Students queuing up for admission to seats in the undergraduate Bachelor of Commerce course and its variants is a given. There is no change to the trend this year, either. But what is interesting is students with eligibility to choose science courses are opting first for mathematics.
Those who walk in for counselling have been and are preferring mathematics to physics or chemistry or even computer science, says Government Arts College, Coimbatore, Professor T. Veeramani, who is on the admission committee.
On the first day of admission for the general category students, the College has seen a good number of the 72 seats filled in the B.Sc. Mathematics and that includes admission under reservation system as well.
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The College’s Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department D. Sumathi says that one of the reasons for students choosing mathematics is the employment potential. And most of the job opportunities are in teaching in schools and colleges.
No school is complete without mathematics teachers. And so is an engineering college, where mathematics faculty are required to tutor first year engineering students in the basics of engineering mathematics, is her refrain.
The scene in the Dr. G.R. Damodaran College of Science, Coimbatore, is no different. Vice Principal K.K. Ramachandran says that as in the past couple of years, this year too mathematics was on top of the students’ preference list.
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And, the students who opted for mathematics had very good score.
Education and career guidance consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi says that the go-mathematics trend is true also in other cities in the State. This has to do with the teaching opportunities the maths graduates get.
Even if they are unable to land a job in schools, they can still carry on with tuitions for school students, as many maths graduates do.
The second reason is that maths acts as base for many competitive examinations – banking exam, for instance. The third is that it helps the maths graduates in entrance examination to management courses and score well in civil services as well, Mr. Gandhi points out.
The fourth is that information technology companies preferring maths students over other science graduates for their logical thinking ability. Plus, when the maths graduates complete higher studies in operation research or data analytics, which is emerging as a strong vertical in the IT space, they stand a very good chance, he adds.