I would look at women’s colleges in consortiums, namely Mount Holyoke & Smith, which has engineering, as well as smaller universities with engineering programs, as you don’t want to be stuck if she decides she wants to switch to a more specific or pre-professional STEM major. I would look at the University of Rochester & perhaps Harvey Mudd as a reach.
DS never enjoyed the AMC or anything similar and would not participate in them in HS. He is now doing a pure Math PhD and loves it. Difficulty with math, as noted before, is that it is nearly impossible to tell whether a kid who is good/likes math in HS will be good/like it once they get into real mathematics, esp upper level stuff in college. I would suggest picking a college that works well for your kid and not worrying about the math aspect of it. Most colleges will have math department that will be good enough for almost any purpose as there is an overabundance of highly trained mathematicians looking for academic work.
DD, excellent through calculus in HS, thinks she may want to do math/applied math in college but is hedging her bets just in case it does not suit her. She also does not enjoy AMC etc.
@SlackerMomMD beat me to it - she can look at the problems without competing. I would also ask her to look at the AMC 10 problems.
https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php?title=AMC_10_Problems_and_Solutions
The AMC 12 are a little more on the advanced side if she has never seen such stuff before.
I personally am not a big fan of math competitions, but I do find that the problems themselves give exposure to a high school student beyond the standard stuff they see. Nothing is a perfect predictor for future success, of course, and so I wouldn’t base my decision just on these contest problems.
Even if she ends up not majoring in math, or changing her major, her high level math skills will be an excellent background for other majors. So look for a university which has an array of strengths. Just keep in mind that engineering and business schools at certain colleges cannot be just “switched into”.
Here’s a thread related to your question - lots of info there:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1873498-ucla-or-univ-of-minnesota-or-univ-of-washington-for-math-major-p1.html
Don’t rule out LACs. My daughter’s first year roommate at Wellesley was a very gifted math student. She took linear algebra her first semester and is now a math major. Wellesley has a fantastic math department.
Another friend of my daughter’s is a math major at Bowdoin. She aced AP Calc B/C in high school, so was looking for a challenging math curriculum in college.
My D was good at Math, but didn’t know what she wanted to “do” with Math. She discovered Chemistry, and wow, she just loved how she could use her math skills in Chemistry. Don’t give up on LACs, my D has had a great experience getting to know and work with her professors.
My younger daughter graduated from an LAC last year with a double major in math and economics. She likes both subjects (as well as almost everything else) and had a hard time deciding which to major in. Economics is very quantitative these days, so having a lot of math classes would have made sense even if she hadn’t wanted to do the double major.
We talked about a wide range of potential majors like math, engineering, business, computer science, physics etc.
D was not ready to rule out any of them, so we focused on schools with with engineering, and business in addition to Arts and Sciences. She did not want to limit her options.
The problem with engineering is that you almost have to know walking in the door that you want it. The curriculum is often full and highly sequenced. It’s tough to have time to explore that first year as the curriculum is pretty set.
However, the first year courses for engineering majors typically include the courses needed for some other majors like physics, math, and statistics, with some overlap with other majors like computer science, chemistry, economics, and other engineering majors. So, from a course prerequisite point of view, it is often easier to start out following an engineering curriculum and switch to another major later, than it is to follow some other major curriculum and switch to an engineering major later.
In addition, at many state flagship level schools, engineering majors are restricted enrollment due to being filled to capacity. At such schools, it is best to start admitted to the major, since most other majors are less difficult to switch into than engineering majors (however, computer science has gotten very popular recently, and may be difficult to switch into).
NO! to colleges with mainly women. As a woman who majored in chemistry I can’t imagine sacrificing the top quality of a major flagship or other school with a large math department highly ranked in math just to be a majority.
Son majored in math at a top <20 school with an excellent math program. He was able to take several grad level courses for his Honors degree plus many different math courses. He started thinking about math and physics for majors and several semesters later chose math. He later added computer science. Your D deserves to be challenged and have plenty of upper level math courses available to her. She deserves challenging beginning calculus sequences (math majors take more than the three semesters of the intermediate math level) instead of “one size fits all” options some schools offer.
She needs a good STEM school since she leans towards the practical (applied) instead of theoretical math from major options listed. Yes, there will be mostly men instead of women but she should have no trouble with that. Do not sacrifice quality for quantity. A large math department- eg with 100 grads per year- will offer many opportunities. Or- like the HS classmate of son’s who went to a different school and has a PhD in Physics- not A LAC for undergrad either.
Most engineering students will take math and science courses freshman year- changes can be made.
Your D needs to look at schools where she can explore several majors with a strong math basis. She needs a wide variety of math courses to choose from. Never worry about numbers of women. Most of us women can thrive in male dominated worlds. Plus make women friends in them.
I agree @ucbalumnus . If a student even thinks he or she wants engineering (or a couple of other vo-tech/job training majors like nursing or education) that student should start with the assumption that engineering is the path. Far easier to transfer out than in. Far less likely to need extra time if one changes major to something else than if a student says, after first year, yeah, I think I want engineering.
My daughter aced high school math all the way up to Multivariable calculus. Her board scores were 800 Math II, 800 math SAT and 36 math ACT. She thought she was pretty good at math and enjoyed it enough that she decided to major in it. She got crushed by her college math courses and her self esteem took a huge hit. The problem was that in high school, she just needed to memorize and regurgitate; whereas in college, she needed to be able to apply the concepts to different types of problems. Unfortunately, her high school did not prepare her sufficiently for that. We were always frustrated with the way some math teachers graded tests. Even if the final answer was correct, it would be marked wrong because the student did not follow the exact steps that were taught. This method of grading didn’t allow for creative problem solving.
The founder of The Art of Problem Solving, Richard Rusczyk, speaks about how, despite being a nationally ranked math student, he found Princeton to be challenging. What he discovered was that while he was brute forcing math problems, the students who really excelled were the ones who understood how to problem solve. He felt that that was what was missing in the typical high school classroom; hence, his creation of the website. As others have suggested, I highly recommend The Art of Problem Solving website and the AMC math series. We discovered these opportunities a bit too late to help our daughter, but anyone interested in a math major would benefit greatly from these resources.
Echoing this sentiment (and rest of her post) from @wis75 - except replace “chemistry” with “math”.
@wis75 @mathprof63 I do not know the context of above comments, but Bryn Mawr has produced the most women who later earned PhDs. So I would not write off women’s colleges or small LACs such as Harvey Mudd or Scripps not having top quality.
@MaineLonghorn , I would love to expose
my d21 about actuary science. I have been to http://www.beanactuary.org/
But I don’t know any thing or anyone that is that.
Can you point me in that direction?
Thank you
Are you SURE of those math PhD stats in post # 33??? Numbers, not percentages. Also, MOST LACs will not have the diversity of math faculty and courses offered by larger institutions where undergrads can take grad level classes. There is also something to be said for being with a larger pool of students with the same major. I doubt there are 100 math majors at any small LAC. Even if one doesn’t take certain classes it is fun knowing one could. Plus the after hours math club lectures/seminars. Quality PLUS Quantity.
@mathprof63- we, a group of some four women chemistry majors knew a woman who majored in math, finished in 3 years and the went to medical school. We figure she could do it because math was one-one credits-hours while we had some 2 credits for 8 hours (or more) lab classes (plus homework). No way could we have found the time (pre-AP days). Of course, one has to have the math ability- one friend almost majored in math instead of chemistry.
re the question about actuarial science. That’s a Business School major (at least at UW). Son had a friend who majored in that. Those students took an advanced (beyond calculus) math course that was routine for math majors and difficult for them- especially since they took it with the math majors.
Look up the major on various college websites to see what the major entails.
My sons are/were math minors in college. The older son is at a top law school, and his love of math got him an assistantship last summer to a law professor who teaches economics and the law. The younger son is majoring in econ and finance. Coupled with that math minor, he is quite attractive to many companies and businesses seeking people who can understand math. He is considering a career in finance, but also is interested in actuarial science, thanks to his high school math teacher. She had a great deal of influence on his thinking.
D has also been researching the field of actuarial science and it appears that it falls more into a business major than a math major. What I find intriguing is that is covers such a wide array of math and business based topics, everything from calculus and statistics to finance and economics. It also appears that a masters degree is unnecessary in the particular job market.
When I suggested looking that the proportion of women math majors at the college, I meant that if a college has 10-15% women among its math majors, it may not be the friendliest place for a woman student. When I was an undergrad, I was often the only woman out of 10-15 students in the upper-level math classes that I took. Fast forward 35 years, and QMP was one of two women out of about 12 in one semester of an upper-level math class that she took, and then the only woman of 6 or 7 students in the follow-on class. While the gender imbalance only bothered me slightly at the time, it did bother QMP.
It is also useful to look at the proportion of women among those who actually graduate with math majors and the proportion of women among those who go on to Ph.D. programs in math. If there is a group that practices for the Putnam exam, and it’s all men, that is not a good sign.