<p>Are there any East Coast LAC's with great math departments or do most LAC's have strong math departments?</p>
<p>I once asked a prominent mathematician what LACs had the best math departments and he mentioned Williams, Reed, and Santa Clara (technically not a LAC but close enough) as having the best math departments in the country.</p>
<p>Definitely Williams</p>
<p>If you consider preparation for a future PhD to be indicative of quality at the undergrad level, this data might be useful, originally posted by interesteddad. Some east coast LACs are in the list.</p>
<p>E.g., 2.7% of all CalTech bachelor's grads later earn a PhD in math.</p>
<p>Here are the colleges and universities more than 2.5 PhDs in math per 1000 undergrad graduates over the most recent 10 year period:</p>
<p>PhDs per 1000 grads </p>
<p>Academic field: Math </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database<br>
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database<br>
Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000 </p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period </p>
<p>1 California Institute of Technology 27.2
2 Harvey Mudd College 18.7
3 Reed College 13.5
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 9.3
5 University of Chicago 7.6
6 Harvard University 7.5
7 Pomona College 6.7
8 St Olaf College 6.5
9 Rice University 6.1
10 Princeton University 5.9
11 Grinnell College 5.9
12 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 5.4
13 Swarthmore College 4.4
14 Bryn Mawr College 4.2
15 Brown University 4.1
16 Yale University 3.9
17 Carleton College 3.7
18 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 3.7
19 St John's College (both campus) 3.7
20 Haverford College 3.6
21 Concordia Teachers College 3.4
22 Williams College 3.3
23 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 3.3
24 Albertson College 3.2
25 Knox College 3.2
26 Whitman College 3.1
27 Kalamazoo College 3.1
28 Carnegie Mellon University 3.1
29 Stevens Institute of Technology 3.0
30 Hendrix College 2.9
31 Stanford University 2.9
32 Amherst College 2.9
33 College of Wooster 2.9
34 Oberlin College 2.7
35 Agnes Scott College 2.6
36 Cooper Union 2.6</p>
<p>Math is one the few departments at Wesleyan that offers a doctoral degree (the others being, biology, chemistry, biochem/molecular bio, physics, and ethnomusicology.) My understanding is that it tends to list slightly toward topology as a sub-specialty. It's Math/Econ program is also quite good, as is the computer science program.</p>