<p>b'smom-
The Gourman criteria strongly favor research universities. In effect, it is a ranking for universities but an LAC shows up occasionally.</p>
<p>Rugg's Recommendations tend to favor LACs.</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>gourman ranks williams with every other liberal arts college in the country... pretty much nowhere.</p>
<p>and collegehelp, would you mind providing the numeric ratings for the math departments you listed?</p>
<p>Weasel8488-
Corroboration is a way to establish validity. If the weather forecast says rain and you look out your window and it is raining, that's validation.</p>
<p>Look at these top twenty from Gourman:
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</p>
<p>They are a very reasonable top twenty and knowledgeable people would intuitively recognize that these are among the very best for math. If the Gourman formula works so well for the top twenty, why would it not work well for the next twenty?</p>
<p>Yes but you aren't corroborating with an objective standard. What you wrote in post 18 was akin to saying that one weatherman's forecast is good because it's the same as another weatherman's forecast, the weather itself notwithstanding.</p>
<p>ericatbucknell-
I don't have time to post each numerical score but they range from 4.92 to 4.09.</p>
<p>weasel8488-
In the physical sciences you can corroborate with objective data. In the social sciences you almost always have to corroborate subjective data with other subjective data. Does the math SAT have validity? It does if the high scorers get better grades in calc.</p>
<p>A ranking system which justifies itself based on its corroboration with another system is effectively endorsing the methodology of that other system, thus denying the necessity of its own existence.</p>
<p>I don't think the rankings discussion is pertinent to the original post. </p>
<p>Name some easier to get into schools with solid math departments, hopefully with an active math culture, that sort of thing.</p>
<p>Collegehelp, you didn't adress any of my points.</p>
<p>And Erin's dad, I thought it was pretty obvious it was from wikipedia. I forget sometimes that there are older folks here who might not have a feel for the internet. I'll be careful next time so as not to be called cheesy.</p>
<p>Sorry about that portion of the comment. I've done some research in my work and if you don't attribute where you got some info you are in trouble. It was obviously quoted but with no source.</p>