I attended Rose-Hulman (a school very similar to Harvey Mudd) and majored in mathematics (class of 2008). I worked for two years as a research analyst for MIT Lincoln Laboratory and then earned my master’s degree in applied mathematics. I am currently in my 2nd year of a PhD program in applied mathematics, focusing on machine learning in computer vision.
I have written posts about jobs/school/future here, here, and here. I also recommend reading this and this regarding grad school.
The criteria for your friend are not very specific and I suspect that signficantly many more specific factors are needed to decide a good route forward. However, in a very broad sense, these are my observations:
(1) Do not go to graduate school, except possibly just to earn a very technically relevant master’s degree.
(2) Learn ways to “make a difference” or “derive utilons from activities” through your non-professional work life. Technological work is almost exclusively the action of creating value for a profit-driven entity. Work that is not highly focused on this task will probably not be intellectually stimulating enough to leave you feeling content with what you’re doing.
(3) Along the lines of (2), do not discount what money can get you. Money is not everything and there’s plenty of evidence that it only weakly correlates with happiness. However, if you want to achieve certain goals, you’ll need to finance them. For example, if you work at a hedge fund and are earning over 6 figures for decades, you’ll likely be in a position to offer prizes or scholarships in a form of charity angelbehavior. This is not a suggestion that you should chase money, but give fair consideration to the idea that you can accomplish a lot more goals later on if you spend a few years of your young life working a bit more doggishly towards profit than might seem “benevolent” by most people.
Tenured faculty positions will not exist by the time your friend is in a position to try for one. More over, this friend will have to spend 5-6 years doing unpleasant computer programming work as a graduate assistant, followed by 2-4 years as a low-paid post-doc with sub-par insurance, followed by between 4 and 10 years of time as an assistant professor, and only then will they really be able to “calm down” and have a normal life if they are awarded tenure.
If you can prevent yourself from desiring the PhD or adopting the false belief that PhD == chance to do intrepid, avant garde intellectual research, then you’ll be far ahead of the field. Make your peace with doing software development / data analysis for a bank / hedge fund / consulting company / software company … live well below your means … and explore lots of volunteer opportunities, open source software projects, etc., to form your worldview about which domain you will try to influence later on.
I’m sure that TONS of people will disagree with me, which is OK. You definitely should investigate the alternatives to everything I am saying. This is just my life experience and what I can ascertain from studying the same exact problem after already sinking ~3 years into grad school.
If your friend does decide to pursue mathematics grad school even after reflecting on all this and reading my other posts, feel free to private message me and I can give more targeted advice about how to look for an adviser and how to choose a good fitting university, field of study, etc.
Thank you for your advice. I wasn’t really sure what a grad student’s life is like and given the high opportunity cost and limited benefits it seems like a bad idea all around.
I attended Rose-Hulman (a school very similar to Harvey Mudd) and majored in mathematics (class of 2008). I worked for two years as a research analyst for MIT Lincoln Laboratory and then earned my master’s degree in applied mathematics. I am currently in my 2nd year of a PhD program in applied mathematics, focusing on machine learning in computer vision.
I have written posts about jobs/school/future here, here, and here. I also recommend reading this and this regarding grad school.
The criteria for your friend are not very specific and I suspect that signficantly many more specific factors are needed to decide a good route forward. However, in a very broad sense, these are my observations:
(1) Do not go to graduate school, except possibly just to earn a very technically relevant master’s degree.
(2) Learn ways to “make a difference” or “derive utilons from activities” through your non-professional work life. Technological work is almost exclusively the action of creating value for a profit-driven entity. Work that is not highly focused on this task will probably not be intellectually stimulating enough to leave you feeling content with what you’re doing.
(3) Along the lines of (2), do not discount what money can get you. Money is not everything and there’s plenty of evidence that it only weakly correlates with happiness. However, if you want to achieve certain goals, you’ll need to finance them. For example, if you work at a hedge fund and are earning over 6 figures for decades, you’ll likely be in a position to offer prizes or scholarships in a form of charity angel behavior. This is not a suggestion that you should chase money, but give fair consideration to the idea that you can accomplish a lot more goals later on if you spend a few years of your young life working a bit more doggishly towards profit than might seem “benevolent” by most people.
Tenured faculty positions will not exist by the time your friend is in a position to try for one. More over, this friend will have to spend 5-6 years doing unpleasant computer programming work as a graduate assistant, followed by 2-4 years as a low-paid post-doc with sub-par insurance, followed by between 4 and 10 years of time as an assistant professor, and only then will they really be able to “calm down” and have a normal life if they are awarded tenure.
If you can prevent yourself from desiring the PhD or adopting the false belief that PhD == chance to do intrepid, avant garde intellectual research, then you’ll be far ahead of the field. Make your peace with doing software development / data analysis for a bank / hedge fund / consulting company / software company … live well below your means … and explore lots of volunteer opportunities, open source software projects, etc., to form your worldview about which domain you will try to influence later on.
I’m sure that TONS of people will disagree with me, which is OK. You definitely should investigate the alternatives to everything I am saying. This is just my life experience and what I can ascertain from studying the same exact problem after already sinking ~3 years into grad school.
If your friend does decide to pursue mathematics grad school even after reflecting on all this and reading my other posts, feel free to private message me and I can give more targeted advice about how to look for an adviser and how to choose a good fitting university, field of study, etc.
Thank you for your advice. I wasn’t really sure what a grad student’s life is like and given the high opportunity cost and limited benefits it seems like a bad idea all around.