<p>I did not care about my grades during the first two years of high school. Because of this, I have lost opportunities for acceptance into certain colleges.</p>
<p>Therefore, I would like some advice on decent colleges that I could possibly gain entry to for a mathematics major. I'm unsure of whether or not I should stay in Arizona and attend one of the public universities here (NAU, ASU, or U of A).</p>
<p>The first issue to deal with is the in/out of state question. Can you afford to go out of state? Would you be happy to stay in state if it’s for a good college? Unless your parents are paying everything, you want to try and keep your debts as low as possible. </p>
<p>On your grades alone, don’t have your SATs, NAU, ASU or U of A will be reaches for you. Although, junior and senior gpa might go some way to help sway them. </p>
<p>You might want to apply to a community college or two, focussing on transfering over (try and get one with links to a specific school you want to attend later- makes things smoother).</p>
<p>If out of state is an option for you, you could look at the state colleges in California (Cal State) as well as Colorado as there are a few who match your existing GPA if you want to go straight into a 4 year school.</p>
<p>Well done in turning your academics around.</p>
<p>With a 3.2, apply to ASU, it’s numerical and you’ll get in as an in-state applicant. Wiht this turn-around, you have a shot at Westminster-Mesa, too (private college, affiliated with Westminster College, where Churchill made his famous speech about “an iron curtain has fallen upon Europe” that defined the terms for the Cold War).</p>
<p>I recommend applying to out of state to schools such as Whittier, Redlands, Chapman, U San Francisco, U Portland, U Puget Sound, St Mary’s of California - they will probably be cheaper than CSU’s since you’ll have access to financial aid (no financial aid at the CSU’s except for the $5,500 federal loan you’re entitled to.) Willamette as a reach?</p>
<p>If you’re willing to travel further away, lots of colleges in the Midwest would be interested in a 3.2 student who has a 4.0 his last years: Beloit is a stand out at that level (St Olaf as a super reach), Earlham, St Kate’s in the Twin Cities (if you’re a girl), South Dakota Tech (if you’re into CS/technology)…</p>
<p>You can also work for a year in an area that has a community college with an agreement with a UC. You would have to go part time for a year, then full time for another year and a summer, all while working and getting A’s and B’s, to transfer to one of the UC’s. In that case, having worked for a year at least while not being enrolled full time at a college, you would qualify (2-3 years later though) for both UC in state tuition and transfer agreements. However it’s very risky because you may not graduate at all. So I’d advise you apply to a 4-year school such as the ones I named above.</p>
<p>Thank you for responding I will take a look at those schools. My senior year grades will be the same as my Junior year, so my weighted GPA will be 3.4. </p>
<p>I have no doubts about getting accepted into ASU, NAU, or U of A, but I am unsure if they will give me the quality of education that I would like.</p>
<p>Money is not a problem… I would just like a good quality of education for a mathematics major.</p>
<p>If you’re full pay, that puts more schools within reach (being full pay is a hook of its own, thank your parents :p)
What do you see yourself doing with math? What’s the highest math class you’ll have taken at the end of high school? (Precalc, calculus, more than calc bc?)
St Olaf for math may be more reachable if you’re full pay but still a long shot; Beloit, Lawrence, Willamette, Kalamazoo, St Mary’s College of MD (Maryland’s Honors College where they would love your OOS tuition money); perhaps other matches could include Earlham, Illinois Wesleyan, Hendrix, Hope (if you’re a conservative Christian it’s a perfect school), Juniata.
perhaps another reach would be Whitman, perhaps Dickinson, Franklin&Marshall.
If you don’t mind tech schools: rpi, rit, stevens, Colorado School of Mines…
Beloit is probably the most reachable school for you with the best math dept.
<a href=“http://www.thecollegesolution.com/20564/[/url]”>http://www.thecollegesolution.com/20564/</a>
<a href=“Mathematics • Beloit College”>Mathematics • Beloit College;
<p>The quality of your mathematics education is largely up to your own initiative. If you take the most challenging courses and put a lot of effort into it, then you will be fine and have a chance at a good graduate school is that is what you plan to do. Possibly the most important thing to select your college on is whether they have good research opportunities should you wish to prepare for graduate school. In that case ASU or UA are probably a better choice.</p>
<p>UA and ASU have respectable math departments, including research activity should you be interested in preparing for PhD study. Despite the rather low selectivity at the low end, the top students at UA and ASU are very good, so the faculty presumably have offerings for them (and there are graduate level courses if you are very advanced in math). I.e. they are schools with a wide range of students, so students like you who are late bloomers in high school can get admitted but reach their full potential better than at a small college where they can get admitted to (because the small college with lower selectivity may not have enough top end students to be worth having offerings for them).</p>
<p>That’s why we need to know whether Mouse will be taking Precalculus or Calculus senior year, or will be more advanced.
If Mouse is in Precalc or Calc senior year, with a B GPA, I’d strongly advocate for one of the LAC’s above since a huge calculus lecture isn’t likely to be the right setting for him/her to major in math. Large lecture halls can be very unforgiving for B students, especially when they’re populated with premed students “retaking” Calculus and hogging all the top grades. Most small colleges have plenty of classes for students who start freshman year with Calculus.
If Mouse is in Multivariable calculus, Discrete math, advanced college classes through dual enrollment, etc, then indeed U of A and ASU are the clear choice. In that case, Mouse should reach out to the math depts at both schools.</p>
<p>Still, it’s a HUGELY different situation to be sitting among 350 other undergraduates and being in a class of 25-30, to be able to ask a question vs. not, to be able to see your professors twice a week versus the TA from time to time, to have an adviser and a peer mentor whom you see regularly, etc. The level of support just isn’t the same at all and for a B student it makes a huge difference. Large universities tend to be sink-or-swim and unless OP is taking calculus BC or further in high school, I’m not sure the “large school” environment would nurture his/her wish to pursue a math major.
In addition, most of the schools named above are not cut throat, but rather friendly/down to earth. Their freshman classes aren’t designed to be “weed out”.</p>
<p>UA does have honors calculus 2 and 3 courses for students coming in with AP calculus credit. These are likely to be smaller sections with few grade-grubbing pre-meds.</p>
<p>ASU has separate versions of calculus 1 and 2 for biology majors (presumably including most grade-grubbing pre-meds) and engineering majors, versus the version for math majors.</p>
<p>In any case, the OP is not a generic B student. The OP was a C+ student who is now an A- student. If math is the OP’s favorite and best subject, then it seems odd to think that the OP will necessarily have trouble in college math at any college that will admit the OP.</p>
<p>But then the OP might want to specify what level of math s/he will complete in high school, and what his/her future goals are (e.g. PhD study in math, teaching high school math, actuarial employment, etc.).</p>
<p>The “no Cal 101 for you” thread wasn’t based on lack of space but rather on their placement policy. I’m still unsure that it wasn’t a case of a student who wasn’t prepared as well as the school thought he was, or that the calc class he was taking wasn’t the right one and he was just struggling because on a 10-week college term the pace is incredibly faster than high school.</p>
<p>I think that what level of math OP will take senior year is key here.
But OP seems to have vanished, so that we’re talking to one another. :)</p>
<p>The highest level of math that I will have taken in high school is Pre-Calculus, currently with an A+. I don’t think that I will struggle in a university setting if I choose to go there.</p>
<p>I am looking to become a college math professor, so I will need a PhD.</p>
<p>
I haven’t taken the SAT, and will be taking the ACT for a second time in December.</p>
<p>If you want to become a college professor, then you need to look at a link you can find by typing “50 schools that produce the most science and engineering PHDs”.
The top programs to become a Math Professor are not accessible to you (CalTech, HarveyMudd, Reed, Uchicago, MIT, etc)
Among the other “top” schools for future PHDs, here’s a list that could be accessible to you, from hardest to most likely (not exact, but roughly) - and I don’t think you’ll run out of math classes if you start in Calculus I at these schools:
URochester
Grinnell
Franklin&Marshall
Hendrix
Whitman
Beloit
Earlham
Lawrence
Kalamazoo
Hampshire
plus NM Institute Mining and Tech (which is a tech school).
These schools are all very very different in setting, location, and atmosphere so check out their websites + read about them in the Fiske Guide or Insider’s Guide to the Colleges or Princeton review’s best colleges.
This of course is in addition to UA and ASU. </p>
<p>Hampshire’s math offerings are unorthodox, and may not be looked at favorably by math PhD program admissions (e.g. no real analysis course). A pre-PhD math student at Hampshire would probably need to use the consortium arrangement to take several needed math courses at University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Whitman, Hendrix, Earlham, Beloit do not appear to have very extensive math offerings in their course listings. Rochester appears to have the most extensive math offerings of the non-UA/ASU list in post #15.</p>
<p>In general, you want to look at each college’s math course listing. Also, look at the schedules to see that the courses are offered frequently enough (a course offered only once every two years can be inconvenient to schedule – if you miss it, you may not be able to take it before you graduate).</p>
<p>You also want to check faculty rosters to see what research interests they have; a school with a decent number of math faculty with diverse (within math) research interests will offer more choice of undergraduate research projects. That might also mean that fewer courses will be “stepchild” courses taught infrequently by faculty for whom that is not their main subarea of interest (e.g. if there are no faculty interested in algebra and number theory, those courses would be taught by faculty who may not be as interested in that subject matter, and may be offered infrequently because they would rather teach other courses).</p>
<p>Advanced math courses that should be available at reasonable frequency:</p>
<p>Real analysis (sometimes called advanced calculus; proof oriented)
Complex analysis (proof oriented)
Linear algebra (proof oriented; there may also be a sophomore level course that is less proof oriented and more application oriented, mainly for engineering and physics majors)
Abstract/modern algebra (groups, rings, fields; proof oriented)
Numerical analysis
Geometry and/or topology
Logic and/or set theory
Number theory
Additional advanced elective math courses that you may be interested in (some applied courses like probability, statistics, theoretical computer science, cryptography, etc. may be in other departments)</p>
<p>If you are looking at eventually aiming for tippy-top math PhD programs, you may want to private-message b@r!um about them, since some of them are LAC-unfriendly with respect to PhD program admissions.</p>
I will take a look at those schools. My senior year grades will be the same as my Junior year, so my weighted GPA will be 3.4. </p>