27
$\begingroup$

Like many others here, I hope to someday become a professor. I've heard that it's very, very difficult and competitive in pure math, and I thought I would come here to ask your opinions.

For those of you that have finished your PhDs, where have your classmates ended up, and how many have left academia? My fear is that if I stay in academics, I will be stuck in temporary postdocs and lecturing positions for the rest of my life.

How much does the prestige of the graduate school matter in job hiring? Is there any hope for the hard-working-but-not-outstanding types of students from mid-tier schools, or will I have to rely on luck and hope that my research area becomes a hot topic when I start looking for jobs?

  • 2
    What kind of an academic job are you wanting? Working at a research-oriented institution can be quite different from working at a liberal arts college, which can be quite different from working at a satellite campus of a state university system.2011-09-29
  • 0
    The problem is not so much the inherent difficulty of it, but rather how little control over the process you have yourself. If you get saddled with a bad advisor, work in a field that becomes unpopular, have someone beat you to publication (or all three, in my case), then be prepared to spend the rest of your life writing code or making PowerPoint presentations for a government lab. It's great if it magically works out, though, and it is the only opportunity that exists for doing real math. If you want to stick with it, best of luck to you.2016-05-26

1 Answers 1