What does a gradschool life like in doing applied math

[bodaos]

Hi,

I am math major and I am thinking about going to grad school doing research in applied math, probably about differential equations or dynamical system. May I know what is a typical day like doing something like that? Is it mainly lots of Matlab coding or you spend most of the time doing problem solving?

Shunji Li

[Agradatudent]

Really completely depends where you go and who you work with. Even in those fields, there are very pure people and very applied people. So it's possible you'd spend 80% of your time doing pen and paper research, and then occasionally coding up numerical simulations to back up your data. There's also a chance it's close to 50-50, but you have to do something on paper to get to coding. Unless you're just extremely applied.

Edited March 20, 2012 by toypajme