I loved that and pretty much all of the management science stuff I did one semester. (I'm racking my brains trying to remember the names of the other stuff we did though!). THe propbability area (even though it was basic and small) was really interesting too.

...do you reckon maths would suit me?? I need reassurance so please say yes!

All opinions, advice etc is appreciated, and keep it coming!

I wont be able to start a course till Sept 07 though due to travelling, but I wanna get it sorted soon enough so I know what I'm coming back too.

Also, another thing (sorry again!)..but can you guys give me a sort of realistic idea or workload, how many hrs of lectures etc. I dont wanna be going in to this blind if you know what I mean. I wanna know exactly what I'm letting myself in for.

Insert name____

Oh, and another thing (sorry!) , should I go the post grad route, or start all over. (i'm not sure which way that works anyway as I'd probably have to repeat my lc maths)

Ok, i'm gonna stop with the q's...now tell me all you know

Misticles

well, first year is about 18 hours a week. workload isnt that bad. a lot of notes though..

Insert name____

Misticles wrote:

well, first year is about 18 hours a week. workload isnt that bad. a lot of notes though..

I was expecting worse than that to be honest, phew!

I have 50 million questions rolling around my head at the mo. I've so much to sort out, things like can I afford to even go back to college, could i survive living at home longer because of it, and loads of other non-maths related things.
I feel that I am definitely going to go for it though in some shape or form. I reckon I'll regret it if I don't. I picked my previous course on a whim, having done NO accounting ever before in school, so I reckon I owe it to myself to do something I like.
Even if I ended up just giving grinds to LC students for the rest of my life I reckon I'd prefer that alot more to what I'm doing now


(p.s keep the advice coming pretty please. I'll be checking bck first thing )

Thank you all so much.

Delphi91

U.L. do a postgrad in maths, stats and computing which I did and found it very interesting. You need to have a degree with some maths in it, but apart from that I'm not sure of any other requirements. AFAIK it's not going to be offered in the coming year as it's being refined.

I progressed on to a MSc out of it and am considering a PhD (and this is after not doing honours maths for LC).

If stats is your interest, UL has a large number of people doing postgrad work in stats.

Pythia

You can do a Higher Diploma in Maths in UCD which basically converts your degree to a maths one and then you can go onto an M.Sc in Maths.
Here is some info on it.
http://maths.ucd.ie/postgradprogmaths.html#Higher_Diploma_in_Mathematical_Science

David19

You say you like maths, particularly statistics and management science? Trinity do a course combining these very subjects. Its called MSISS:

http://www.tcd.ie/Statistics/students/index.shtml

You should take a look around that site, it sounds interesting. It wouldn't be as theoretical as pure maths but would still contain quite a bit to keep it interesting, especially stats. Its part of the engineering department and you actually share quite a few classes with the engineers. It seems like a very good degree to have judging by the jobs students get and the subjects studied. It would go well with accounting.

With respect to a maths degree, Im doing one myself. It is very hard to know if you'll like it or not. Apart from going to lectures you could look at a couple of maths text books and see what you think. They'll give you some idea of what you'll actually be doing.

Btw I think you'll need to do LC honours maths. Also it should be noted that if you started in maths you might be able to change into another course easily enough, if you found it too tough.

smiles

Maths / Stats is good, but try to get some analysis type subjects in, or else you'll be stuck reviewing someone elses data.

I'm doing Financial Maths and Economics in NUI, Galway and it's a brilliant course, thought I'd be more interested in the Economics, but the Maths really works for me, and the mix of subjects are great.

I'm doing a masters in maths and mathsphysics. This year I'm doing some 3rd and 4th year courses in maths, and I love it. But when I started college, I hated maths in 1st and 2nd year. It tends to pick up a lot in 3rd and 4th.