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TSR Wiki > University > Choosing a Subject > University Courses > Mathematics Degree

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Contents 1 Course Overview 2 Admissions 2.1 Universities offering Mathematics 2.2 Academic Requirements 2.3 UCAS Form & Personal Statement 2.4 Interviews 3 Course Structure 4 Life as a Mathematics Student 4.1 Study Help 5 Graduate Destinations and Career Prospects 6 Frequently Asked Questions 7 Also See 8 Useful links

Course Overview

Admissions

Universities offering Mathematics

• The UCAS course search tool can be used to find a list of universities offering mathematics as an undergraduate subject.

Academic Requirements

It is essential to have taken GCSE maths and A Level maths if you want to study Mathematics at university. Some universities (e.g. Cambridge) also ask for some Further Maths modules. Actual grades required vary between universities.

For entry to Cambridge University and Warwick University, it is usually required for the student to take the STEP examination.

UCAS Form & Personal Statement

For a successful UCAS application a well written personal statement is essential. If you need help or ideas there are several sample mathematics personal statements in our Personal Statement Library which may give you some ideas. (but please don't plagiarise them by copying and pasting them).

Mathematics Personal Statements

Interviews

Not everywhere has interviews for maths. Others may just invite you for an 'informal chat'. But don't worry if you do get called to interview. People said to me you can’t really prepare for them. Evidently, I didn’t believe them, but once you get down there and meet the tutors and everything, it just doesn’t seem like they would care about all of the minutiae that everyone thinks is so important (e.g. OAF).

In general, they were quite fun actually. My advice is as follows:

• Sort out any problems, however small, with your Maths teacher.
• Look at the proofs of things that are blindly asserted in class / in textbooks.
• Have an area of interest to talk about.
• Get the Siklos STEP booklet.
• Do some of the old Oxford Maths Tests from the 80's on www.mathsexams2.tk as well as obviously the ones on the Oxford website.
• Be comfortable doing questions which look hard but are on things you know eg. differentiating e^e^cosx^e^x. It's just using the chain rule 3 times rather than one.
• Also, knowing how to prove basic number theory is invaluable. There are tricks which you must learn like, proof by induction, contradiction, considering the cases of odd and even, modular arithmetic, writing odds as 2k+1 and evens as 2k etc. etc.
• My advice would be to prepare as much as is going to make you feel most confident. Also, be calm. Most of the questions aren’t that hard.
• If you're applying to Oxford, the written test is really important to some tutors, they may place A LOT of emphasis on it.

Course Structure

Life as a Mathematics Student

As a maths student you will have a decent number of contact hours and directed study time. You will not have as many contact hours as people doing sciences due to not having countless lab sessions, but also you will not have hours of private study and reading time as much of the teaching will be through lectures and seminar classes. Overall you will have a nice balance. Generally, do not expect any days off from timetabled teaching, but at many unis you will be unlikely to have any full days of lectures either though this will certainly depend on where you study.

Outside of formal teaching, a lot more of your time will be taken up with study questions. The amount you have and how long this takes you will depend on the university, the module, the topic and your own abilities. Be prepared to spend hours on some questions and get nowhere with them while on others you could get the desired results and full marks through very little work. This may seem a little unfair, but it's the very nature of what maths is like at high level and you'll soon get used to this.

Study Help

Group study sessions can also be very helpful (and at the start of the year a great way to get to know others on your course). Hearing how other people are tackling a question can mean you spot something in the question you didn't pick up on. This can allow you to go on with the problem questions and use what you've already done to get one step further to the needed solution. The group study can also help significantly with your own ability to communicate and explain complex situations. While the maths might be clear in your head and even appear clear on paper to you, getting someone else to understand what you mean and what you have written can be quite tricky at times!

I'd also advise not to leave work close to the handing in deadline. It is often hard to determine just how long some maths work can take until you are well underway with it. And if you fail to grasp one of the basic pieces or don't get that shot of inspiration you could leave yourself with a mountain of work to climb and only a couple of hours to finish it.

At the very least start the work in plenty of time. Get your head around what is required. This will often leave you time to ask a lecturer about it or get some books form the library to read more around the subject. It might just have been me, but I often found myself thinking of certain questions I was stuck with at other times, like on the bus or lying in bed in the morning. Often I'd get that break through with the work at these unusual times. So I was pleased to have looked at the work early in the week to give me this time to think over it all.

The best piece of advice I could give you though is not to give in too easily with work. It will challenge a lot of you. Maybe not always, but some of the time. You might not spot the best method to solve the question or prove the theorem straight off. But keep trying. Look at different approaches. Start from scratch again (you could have made a slight mistake). You have the time, so to stand the best chance of succeeding, make sure you keep at the work!

Graduate Destinations and Career Prospects

A large majority of Mathematics graduates go into work immediately after completion of their degree. Maths graduates generally find themselves very employable due to the open-endedness of their programme, and because the skills acquired on such a programme are largely transferable to many aspects of employment. Most significantly in Business and commerce. Nearly a third of all mathematics graduates who go into employment become Business and Financial Professionals and Associate Professionals. Other popular destinations include Other Clerical and Secretarial Occupations, educational related jobs, becoming Numerical Clerks and Cashiers, and also becoming Marketing, Sales and Advertising Professionals.

However, as with most academic degrees, a number of graduates continue into even higher education. This would entail studying for a higher degree in a related subject i.e. Maths, astrophysics etc. Also some graduates carry on studying for a teaching qualification. But in reality, a very large number of possibilities are feasible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Also See

Useful links

• How to choose a maths degree that adds up for you [1]

in the Independent 2007, by Warwick maths professor David Mond.,