Note that this core curriculum adds up to 237 Caltech units (201 in non-math), which is about 49% of the 486 Caltech units (41% for non-math) needed to graduate. Caltech is on the quarter system, with a typical full time course load of 42 Caltech units per quarter and typically 12 quarters in four academic years to graduate.
So Caltech probably falls into a similar category as MIT, Harvey Mudd, and Chicago as being less desirable for the student in question due to the larger core curriculum.
Yes, Caltech has a substantial STEM core plus humanities/social sciences requirements. However, it isn’t as harsh as your numbers would seem to suggest. First of all, a typical student takes 5 full courses (or 45 Caltech units) each quarter, or 135 units in a year, or 540 units over four years. The 201 non-math units are 201/540 or 37%. Among the 201 non-math units, most of them are in sciences with the largest component in physics. Because of their close association and interrelationship, a lot of mathematicians study some physics (at least theoretical physics), in the same way that theoretical physicists study advanced mathematics.
Ya, my son took 5 physic courses As previously mentioned, the psychology course was quite popular. I saw the student presentations The core classes are special.
But this is really not what a committed pure mathematician wants to spend their time doing. Hawking’s Brief History of Time lectures were a nice distraction but not something I wanted to take further.
The beauty of mathematics isn’t just in one’s imagination. It’s in many ways connected to the natural world. The closest of those connections are to be found in physics. Some inspirations in mathematics also came from, or were as a result of, investigations in physics. BTW, Hawking’s Brief History of Time lectures, if they exist somewhere on college campuses, would be considered too cursory to be a physics course at Caltech.
Different people find beauty in different things. To me number theory is infinitely more (pun intended) “beautiful” than fluid mechanics.
What’s most unusual about OP’s son is the statement that he wants to focus on pure maths. Very few high schoolers are that specific about their mathematical interests. So the question is should he be forced to do lots of courses that are unrelated to his interests?
Yes you need a grounding in multiple areas of maths. But forcing a pure mathematician to do lots of physics courses is similar to forcing a physicist to do lots of chemistry or biology. The US education system tends to think that’s a good thing. The UK system is all about specialization, starting in high school.
As might relate to this, however, the college physics courses with the greatest overlap with mathematics may not require general physics courses as prerequisites.
In the European system my H teaches in, high school finals’ papers are distributed to the schools at 5.00 am on the respective testing days by state police.
So the state’s high school maths departments meet up at 5.30 am or so to do every single problem and check the solutions to make sure there aren’t any mistakes, while the DoE math department staff sits at their phones waiting with bated breath whether there are any corrections to be rolled out statewide before testing starts at 8.00 am (a system that incidentally ensures that every single math teacher in the country has to keep up to snuff!)
Also, there is always a choice of two papers each (in maths, it’s two analysis papers, two linear algebra and two stats) and the high school department is required to choose the one of each they feel will work best for their students.
So the papers are distributed, every one starts working and H exclaims “ooh, this is beautiful!” At which the whole department bursts into laughter. H says “wait, what?” and his colleagues proceed to explain to him that that years seniors (most of whom had happened to have H either as a maths or physics teacher in former years, it’s a small school) had specifically reached out to their math teachers to tell them “whatever you do, don’t pick the problem that Mr T calls “beautiful” - it’s invariably going to be the hardest one and the one we’ll hate!”
@Tigerle Great story.
There’s a famous Cambridge professor, Bela Bollobas (Béla Bollobás - Wikipedia) who was known for setting beautiful but extremely challenging Tripos questions. It was very obvious which were his questions, and most people were sensible enough to leave well alone.
The quote from the UChicago website on wellness - “There’s no way around it: life as a student is stressful” I give them credit for their honesty, but not really a great way to sell your college. Stress is there in most, if not all colleges, but saying up front that you’ll be stressed out may not be the best way to convey that.
“Not sure why you’d want to shut down the discussion on their behalf. Maybe they can clarify themselves what’s helpful and what isn’t.”
Every poster is describing their college as the greatest in the world for the OP, so of course everything sounds great. If a kid is a junior in math at a place like Berkeley, he will run out of courses at LACs, unless they have a grad dept like Wesleyan. And if any kid likes the vibe at Berkeley, he or she will be out of place at Williams, I’ve been to both, they’re very different. Giving advice just so your favorite college gets a look or an application and not looking at the needs of the student, is not good either.
Agree with @Twoin18 here. If he knows what he wants to do, why do something else? That makes no sense to me. Education is so expensive. One should take the path that makes the most sense based on what THEY want.
I like the US-based system in the sense that exposure to lots of subjects is common at the undergraduate level. But I also like the idea of a student who knows what they want not taking courses which don’t advance their knowledge.
However, the level of stress can vary both by the college and the student.
A college may increase stress level by having difficult general education or core requirements, for example. A department or instructor may increase stress by having competitive grading (“on a curve”) or using a more opaque competitive admission process to enter an oversubscribed major. A student may increase stress by choosing a competitive path (e.g. pre-med) or by being prone to being stressed out over relatively minor things.
Again, that is rigor, not competitiveness. UChicago is collaborative in that students help each other. MIT is another example of a rigorous college that is highly collaborative.
UChicago is certainly not for everyone. But it is ideal for some. My D is very smart but used to coast when allowed to. At UChicago she learned what she is truly capable of because they pushed her, and she found that she enjoyed being pushed. She developed much more there than if she went to someplace like Harvard. While it is possible to create a rigorous program at Harvard, it is because the student sought it out, not because it is prescribed the way it is at UChicago.
Anyway, I think we have given the OP a good view of what UChicago is about, and she and her son can decide if that’s what they want.
Forgive me, if I haven’t kept up with the latest lingo, but I thought “grading on a curve” was designed to decrease stress since it usually winds up adding a few notches to a competent student’s grade.
That is only when the instructor pre-sets the grade thresholds and then discovers later that the students are doing worse relative to the pre-set grade thresholds than expected (perhaps because the assignments and tests are harder than intended), so the instructor then uses a “curve” grade distribution to lower the grade thresholds.
But when the instructor for organic chemistry announces that the top 15% will get A grades, the next 35% will get B grades, and the rest who do passing quality work will get C grades, all of the pre-meds in the class then know that they need to climb over 85% of their fellow students to avoid hurting their medical school dreams.
Maybe OP can clarify what she meant by pure math. To me, it doesn’t mean only math and nothing else. Rather, it means the type of math OP’s son is interested in. He prefers abstract algebra and number theory over calculus and other so-called analyses, among the subjects he’s already studied. In the history of sciences, and yes, math, there’s no shortage of examples where some of the best scientists and mathematicians gained insights to their field of study from knowledge, experiences and observations outside their field of study.
I don’t think there’s a single physics program (at least in the US) that doesn’t require a student to study some other sciences (not just chemistry and biology), because boundaries between them are often blurred and these blurry areas are often the most interesting.