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Career (1 Viewer)
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There are a couple of factors to consider when deciding what to study beyond the HSC:
It is very important that you consider fields of study that you personally feel interested in since it likely will not be a pleasant experience studying one or two degrees that do not satisfy your study interests, which can also have repercussions on your future career, i.e. the interest factor (or lack thereof) will naturally follow and will therefore apply to your career. This means that personal interest can create a difference between a career that fulfills your ambitions (leading to a higher chance of enjoying your profession) and a career that does not really meet your expectations/ambitions, which is also one that you may possibly find disagreeable.
Since both programs that you have mentioned include computer science, it is a matter of choosing between studying actuarial science or applied mathematics concurrently with computer science.
Relevance to your desired career:
Consider your own career aspirations - what do you wish to do in the professional world? You may be able to decide which program to pursue based on its relevance to your future career. Some things that you may wish to consider in terms of deciding the program that you believe is more relevant to your future career include:
- Personal interests
- Relevance to your desired career
It is very important that you consider fields of study that you personally feel interested in since it likely will not be a pleasant experience studying one or two degrees that do not satisfy your study interests, which can also have repercussions on your future career, i.e. the interest factor (or lack thereof) will naturally follow and will therefore apply to your career. This means that personal interest can create a difference between a career that fulfills your ambitions (leading to a higher chance of enjoying your profession) and a career that does not really meet your expectations/ambitions, which is also one that you may possibly find disagreeable.
Since both programs that you have mentioned include computer science, it is a matter of choosing between studying actuarial science or applied mathematics concurrently with computer science.
Relevance to your desired career:
Consider your own career aspirations - what do you wish to do in the professional world? You may be able to decide which program to pursue based on its relevance to your future career. Some things that you may wish to consider in terms of deciding the program that you believe is more relevant to your future career include:
- Option 1: Do you intend to become an actuary at some point in your career?
- Option 2: How do you intend to combine your knowledge of computer science and applied mathematics, resulting in a successful career?
pikachu975
Premium Member
If you wanna become an actuary then that's a good double degree since some Excel processes can most likely be more efficient with the use of Python. However if you wanna pursue a software dev role, I think actuary doesn't really help much. All I learnt in uni was relating to Excel (barely), statistics, risk/insurance, which you'll probably learn better in applied maths if you wanted to use it in combination with computer science.
If I could restart I'd do comp sci rather than actuary because of the fact that knowing coding has a lot more potential for huge salary/creating your own projects. Actuary is more of a linear path from what I know. You basically do 3 years of uni to finish part 1 qualification, then do part 2s with uni+the institute for a pay rise, then part 3s with the institute for another pay rise. The part 2s and 3s are usually done while working which makes it pretty hard.
The only issue I see with pursuing actuarial is that payrises and promotions are sorta limited to these exams, so you're time gated. Like if you wanna become a senior actuary or a manager or something you probably need part 3s most of the time. But with comp sci, if you're very good you can just get promoted/get better roles really quickly since there's no exams time gating you, but more of your skill instead.
But yea you can't go wrong with either option tbh, but I'd only do the actuary double if you actually want to become an actuary. If you know you're set on pursuing the comp sci field, the actuary double is mostly useless in my opinion.