Thinking of Grad School?


See the GT Grad School pages "Thinking about Grad School."

 

There are two ways to pursue grad School, either the PhD, or a Masters.

Masters:  Generally two year programs.  And recently there have been several more focused programs, in a variety of topics of increasing importance.  These include: bioinformatics, quantitative finance, atmospherics, computational and applied mathematics.   Of course these courses of studies tend to be quite computational in nature. Be sure to highlight your computing skills.

Georgia Tech offers programs of interest here:  Bioinformatics, andquantitative finance.

A starting point is a site hosted by the Sloan Foundation,   Sciencemasters.com   They have a list of programs they have sponsored,  as well as those that they have not.    This site is not wholly inclusive!  If you have more suggestions for links, let me know.

Ph.D.  Generally a five year program.  With the increased homeland security concerns, there is a strong interest in boosting the number of American PhDs.  Currently, there are about 1000 Math PhDs/year, with just about 50% being American.

Each year, the American Mathematical Society publishes an extensive survey of the profession.  It includes employment information on the the new PhDs.  (5% unemployment for the 2001 new PhDs) as well as salary information. Read the February 2002 report to see how it relates to your interests in math.

Here are the highlights from the report \
  • The unemployment rate is 3.7%, up from 3.3 the previous year.
  • The number of new PhDs has dropped 10% over the last four years, due almost entirely to a drop in non--US citizen PhDs. (I would expect this trend to continue.--ML)
  • Of 919 new PhDs, 818 were employed in the US, and 574 have academic employment. 274, or 30% of those employed, work in goverment or industry.
  • The percentage of women new PhDs is 31.2%, which is high. This percentage seems to be trending higher.
  • Median salaries for new PhDs taking academic positions was for 9-10 months $41,300 for females and $43,000 for males.
  •  Doing math research is quite hard.  The insights that lead to substantial advances are won only by very hard effort.  At the same time, if struggling with math is what you love to do, and you get paid to do it, life is pretty darn good.   Mathematical research remains vital, and is central to a great many of the coming technological advances.  So collectively we will need people with these sorts of skills.  There is a future in it.

    Still not sure?  And still going to apply for grad school?   Go ahead and pursue the PhD.  That is where most of the money  and  the options are.