Current HS Sophomore creating a list of colleges to apply to. I’ve heard really good things about the program at GaTech but really bad things about the student culture. I thought I’d ask here to confirm it. I’m really nerdy and some of my best memories have been working together with fellow nerds on passion projects and working together with fellow nerds on homework. I recently got into an advanced program for math in my state full of (mostly) math nerds, and it was awesome. I finally felt understood.
So in looking for a university I want a university with a nerdy and also collaborative student culture. I thought as an institute of technology I’d get that at GaTech. But I’ve also heard it’s really cutthroat and extremely career focus. Is this true? How would you describe student culture at GaTech?
Not a student but a parent. Georgia Tech is extremely collaborative in our child’s experience. Not at all cutthroat. Lots of academic support. We know many Georgia Tech students as we are in-state, and all that we know who have gone there have loved it.
There is definitely a career focus as their career placement is excellent. That’s not to say there are not people who intend to go on and get their PhD and do research, but they do put a lot of engineers out in industry.
Georgia Tech is extremely rigorous, which can be stress-inducing, but it’s far more collaborative than it is cutthroat. That’s actually quite a nice hallmark of the school. It’s also home to a wide range of personalities, and that includes plenty of super nerdy techies.
As a young person, you will benefit from looking at sources geared towards young people.
Try the college’s social media pages. Look at the college website to see if they have videos uploaded about social events, or maybe there are some student-led QA sessions upcoming. Check out Niche and Unigo, though be aware that Unigo has undated reviews.
You can call the admissions office and ask to be connected with real students who can give you perspective on the college. Good luck.
The culture of the engineering majors at Tech has changed quite a bit since I was there. The gender ratio is better too. But even then, while engineering was academically demanding the culture of College of Computing was somewhat different.
Engineering is intense. People can take away what you will with that. Your also going to find nerdy students at just about any college. Most engineering colleges are collaborative. Focused. Yes. Reach out to student groups. Go to Facebook etc pages at the school. Talk to students there when /if you visit. You should get an idea of how they roll from there. At some schools we stopped students and ask them why they choose the school and how’s it going. This information actually was very helpful and everyone was kind with their time.
As an opinion, I don’t believe Georgia Tech would make an especially good choice for a likely math major. Since engineering majors there predominate at a ratio of 36:1 over math majors, you might find your academic interests to be uncomfortably divergent from those of the majority of its student body.
DS is doing a double major at GT in CS/Math and says he does not feel it is cutthroat at all. He mentioned the avg GPA is 3.6 in CS which is pretty high…
I am a math professor and also a parent of a GT engineering student. My notes:
My son has found the culture to be collaborative overall. He is in a club where many upperclassmen are quite helpful. Similarly, he is able to find likeminded students in his classes.
GT has an excellent math department. If you are instate, its a great opportunity. As others have pointed out, though, it is primarily an engineering school. If you are OOS,there are other universities with a broader base of types of students, not just engineering.
Culture of math majors can vary widely from one university to another. All R1 universities have great math departments, so it’s more about how you fit with the student math culture at these places. Selective LACs will offer more faculty guidance for math majors and tend to have close knit student groups.
In general,once you step out of college, mathematics in academia is highly competitive . There are many PhDs in math and not enough academic positions, even though many top tier math departments have scaled back on the number of grad students they admit. And most of the open jobs tend to be positions that are teaching related(like mine), not primarily research.
I happened to be GaTech alumni with BS in Math from it. I have a relative who got PhD through Math department in a crossover with IE and CS (Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (ACO)) and worked on Wall Street with it doing modeling and programming. GaTech always had a very strong Math department. GaTech is a pressure cooker but it is not MIT… If you get there, Math department was relatively small. Many students in that department used to be foreigners (China, France- GaTech has satellite locations there, and many students from Europe). Very few females . Many Post Docs who teach are foreigners too. I have no idea how it is now, but I suspect it is very similar. It is very nerdy… It is definitely not LAC or a warm supportive environment…
I suspect that Math is less collaborative than Engineering. A lot of Engineering is project-based (working in teams like my DD does now for BME there). There is less working in teams in Math (you usually are not solving homework in teams). However, nobody prohibits you to have study groups in teams theoretically…
Here is the list of Phd students from last 50 years :). It looks that there are more PhD students now so I guess there are more undergrads too. Post PhD Positions of the Alumni of the School of Math | School of Mathematics | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA
I would say it’s different now from what you described. Definitely nerdy, but collaborative. GPAs are crazy high - over 3.5 in all majors. Typical entering class is at least 40 percent female. 8 sororities on campus. A traditional college campus feel with D1 sports and school spirit that focuses on STEM.
My younger brother went to Georgia Tech, way back in the mid-90s, and he found electrical engineering to be a challenging and collaborative program. Back in those days, he said that the male/female ratio felt like 2:1, but I’m not sure if he was exaggerating or if it really was that heavily male back in the 90’s.
The one thing he consistently said was that drinking was a big part of the student culture at Tech, and he was not in a frat. He described it like this: “Georgia Tech: a drinking school with an engineering problem.” Maybe it’s less like this nowadays, or maybe it was just a case of him gravitating to friends who liked to drink as a way to entertain themselves and blow off steam and the stress of the academic load. Regardless, there was a lot of drinking in the dorms when I visited him. Granted a football weekend visit is probably not the best barometer of day-to-day life on campus!
It is not 40% female in Math. I can put my head for it . Used to be 2 girls out of 13 students in upper Math classes for BS. Math is not CS or Engineering. It is not very popular among girls.
I am not an expert in Asian names, but I doubt that among listed (see the link above) recent PhD students 50% are women…
I think drinking issue is a student problem, not a college one. DD is a student at Tech now and not in sorority and does not drink at all (never did, just not interested…) Her friends are not drinking either. I have never worried for her for drinking or drugs.
On the other hand at introductory day when we droped DD , college President mentioned that classes did not start but they already have a freshman student in the hospital due to drinking… There is nothing they can do to prevent it… If some students are acting stupid what can you do? Campus is in Atlanta with plenty of alcohol. Tech is relatively big public school. Nobody is going to babysit students like in some small privates…
I can’t say about women in math now. Used to be few back in the day. College of Sciences has a lot of women though. I think among the various colleges at Tech, College of Computing is the most male dominant.
. Used to be 2 girls out of 13 students in upper Math classes for BS. Math is not CS or Engineering. It is not very popular among girls.