Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 198 posts

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#31

Post by dekhn »

s0rce wrote: post #15

The average income for biochemists and molecular biologists is >$100k? Is this heavily skewed by doctors who did biology as a pre-med degree?

long ago when I was considering majors (1991) molecular biologists made $70K. This makes sense to me- a scientist at a major pharma is going to make over $100K if they are an expert in their field and have 5-10 years experience ($100K in the bay area is a starting salary for many software engineers).

Mol Bio has several job outcomes- the worst is lab tech, which alone in the bay area can be $60K, the best is CEO/Founder ($1+M/year), with professor ($150K) in the middle.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#32

Post by randomstring »

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia.

That said of all the actuaries I went to school with, none liked their jobs and all eventually moved on to do something else.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#33

Post by QML »

user1324345 wrote: post #18

these metrics are always pure garbage. Someone comes up with an equation like: (start salary) + (median salary) + .5 * (job availablilty) + .75 * (growth) ... etc then they rank everything, tweek it, make an article. The scary part is people will read this and parrot this information for potentially years, "did you know actuary is the best job???" This is actually how misinformation spreads.

I'm fine with metrics, as long as when people say "best", they'll quote an interpretable formula -- you have to start somewhere. The issue with this metric, however, is that there seems to be no given weight towards the population size. What is the point of a metric if it isn't generalizable?

I have the same grip with college rankings. When you look at the top 20, and then at the total student population, you'd realize these rankings are useless for the majority of Americans since only a small fraction will attend these schools.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#35

Post by frandroid »

pkaye wrote: post #16
rubatuga wrote: post #2

Where’s computer science?

There is no longer any science in computers. Going forward everything is going to be involving some combinations of Javascript, distributed systems and machine learning.

We're all in the cloud trades now.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#36

Post by stochastastic »

f00_ wrote: post #23
stochastastic wrote: post #12

As an actuary I don’t think I would recommend it for most people. At the very least, keep your options open by getting a math or CS degree and passing a couple of exams on the side. I feel like this really glosses over the weight of the credentialling process. It also doesn’t appear to talk about the oversupply of entry level applicants.

How long did it take you to complete the exams? I think I read a lot of actuaries actually finish them while on the job Think it's possible to self study the exams? Not a likely path for me, but interested in seeing if anyone has done that

Most people get started before their first actuarial job, get a “student” position two to four exams in, and then finish up on the job. I had a math degree and three exams coming out of college and it took me about five years to finish the whole exam sequence. Self study is a viable option, but it helps to have the math and business background.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#37

Post by stochastastic »

secabeen wrote: post #19
stochastastic wrote: post #12

As an actuary I don’t think I would recommend it for most people. At the very least, keep your options open by getting a math or CS degree and passing a couple of exams on the side. I feel like this really glosses over the weight of the credentialling process. It also doesn’t appear to talk about the oversupply of entry level applicants.

Interesting. Do you have any articles about the oversupply of entry-level actuaries? Actuarial science was a career path I considered, but I ended up in systems/network/devops instead.

No, just a general sense. I think the career got publicized at a time when a lot of people were struggling to figure out what to do.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#38

Post by dv_dt »

harshreality wrote: post #30
grouseway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for some it is a very stressful job. They have a very high suicide rate: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/ "The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3)."

correlation or causation? I could easily imagine that more depressed people pursue veterinary jobs because being around animals makes them less depressed.

The linked article goes through a list of qualitative factors which could be linked (though it does not seem to attempt to quantify their correlation).

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#39

Post by dv_dt »

randomstring wrote: post #32

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries…

What do actuaries do from day to day? Are they old-school original data scientists, or something else?
Post reply on HN