<p>Talented math students are not necessarily as advanced in math as the OP is (in college sophomore level math as a high school junior). A talented, but not especially advanced, math student (e.g. enters college having just completed AP calculus or even just precalculus) may find many more LACs suitable in terms of advanced math course offerings than the OP will.</p>
<p>Note that a number of LACs listed in reply #59 do have cross registration agreements with other schools which may offer more advanced math courses for those who run out of them at their LAC (e.g. Barnard - Columbia, Haverford and Swarthmore - Penn, Morehouse - Georgia Tech and Georgia, Pomona - Harvey Mudd, Wellesley - MIT; although commuting and administrative convenience or lack thereof does vary).</p>
<p>Iām willing to bet all (or almost all) of those āinternational institutionsā are universities. If that assumption is correct, then there are 64 universities represented as opposed to 10 LACs. That seems to support attending a university as opposed a LAC.</p>
<p>Honestly, if I were OP, I would apply to both strong LAC-like universities (e.g. Chicago, Caltech) and LACs (preferably ones with access to some research universities nearby.) And of the two, Iād pick any of the universities over the LACs, and choose for fit.</p>
<p>^ Yes, Pomona is one of those LACs with a cross-registration agreement. However, Pomona has nearly as many of its own Math faculty members as Harvey Mudd does (16 Pomona v. 17 HM professors), covering a wide range of sub-fields. Thatās 16 PhD-holding math professors, fully focused on undergraduates, for 31 Pomona degrees conferred in mathematics during 2012-13 (per IPEDS data.) At least 4 of them graduated from LACs, by the way. </p>
<p>Which is not to say you couldnāt find more resources at a research university (perhaps even with nearly as much support for undergraduates at some of them.) For UChicagoās Fall 2014 undergraduate mathematics course listings, I count 124 unique instructors. That would include lecturers and maybe some graduate students. Still, that is a lot of people to learn from in a program that conferred 155 math degrees in 2012-13. </p>
<p>Take a look at active course listings. Some schools may have a lot of courses listed in their catalog but only run them every few years. Williams is stellar in math, and offers independent study and tutorials. Itās rigorous with a particularly engaging faculty. </p>
<p>Hereās an excerpt from a recent post elsewhere on CC:</p>
<p>"My older son is (obviously) at Cornell. We made sure to help him choose a campus with a graduate program because his math level was already so advanced. He was quite certain that he would be a math major. Heās taking mostly graduate classes now as a junior. "</p>
<p>Iām not advocating for Cornell specifically, but the point is somebody similarly advanced and oriented would be well advised to arrange for themselves a situation where he/she has the same opportunities as that āolder sonā has. IMO.</p>
<p>My D1 came into a large LAC with extensive advanced placement, including college math courses, and had trouble scheduling courses of interest during her last year there. There were courses, just not those she wanted, The ones she may have preferred were either not offered there, were given only every other semester or every other year, or were only offered in a single section which conflicted with something else that was also only offered in a single section. A former CC poster, Marite, reported that her son, also highly advanced, encountered a similar situation at a different large LAC. </p>
<p>That does not necessarily mean that all LACs ought to be avoided. However, at all schools being considered, more research into the available offerings and real access to graduate level courses would be advisable here. Seems to me.</p>
<p>I suggested it in passing, once before, but the OP might still consider College of Creative Studies at UCSB for the flexibility and opportunities for an individualized curriculum within a large university. Most people donāt automatically associate UCSB with high-level Math, but CCS is a unique program. </p>
<p>In this recently posted article in USA Today called āTop 10 Colleges For a Math Major,ā Harvey Mudd College is listed (along with 9 universities).
college. usatoday. com/2014 /10/08/ top-10-colleges-for-a-major-in-math/ (remove the spaces I put in to link to the article)</p>
<p>^ Strictly in terms of academic quality, I donāt believe that ranking is plausible.
It conflates too many measurements that are likely to be affected by factors other than the department quality (such as starting salaries or the percentage of graduates who major in math.) </p>
<p>Colorado Mines (#2) has a department of āapplied mathematics and statisticsā. It has very few pure mathematics courses. Not that it isnāt a good program, but I donāt believe itās a stronger mathematics department than quite a few schools farther down the list (including Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley.)</p>