Maths career advice please.

I started a Bsc in Actuarial Science this year. I can no longer take it. It's so boring. I wouldn't be able to do two years of nothing but stats. But the good news for me is that I've finally realised what I really want to do in life. I want to do pure maths, do a postgraduate, keep learning and go down that academic route.

That basically means changing degrees. The most mathsy one at LSE is Maths with Economics. Is that an okay Bsc to then go on to a Maths Msc at some other decent uni?
Here are the modules: All maths apart from one stats and three econ:
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/degreeProgrammes2011/mathematicsAndEconomics/G1L1_BSc_MathEc.aspx

I've suddenly realised that I ought to do something that matters that I like so please don't sugar the pill here. If it isn't good enough I'll drop out and do a degree I actually love somewhere else in a year.

I'm also going to book at the careers service but any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

I appreciate this doesn't help with your dilemma, but I'm currently holding an offer for Actuarial Science from LSE. Does everyone find it as boring as you're making it out to be? What would you say the main pros/cons of the course are? Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I'm currently in a dilemma regarding which offer to accept, so any advice atall would be appreciated.

On a regular basis, I talk to only four people doing the same degree as me And one of them lives in my halls and I'd probably be friends with anyway. It's because we're a rare bunch and the classes for people only doing actuarial science. The others in my classes I did try to talk to but soon realised it'sl difficult due to so-called cultural barriers or some ridiculous bull**** like that, I don't know. It's tragic though.

One of them loves Actuarial Science. President of the society, unnatural passion for it. Good for him. Each to their own I guess. I'll never, ever understand why, though. I do envy him though, lol.

Another dislikes it and is only doing it for the money. I know because he told me. Appreciate his honesty.

The other two dislike maths and likes stats. Not sure about their opinion on actuarial science. They're not involved in the society or anything like that so I imagine it's just a safe career.

In my opinion it's a boring course but anice job at the end. My maths teacher told me yesterday that the profession seems to have stagnated a bit and isn't very interesting because of that. Even if it was booming, it would be hard for me to find it interesting. It's a good career but if you're going for it, for God sake have something else in your life to keep yourself sane. It's still miles better than going into investment banking for money people don't even know what they want to spend on, though.

Ok thanks, what percentage of the course is Stats as opposed to Pure Maths? I find Stats pretty interesting in school (Although I only do S1, and I imagine it gets an awful lot more difficult than S1 lol) Does everyone that you speak to thats doing the course want to be an actuary at the end of it? Or are there people who want to go into other areas eg. Investment Banking

They all want to be actuaries (otherwise they'd be doing economics or maths and econ or something).

You found S1 intersting? Even my enthusiastic friend didn't find S1 interesting. Presumibly it does eventurally get harder at university.

You have an offer. I'm quite suprised you didn't check what modules you'll be studying. It's one stats in year 1, then nothing but stats in 2 and 3. The module in year 1 is disgusting. It's not even interesting because you just learn techniques without a clue as to why or how they work. You do what a robot does only slower.

You're also forced to do LSE100 although if you skip all your classes and go to no lectures all you get is an automated email telling you to go of they'll be terrible consequences. Which obviously isn't too bad as they only come once every two weeks and you can delete them in about five seconds, which is still quite annoying I admit, but it's better than doing it.

I started a Bsc in Actuarial Science this year. I can no longer take it. It's so boring. I wouldn't be able to do two years of nothing but stats. But the good news for me is that I've finally realised what I really want to do in life. I want to do pure maths, do a postgraduate, keep learning and go down that academic route.

That basically means changing degrees. The most mathsy one at LSE is Maths with Economics. Is that an okay Bsc to then go on to a Maths Msc at some other decent uni?
Here are the modules: All maths apart from one stats and three econ:
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/degreeProgrammes2011/mathematicsAndEconomics/G1L1_BSc_MathEc.aspx

I've suddenly realised that I ought to do something that matters that I like so please don't sugar the pill here. If it isn't good enough I'll drop out and do a degree I actually love somewhere else in a year.

I'm also going to book at the careers service but any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

I don't think you'll cover anywhere near enough pure maths in order to do a proper MSc in maths.

2nd year you'd pick algebra + number theory, differential equations and optimisation and then 3rd year you'd pick more algebra, complex analysis and then the other maths modules in our department are just rubbish. Compare this with Imperial let's say:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ugprospectus/facultiesanddepartments/mathematics/mathscourses

It feels to me like you're one year behind Imperial compared with our maths + economics degree (and that's because we do some very hard economics on top of maths), so I don't think you would get in to proper MSc Maths courses.

However, you could do something like "applicable mathematics" or whatever I suppose. LSE graduate destinations say that people have go on to do the following:

MSc courses in Applied Mathematics, and Econometrics and Mathematical Economics at LSE
MSc Applied and Computational Mathematics at the University of Oxford
MSc Economics at University of Cambridge
MSc Finance at Imperial College, University of London
PhD Financial Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
PGCE at the University of Sheffield
Graduate Diploma in Law at BPP London

I spoke to Martin Anthony about it and applicable Mathematics Msc actually sounds really interesting. However it's clearly a big decision to switch degrees to possibly go on to study a masters when I'm not even at the end of my first year yet.

Since Maths with Econ is a brand new course, do you actually think it's any good in terms of education, career, options etc? LSE is a good place but we're not known for maths all that well. Perhaps I'd be better swapping to Maths and Econ, or just not swap at all :\. I guess I should see my exams through, first.

Thanks for all the help.

Oh and Swayum, I noticed you did really well in your exams last year, do you reccommend any particular tactics for preparing? Thanks.

Maths with Economics is unpredictable to me - I don't know whether it'd be considered "good" or not. On the one hand, no one is realistically going to know the difference between Maths and or with Economics. On the other hand, LSE isn't exactly the best for maths in the UK (it's good for certain areas like game theory, but you can definitely do a lot better with AAA grades). Where as Maths and Economics is proven to be a good choice both in terms of further study and career options. If you want to do 3rd year stats, I'd advise you to pick Maths with Economics so you can do ST202 in 2nd year. Otherwise, pick Maths and Economics - you'll still have the option to switch to Maths with Economics in 3rd year (but you wouldn't be able to pick any 3rd year stats).

Exam wise... I basically learnt off of past papers and solutions.

I didn't look at MA100 slides at all or makes any notes throughout the year. I'd advise you to start by ploughing through every exercise and, whenever you're stuck, read up on the required method. Keep going and then move on to past papers - I have solutions down to 2005 or something.

MA103 is a similar animal, but before doing exercises and things, read through the notes and try to take in as much of the definitions you can - MA103 comes through practice and learning all the little tricks.

ST102 - focus a lot on the weekly exercises, the exam will be extremely similar. Make sure you can answer every question on the weekly exercises perfectly. Only use the last 4 years of exam papers, the older ones are irrelevant (and much harder!).

EC102 is a monster. I read the book many times, not focusing so much on the slides, and I went to office hours a lot. Go through the problem sets over and over again. Iain Long's solutions to the weekly exercises act as better notes than anything else really - he usually explains some theory, then applies it to the question and then sometimes even goes beyond the question to explain concepts even better. My best advice here is to read his solutions over and over and over and over again - I can't explain how many times I read through his solutions to the sticky price model stuff. Definitely go through the slides before the exam as well though as he has lots of random stuff like organic farming, but focus on solutions to weekly quizzes and problem sets. Go to all the revision lectures.

I don't agree with the LSE line that you shouldn't rely on past papers, but that's my opinion. If you look through some past MA100 papers, you can not only predict what's going to come up, but also the order in which it's going to come up. I found MA100 to be extremely repetitive in terms of its questions - same thing over and over again but with different numbers/phrasing.

Private Message me your e-mail and I'll send you the solutions.

I don't really agree with you that EC102 has a lack of resources. Yes, the lectures aren't recorded, but that's the case at most universities and even most courses at LSE (especially 3rd year). I agree it'd be helpful if he put up his slides because the lectures sometimes move too fast to copy everything down, but not being able to understand slides is usually to do more with not making notes about the stuff he says out loud. You get the course pack, you get the books which are very good and thorough, you get solutions to weekly problems which cover most topics, you get problem set solutions which cover even most topics, you get 18 hours of revision lectures (it's only 2 hours in other courses, even in 2nd year) and you have office hours. When you answer an EC102 question, don't just look for the fastest way to conclude that x = 5 or you have more income or whatever, try to understand why you're asked that question, i.e. what is Prof. Young trying to test your knowledge of and do you really understand why that answers works or have you just managed to figure out the right answer through some maths/common sense?

ST102 - 70/120 doesn't translate to 70/100 unfortunately. It's true that 100+/120 translates to 100/100, but marks below get scaled in some way that they refuse to reveal (i.e. you could get 85/120 but end up with, say, 78/100 when you get your results). There should be some explanation of this in the summer.

Section A is about applying knowledge, yeah. I think vector spaces + group theory are quite easy marks in the sense that there isn't that much they can ask you which you won't have come across before. The analysis part is hard (and compulsory in the exam), so you just have to hope for a nice question there (2010 year lucked out big time).

Back on topic btw: I really don't see the point in studying Actuarial Science in general. I mean, you can do most economics/maths related courses and get a job as an actuary. The only thing the course offers you really is exemptions from actuarial exams, but is that such a big deal? I'd rather take a degree that's less pigeonholed than Actuarial Science because then you can avoid questions like "why do you want to be a trader if you're studying Actuarial Science?" if you decide not to eventually become an actuary. And really, I don't see how any 17/18 year olds know for certain that they want to be actuaries...

Back on topic btw: I really don't see the point in studying Actuarial Science in general. I mean, you can do most economics/maths related courses and get a job as an actuary. The only thing the course offers you really is exemptions from actuarial exams, but is that such a big deal? I'd rather take a degree that's less pigeonholed than Actuarial Science because then you can avoid questions like "why do you want to be a trader if you're studying Actuarial Science?" if you decide not to eventually become an actuary. And really, I don't see how any 17/18 year olds know for certain that they want to be actuaries...

I aspire to become an actuary for certain since I was 17 years old, and now at the age of 18 turning 19, I'm working towards the goal!

Why do you want to be one?

Cause I like Maths particularly Statistics, Calculus and Number Theory, and want to apply my mathematical aptitude to the financial world. Why financial world but not engineering? Cause I'm interested in investing in stock market since young, and although I couldn't fully understand everything, but it intrigued me and I want to find out more about it, about its implications of fluctuations to the financial market. Considering the risk involved in trading and investing, I want to learn ways to calculate risk through stochastic modeling and risk management, to make wise decisions in the financial sense.

Like the initial post that you have posted earlier, if you don't have the passion, don't do it for the sake of your future life and career. You will only gain utmost satisfaction if you do the thing that you enjoy doing for the rest of your life.

you do realise in the of job of an actuary, there is essentially no mathematics used unless ur in the field of GI (general insurance) , and an actuaries main field of work is not orientated towards the financial markets? Also the risk management side for actuaries mainly deals with the likes of insurance opposed to banking/finance!

I still maintain maths/stats/econ or whatever is a safer bet! You can always become one afterwards regardless if you have certain amount of exemptions under your belt, but good to hear your passionate and ambitious on the topic, unfortunately I thought i was, but like Tallon also made an error of judgement and changed quickly!