Which Minor Do You Suggest?

[arizonasooner]

I was a Meteorology major with a pre-med minor.

Ended up with my BS in Meteorology and an MS in Chemical Engineering.

And I work in process controls today. Funny how things just happen...

[PSUBlizzicane2007]

Computer Science for sure, and take 1-2 GIS courses on the side.

[LocoAko]

I am regretting my minor in environmental science.... oy.

[Itunis]

I'm surprised this thread got resurrected.

My adviser suggested GIS over CS, and when the NWS roadshow came through a few weeks ago, the MIC at LOT listed GIS as slightly more desirable to him than CS, but also said that CS courses (especially web design and Java for AWIPS II) are very good things to have.

So my plan as of now (which is definitely optimistic) is to get the GIS minor, take PDE and/or Stat (hopefully both if I can make it all fit) in addition to the Math minor (idk anything about these subjects, but at Valpo Linear Algebra is listed in the same course as DiffEq) and finally tack on a Java class so that I have at least enough to go off later.

The other thing that drove me choose GIS (though I technically haven't declared anything yet) is that I've always loved maps, whereas I hated my AP Java class last year.

Sounds like you have it all planned out. Good! My meteo prof here says that comp sci is probably the best subject to minor in. Apparently when Wunderground recruits they go straight for the students who can program. But GIS certainly can't hurt, and having both that and a basic compsci class under your belt will look good to employers.

[kylemacr]

I cannot recommend something involving statistics enough. Since you don't want to do research or live in academia, math will have its limits. Applied math is how we model the atmosphere but statistics is how we observe and learn about the atmosphere (or anything, really). Out of all the math classes I've taken (I did a double major, so lots of them), the statistics classes were by far the most useful. Sure it's nice to know how to solve a partial differential equation, but that rarely happens.

Almost every paper I read involves statistics of some sort. Anytime you want to do a climatology, look at composites, regression maps, forecast verification, etc. you will need statistics. The field of statistics is deceptively simple - the analyses aren't generally very complicated, but there are so many subtleties when it comes to correctly interpreting and applying them that you really need a good statistics class, taught by a statistician, to understand how statistics really works. The devil is in the details as they say and it's well worth it to learn those details.