<p>Hi,</p>
<li><p>What are the top colleges/universities in terms of undergraduate math? (I regret using the word “best” in the original thread title.)</p></li>
<li><p>I’m also interested in good math colleges/universities that have a small core curriculum or no core curriculum. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’d be grateful for an answer to either question, if not both. Supporting evidence would be appreciated (e.g., where you got some ranking from), but it’s not necessary.</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, U of Chicago, and various others. If "no core curriculum" is your criterion, exclude Chicago from your list, but carefully consider whether what MIT and Caltech require is what you would want to take anyway, and think ahead about how to satisfy degree requirements at Harvard, Princeton, or Berkeley.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response, Tokenadult! </p>
<p>Let me revise my question (taking departure in the second question):</p>
<p>What are colleges with no core curriculum that have a good math department? (For instance, I'd imagine Brown and Johns Hopkins would be one of them.)</p>
<p>Brown and Johns Hopkins certainly have good math departments. Brown has no core curriculum whatever, so that would be one attraction of Brown for you.</p>
<p>Gourman Report ranking for undergrad math:
Princeton
UC Berkeley
Harvard
MIT
U Chicago
Stanford
NYU
Yale
Wisconsin Madison
Columbia
Michigan Ann Arbor
Brown
Cornell
UCLA
Illinois Urbana Champaign
Caltech
Minnesota
U Penn
Notre Dame
Georgia Tech
U washington
Purdue WL
Rutgers NB
Indiana U Bloomington
U Maryland College Park
Rice
UC San Diego
Northwestern
Texas Austin
carnegie Mellon
Johns Hopkins
Washington U St Louis
Ohio State
SUNY Stony Brook
Penn State
UVA
RPI
Illinois Chicago
U Colorado Boulder
U Kentucky
UNC Chapel Hill
Dartmouth
U Rochester
U Utah
SUNY Buffalo
Tulane
USC
UC Santa Barbara
U Massachusetts AMherst
U Oregon
Duke
Louisiana State Baton Rouge
U Arizona
case Western
Michigan State
U Pittsburgh
Brandeis
US Air Force Academy</p>
<p>Where is the Gourman Report published? How old is the data set on which those rankings are based? </p>
<p>Gourman</a> Report - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia </p>
<p>"It has been widely criticized for not disclosing criteria or ranking methods,[1][2] as well as for reporting statistically impossible data, such as no ties among schools, narrow gaps in scores with no variation in gap widths, and ranks of nonexistent departments."</p>
<p>You should look at the following LACs:</p>
<p>Grinnell (open curriculum)
Carleton (distribution requirements
Williams (distribution requirements)
St. Olaf (distribution requirements; core option)
Reed (semi-core; distribution requirements)
Pomona (distribution requirements)
Harvey Mudd (distribution requirments)</p>
<p>And these universities:</p>
<p>Brown (open curriculum)
Caltech (science core)
MIT (distribution requirements)
Rice (distribution requirements)
Waterloo (Canada; limited distribution requirements)
Princeton (distribution requirements)
Chicago (core curriculum)
Carnegie Mellon (distribution requirements)</p>
<p>The Gourman Report is so broad as to be meaningless, IMHO.</p>
<p>LACs for math from Rugg's:
Bates
Bowdoin
Bucknell
Carleton
Colgate
Dartmouth
Davidson
Dickinson
Harvey Mudd
Holy Cross
Kenyon
Mount Holyoke
Occidental
Pomona
Rice
St Mary's (MD)
St Olaf
Trinity (CT)
Union
Wabash
Wellesley
Wheaton
Whitman
Willamette</p>
<p>for a safety school, check out the University of Missouri-Rolla...they recently changed thier name though. but they are a very math/science centered university.</p>
<p>The Gourman Report does allow ties, but they are unlikely. The Gourman Report does not rank non-existent programs but it does rank programs together that go by different titles (as explained in foortnotes).</p>
<p>Gourman Report method</p>
<p>INTRODUCTION</p>
<p>Since 1967, The Gourman Report has made an intensive effort to determine what
constitutes academic excellence or quality in American colleges and .universities.
The result of that research and study is found within this book. </p>
<p>The Gourman Report is the only qualitative guide to institutions of higher education
that assigns a precise, numerical score to each school and program. This score is
derived from a comprehensive assessment of each program's strengths and
shortcomings. This method makes it simple to examine the effectiveness of a given
educational program, or compare one program to another. </p>
<p>These deceptively simple numerical ratings take into account a wide variety of
empirical data. The Gourman Report is not a popularity contest or an opinion poll,
but an objective evaluation of complex information drawn from the public record,
private research foundations, and universities themselves. Many of the resources
employed in this research, while public, are not easily accessible. Individual
researchers attempting to collect this data in order to compare institutions or
programs would face a daunting task. </p>
<p>This book is intended for use by: </p>
<p>• Young people and parents wishing to make informed choices
about higher education.
• Educators and administrators interested in an independent
evaluation of their programs .. </p>
<p>• Prospective employers who wish to assess the educational
qualifications of college graduates.
• Schools wishing to improve undergraduate programs
• Foundations involved in funding colleges and universities.
• Individuals interested in identifying fraudulent or inferior
institutions ..
• Citizens concerned about the quality of today's higher education.
For all of these researchers, the breadth and convenience of the data in The
Gourman Report can greatly facilitate the study of higher education. </p>
<p>Method of Evaluation </p>
<p>Much of the material used in compiling The Gourman Report is internal-drawn
from educators and administrators at the schools themselves. These individuals are
permitted to evaluate only their own programs-as they know them from daily
experience-and not the programs of other institutions. Unsolicited appraisals are </p>
<p>occasionally considered (and weighed accordingly), but the bulk 'of our
contributions come from people chosen for their academic qualifications, their
published works, and their interest in improving the quality of higher education. It
attests to the dedication of these individuals (and also to the serious problems in
higher education today) that over 90% of our requests for contributions are met
with a positive response. </p>
<p>In addition, The Gourman Report draws on many external resources which are a
matter of record, such as funding for public universities as authorized by legislative
bodies, required filings by schools to meet standards of non-discrimination, and
material provided by the institutions (and independently verified) about faculty
makeup and experience, fields of study offered, and physical plant. </p>
<p>Finally, The Gourman Report draws upon the findings of individuals, associations </p>
<p>and agencies whose business it is to make accurate projections of the success that </p>
<p>will be enjoyed by graduates from given institutions and disciplines. While the </p>
<p>methods employed by these resources are proprietary, their findings have </p>
<p>consistently been validated by experience, and they are an important part .of our </p>
<p>research. </p>
<p>The Gourman Report's rating of educational institutions is analogous to the grading
of a college essay examination. What may appear to be a subjective process is in
fact a patient sifting of empiricar data by analysts who understand both the "subject
matter" (the fields of study under evaluation), and the "students" (the colleges and
universities themselves). The fact that there are virtually no "tie" scores indicates
the accuracy and effectiveness of this methodology. So does the consistent
affirmation of the ratings in The Gourman Report by readers who are in a position
to evaluate certain programs themselves. </p>
<p>The following criteria are taken into consideration in the evaluation of each
educational program and institution. It should be noted that, because disciplines
vary in their educational methodology, the significance given each criterion will vary
from the rating of one discipline to the next; however, our evaluation is consistent
for all schools listed within each field of study. </p>
<ol>
<li>Auspices, control and organization of the institution; </li>
<li>Number of educational programs offered and degrees conferred
(with additional attention to "sub-fields" available to students
within a particular discipline);</li>
<li>Age (experience level) of the institution and of the individual
discipline or program and division;</li>
<li>Faculty, including qualifications, experience, intellectual interests,
attainments, and professional productivity (including research);</li>
<li><p>Students, including quality of scholastic work and records of
graduates both in graduate study and in practice;
• The Goullnan Report-Undergraduate </p></li>
<li><p>Basis of and requirements for admission of students (overall and
by individual discipline) </p></li>
<li><p>Number of students enrolled (overall and for each discipline); </p></li>
<li><p>Curriculum and curricular content of the program or discipline
and division;</p></li>
<li><p>Standards and quality of instruction (including teaching loads); </p></li>
<li><p>Quality of administration, including attitudes and policy toward
teaching, research and scholarly production in each discipline,
and administration research;</p></li>
<li><p>Quality and availability of non-departmental areas such as
counseling and career placement services;</p></li>
<li><p>Quality of physical plant devoted to undergraduate, graduate and
professional levels; </p></li>
<li><p>Finances, including budgets, investments, expenditures and
sources of income for both public and private institutions;</p></li>
<li><p>Library, including number of volumes, appropriateness of
materials to individual disciplines, and accessibility of materials;</p></li>
<li><p>Computer facility sufficient to support current research activities
for both faculty and students;</p></li>
<li><p>Sufficient funding for research equipment and infrastructure; </p></li>
<li><p>Number of teaching and research assistantships; </p></li>
<li><p>Academic-athletic balance.
ipecific information about the data used to rank institutions and programs is
Ivailable in Appendix A and Appendix B.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It's gratifying to see that every college I first mentioned to the OP is in the Gourman undergraduate top twenty (as is my alma mater, my son's likely "safety" college), but I don't buy the methodology. It looks like the Gourman report is too much of a one-man show by the wrong one man.</p>
<p>I read an article a while back (swear I bookmarked it and can't find it...) in which MIT looked at undergrad math programs, and said these were the top six, in no particular order: Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UChicago, Harvard and Princeton. The next tier was UMich, UCLA, NYU and Caltech.</p>
<p>Mudd sends 40% of its math majors to grad school.</p>
<p>What kind of math do you want to study? If you want to study applied math, then you should make Brown your top choice, but I would look elsewhere for pure math. Also, what do you mean when you say you want little or no core curriculum? Lots of math schools have distribution requirements or science cores.</p>
<p>ditto.</p>
<p>10chars</p>
<p>Kato and Chao make UChi the top in number theory and abstract algebra. If you want applied math, or mathematical physics, then go elsewhere-- but in terms of abstract pure math–Chicago is coming on like gangbusters. My son has turned down more “prestigious” colleges in order to study math at Chicago.</p>
<p>This post is over 2 years old. I doubt the OP is still looking.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In no particular order: MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Stanford.</p>
<p>Good second-tier options would be for example NYU or UCLA.</p>
<p>I am continually amazed at how often UC Berkeley is included with HYPSM when discussing top departments, yet drops down to 21st place overall in the USNWR rankings behind schools like Notre Dame, Emory or Vanderbilt. I imagine that it has to do with large size of the student body.</p>
<p><a href=“no%20attacks%20please,%20ND,%20Emory%20and%20Vandy%20are%20great%20schools”>I</a>*</p>
<p>USNWR also ranks graduate programs.<br>
Just because a school has a top rated graduate program it does not mean the undergraduate program will be strong. On some campuses the most productive research faculty teach few if any undergraduate courses or they have poorly developed teaching skills. A better strategy is o look at the feeder undergraduate schools for the top graduate programs. You may be surprised at the number of LACs and lower ranked universities that send kids to the top graduate programs.</p>
<p>Feeder Schools?</p>
<p>you mean like this?</p>
<p><a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;