Why UT Math Honors?
The Wall Street Journal recently declared in an article, "Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs", that the top job in the USA is mathematician. The second and third best jobs are actuary and statistician, both highly mathematical jobs for which a math major can be the very best preparation. Mathematicians are not just math professors; many work in industry and government, solving difficult, cutting-edge mathematical problems, and interacting with scientists and engineers. The math major can also be excellent preparation for other careers, from law to medicine to economics to computer science to physics to secondary education. Below are some of the reasons why UT Math Honors provides one of the best available routes to any of these careers.
Student Outcomes. Since its inception, 100% of UT Math Honors graduates have have continued to graduate school or received math-related employment immediately after graduation. 88% of Math Honors Graduates continue to graduate school in a math-related field. Currently, UT Math Honors graduates are pursuing graduate work in Math, Computer Science, Economics, Education, Medicine, or Statistics at the following universities: Arizona, California-Riverside, California-San Diego, California-Santa Barbara, Colorado, Connecticut, Johns Hopkins, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, Tennessee, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Wisconsin. All of the math graduate students are supported by graduate assistantships or fellowships that pay all graduate tuition and fees, as well as a living stipend. Every UT Math Honors graduate who has applied for a math graduate assistantship has been awarded one. In recent years UT Math students have earned doctorates from Cornell, Stanford (math education), UNC, and Memphis (medicine). Our first three graduates have earned PhDs and are now at the prestigious Courant Institute, the Mathematical Biology Institute at Ohio State, and the University if British Columbia.
Broad and Flexible Curriculum. The math department at UT has a broad and flexible curriculum designed to accomodate a student body with a wide range of motivation and ability. Exceptional students may skip junior-level math courses and enroll in core graduate courses as early as the junior year. The active and diverse research program in the math department supports a wide variety of courses covering all major fields in mathematics, and allows Math Honors students to work with world-class researchers in writing their honors theses. UT Math Honors students have also been very successful in securing paid summer positions to do undergraduate research at UT and other universities around the country.
Support and Activities. All UT Math Honors students are advised each semester by Dr. Nicoara, the Math Honors Director. In addition, every student has a faculty mentor with whom he/she meets each month. Every Math Honors student eventually also has an honors thesis advisor. E-mail listserves send important announcements to regular and honors math majors. For the duration of the National Science Foundation Grant, the department offers an honors summer research program in alternate years. Other activities include an undergraduate honors seminar, a Junior Colloquium that offers bi-weekly talks for undergraduates, and an active Putnam team. The Putnam Exam is the largest and most prestigious undergraduate mathematics contest in the world. UT's Putnam team does very well each year; recently the UT team placed 17th among over 1200 colleges in North America.