Why I chose Maths at Birmingham

When applying to university, I didn’t know what career path I wanted to go down at all, so I wanted to choose a degree that could open lots of doors for me in the future and enable me to have a wide range of career opportunities.

For me, maths was the best choice since I love puzzles and problem-solving, I like treating maths questions as fun logic problems and I enjoy finding ways to twist my brain to tackle each question. Even though it may take a long time, it’s always rewarding finding the answer in the end!

After eventually settling on a degree, the next step was choosing which university to go to. I was looking at places such as Warwick, Southampton and Manchester, but when I went to the Birmingham offer holder day, I was instantly blown away. I had the opportunity to talk to staff that are now my lecturers, student ambassadors that I’m now good friends with, and prospective students that were in the same boat as me. I felt like it really gave me a good insight into what it would be like to live there, and accurately represented the friendly, positive environment that I get from the Maths department today!

I also really liked how much emphasis they put on MathSoc and student life. MathSoc runs lots of events throughout the year, including bowling, quiz nights and bar crawls! The society has helped me find my closest friends and gave me the opportunity to meet lots of people on my course from the beginning and continuously throughout the year. It’s so nice having course mates to study with, as you can help each other out when you’re stuck and work through problems together. I used to only be able to work independently but now at university I have the opportunity to collaborate more with others. If we are still struggling with a problem, there are lots of people we can ask for help- either our tutors, the postgraduate teaching assistants, or visiting our lecturers during their office hours.

I think office hours are one of the most useful things that the Maths department offers- each lecturer has an hour a week where they are in their office and wait for students to come and ask questions about any topic that they’re struggling on. So if you don’t catch something in the lecture, you can visit their office hours so they can explain it further for you. They’re so friendly and supportive- I’ve learnt that no question is a silly question!

Another reason I chose Maths at Birmingham in particular was because of the amount of emphasis they put on careers. It persuaded me to switch from the three-year BSc course to Maths with a Year in Industry (which is super easy to do)! We have lots of tutorials based on working on our CV, applications and cover letters which were really beneficial. The Careers Network also offer mock interviews and give personalised feedback. I’ve found the careers fairs extremely useful when finding my year in industry placement, especially the Maths career fair in particular, which had big names like Deloitte, Autodesk and Bayer. Something that I always talk about in my interviews are the group projects that we did in 1st year. This was my first time solving maths projects in a team, so it taught me so many transferable skills (that I talked A LOT about in interviews).

Overall, I really thought that the Open Day was really representative of what it’s actually like to study here, including the interactive lecturers, the friendly students, and the amount of support available!