Prospects Postgrad 1

ADVICE AND GUIDANCE Postgrad 31 Maths market ALEX O’NEIL studied Mathematics at specific sections of maths that I find interesting and complex. For example, if I’m working on a graph problem and I find myself heading in a specific direction, I can continue to investigate that area in greater detail until my enquiring mind is satisfied. During my first year I did a lot of reading around the subject and have explored areas that I believe will help me for my research. It involves a very high level of self-motivation and discipline as there are no classes, but this also means a great deal of academic freedom. As a research student it is completely different to undergraduate life. As I at a good time! I also did a lot of marking of undergraduate students’ work and helped with the extracurricular exercise classes that the Department offers to students. Balancing work with study involved staying up increasingly late at night unfortunately, but I didn’t mind as I’m a bit of a night owl anyway. Thankfully, I am now receiving funding from the University, but have kept my part-time job to make sure I have enough cash to fund my social life. The Mathematics Department informed me about funding and put my name FINAL SCORE My main priority is to Queen Mary, University of London. Fascinated with figures, he decided to stay on and complete a PhD in Mathematical Sciences. I am very passionate about studying mathematics and felt the breadth of study covered in my first degree was not enough for me, so I decided to complete a postgraduate course. I am really fascinated by maths and its applications and wanted to get a deeper appreciation of what was going on in the department in terms of research and interdisciplinary cross-over. I also thought a postgraduate qualification would be good for my job prospects. I was chatting to one of my lecturers after a seminar at the start of my final year and we began to discuss his research into graph theory (networks). It sounded really interesting to me and is definitely a subject that still has a large amount of potential. I was already aware that this research was well regarded by other mathematicians and it also has commercial uses within a number of industries. It made sense to continue at Queen Mary, as I had enjoyed it so much during my first have mentioned before, you have to be highly motivated and be prepared to make many mistakes and work for many hours. However, the benefit is that I simply get to work in areas that I choose, and there are no core classes and no set requirements that I have to jump through in order to pass. graduate, and then I will begin looking at jobs. Maths has so many commercial applications and I’m sure my problemsolving skills will be in demand. There are many options available and the main aim of further study is to teach degree and it gave me the opportunity to forward to a funding Council to be you skills that you would not normally considered. They were really helpful and work with a prominent professor in the achieve in day-to-day life. my supervisor went through the field of maths. Postgraduate study should put you in application form with me, ensuring that a better position once you have finished CALCULATING COSTS In my first year I I had not made any silly mistakes and and definitely give you the confidence to applied late for funding and didn’t have that my application stood out for the take on any job. I have potential any options available, so I had to fund right reasons. opportunities in the banking, software myself by working and with a small PROBLEM-SOLVING Studying a PhD is a development, financial services and Career Development Loan from my bank. I worked part time in the international office at the University, about ten hours a week, mainly in the morning, to ensure I was out of bed rather different approach to my undergraduate study, as it is a highly specialised area that I am focusing on. I can now really concentrate on the risk-related industries. http://www.qmul.ac.uk/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Prospects Postgrad 1

Prospects Postgrad Autumn 2008 Contents: What’s Inside For Love and Money Cash for Qualifications A Tale of Two Students Meet the Postgrad People All Aboard The Postgraduate Environment Maths Market The Postgrad Programme Teacher Training Arts and Humanities Science and Engineering Business and Management Social Sciences

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