Mathematics

The best reason for choosing mathematics at university is that you have always found it fascinating and you have always found it easy and fun to do. Employers like people with maths degrees, so it comes in handy when you are job hunting.  But the most important thing is that you love mathematics, and think about it even when you have done your school assignments.

Check out this page for photos of some of our students and other useful information. There are two mathematics tutors at Christ Church: Prof Michael Vaughan-Lee who researches into abstract algebra and into the uses of computers to solve problems in algebra, and Prof Sam Howison who works on mathematical modelling in industry and in the mathematics of finance. You can take financial mathematics options in your third year at Oxford, and these are popular with students planning to go into business and banking. Sam is also involved with running the MSc in Mathematical Finance and is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Mathematics graduates go into all sorts of different careers. Two of our recent final year students went on to do further degrees in Mathematics. Two more went to train as actuaries and one as an accountant. Some others went to big investment banks such as Bank of America or Goldman Sachs to work as equity analysts or in similar areas. In recent years we have had a couple of graduates going into web site design for the world wide web, one into the Army, and at least one has gone to work with GCHQ at Cheltenham - that is so hush-hush that we are probably not supposed to know about it.