I'm torn between Operations Research/Actuarial Science/Both

[Hodgey8806]

I want to have broad opportunities after my degree, and with the new ideas floating in health care, Actuarial Science might seem like a career that may experience some downsizing.

Now, I was also interested in Operations Research as well, and my university offers both in the math department. With Operations Research, I will probably have to get my Master's when it is all said and done. I don't really mind that, because I will get to take an econometrics course which is also a subject I'm very interested in.

What do you think? If I do both, it will take about another year to get my degree. Then grad school possibly. Do you think it would be worth it?

 

[chiro]

I want to have broad opportunities after my degree, and with the new ideas floating in health care, Actuarial Science might seem like a career that may experience some downsizing.

Now, I was also interested in Operations Research as well, and my university offers both in the math department. With Operations Research, I will probably have to get my Master's when it is all said and done. I don't really mind that, because I will get to take an econometrics course which is also a subject I'm very interested in.

What do you think? If I do both, it will take about another year to get my degree. Then grad school possibly. Do you think it would be worth it?

This is just my opinion and I am not an actuary or an operations researcher. I am however a statistics major, so you know where I am coming from, and have investigated the actuary path.

The actuarial path is very specialized. You will learn statistics, but most of it is applied to the discipline of insurance. Now if you end up passing the actuarial exams, my guess is that you will probably be very likely to apply it to other fields (since the exams are hard and yes I have looked at them), but like I said the knowledge is rather specialized to insurance and other areas of risk management.

Based on that, I would if I were you get a major in statistics and then go from there. In masters programs you can go into "statistics" which includes designing experiments and sampling along with other "mathematical statistics" subjects like higher probability, time series analysis and so on, or go into biostatistics with the focus of statistical applications to health, or even go into financial fields like actuarial science or other forms of risk management.

If you decided to get a major in statistics (with decent results), you should qualify all statistics related masters programs. Then if you wanted to become an actuary, you could probably do the probability exam at the very least and perhaps the exam that involves stochastic processes and markov statistics.

If you end up not liking actuarial science, then if you have a bachelors in statistics, you are going to be better off than if you just did a specialized course in actuarial science, and this is kind of the crux of my argument to just major in statistics as an undergraduate to get a broader and deeper skill set.

Locrian is an actuary on this forum, and he will ultimately offer better advice than myself on this matter of becoming an actuary, so hopefully he chimes in here and gives you advice.