Potential Career Paths?

[Solstice]

Hello, everyone!

I'm planning on taking Math, Chemistry, and Physics for my HL courses, but I feel a bit lost as to what I want to pursue as a career after university and such. Out of the three subjects, I'm very interested in math (more so than the other two subjects), so at some point, I considered being a math teacher when I'm older, but other people have also suggested that engineering could also be a reasonable choice for me. There are so many types of engineering though, and I don't really know the difference between them. I don't know what I should be doing.

So, I just wanted to ask which careers the combination of math/chemistry/physics HL would be useful for? I apologize if this question seems a bit vague, or if this is posted in the wrong section.

Thank you for your time!

[King112]

Hey there!
Well, if I'm honest with you, it's tricky deciding what you want to do! First up, before anything else, I highly urge you to reconsider your HLs as Math, Physics, Chem HL is a lot of work. Also, just so you know, your career choices are more influenced by Uni (which is affected to some extent by high school), so I wouldn't sweat it too much.

However, for now, let's assume you stay with this choice. You have a lot of options of what you can do/study.

Certainly teaching mathematics is an option. Here, it would depend on whether you want to teach High School students or university students. Generally (and there are exceptions), high school teachers do not have PhDs; and arguably most don't have masters (depending on the country, state etc etc). For university, you certainly need a PhD. So you can consider that.

In terms of other options, you're quite free honestly. At university, you could study (and this isn't a comprehensive list): Economics, finance, engineering (such as aerospace, chemical or electrical to name a few). And then career paths are strange depending on the major you choose. A few paths that I can think off the top of my head are: Engineering, Consulting, Finance (investment banking, hedge funds etc),  Weapons development, automobile design.

Tl;DR: There are plenty of options for you to choose from.

 

Hope this helps

[Solstice]

7 hours ago, King112 said:

Hey there!
Well, if I'm honest with you, it's tricky deciding what you want to do! First up, before anything else, I highly urge you to reconsider your HLs as Math, Physics, Chem HL is a lot of work. Also, just so you know, your career choices are more influenced by Uni (which is affected to some extent by high school), so I wouldn't sweat it too much.

However, for now, let's assume you stay with this choice. You have a lot of options of what you can do/study.

Certainly teaching mathematics is an option. Here, it would depend on whether you want to teach High School students or university students. Generally (and there are exceptions), high school teachers do not have PhDs; and arguably most don't have masters (depending on the country, state etc etc). For university, you certainly need a PhD. So you can consider that.

In terms of other options, you're quite free honestly. At university, you could study (and this isn't a comprehensive list): Economics, finance, engineering (such as aerospace, chemical or electrical to name a few). And then career paths are strange depending on the major you choose. A few paths that I can think off the top of my head are: Engineering, Consulting, Finance (investment banking, hedge funds etc),  Weapons development, automobile design.

Tl;DR: There are plenty of options for you to choose from.

 

Hope this helps

I see, thank you so much for your comprehensive answer! I appreciate it a lot, and it most definitely helps. 

I think I'll be sticking with my HLs despite the difficulty, becuase unfortunately I'm not as interested in any of my SL classes enough to bring them up to HL instead. I guess I'll see once I start the IB in a couple of weeks though, haha.

Thanks again!