>As a side note, is a BS in pure math particularly useful, beyond the fact that it's a bachelor's degree? That always struck me as one of those disciplines that

>As a side note, is a BS in pure math particularly useful, beyond the fact that it's a bachelor's degree? That always struck me as one of those disciplines that would require an advanced degree to be of use. Note that I don't have a masters/PhD in mathematics, so take this with a grain of salt. But from what I've seen, if you want to actively study & research mathematics, it's PhD or bust. If, however, you want to be a software developer, a statistician, or to work in finance, for example, a BS in mathematics will serve you quite nicely. It may even have a slight advantage in that it's a bit more versatile: I'm currently working as a software developer but could take the degree any number of other directions. And for other degree paths, it's simply useful as a bachelor's degree -- though I have had friends indicate that they found non-technical (managerial, sales, etc.) jobs insanely quickly with a BS in math or physics. They always attributed it to the inherent difficulty of the degree; of course, that's just anecdotal, so I'm not sure if that's really the case or not.