<p>So, how can I go about searching for a school with a strong math department (or any specific department for that matter?) I often see comments from people about colleges that aren't necessarily well known, but have great theater, international study, or some other specific major, but how can you look at a college and figure out whether it's got a strength in a particular area? When we use online college search tools, every school has a math major offered, so you can't really narrow it down by that. </p>
<p>Ideally, my son would like a school with a strong math program, good prep for PhD programs, good financial aid (merit and need based), lots-of-fun-without-getting-drunk-all-the-time atmosphere, competitive sailing would be a nice bonus (but a lack of sailing would definitely not rule anything out for him). He's not picky at all about size (he loves one nearby school that is very small, but is fine with the idea of the large state school too). Specific recommendations would be great, but what I'd really love is to know how you can get online and find gems by a specific area of study.</p>
<p>He is just a sophomore, but he did well enough on the PSAT this year that I'm sure (barring something weird happening on test day) that he'll probably qualify in our state for NMF.</p>
<p>I would look at St. Olaf College. #1 for students going on to earn PHD in math. They have a very high percentage of kids who study abroad and their theater facilities are nice. Also
for a kid who doesn’t want an alcohol dominatd college experience, St. Olaf fits. Beautiful campus, great food, but cold weather. Kids adapt to weather though; I have one student at Carleton and one at Macalester and they deal with the cold well.</p>
<p>Go to artofproblemsolving.com where you can read about and talk to those in math programs around the country. You are right in that it is very hard to gauge the strength of a program from the outside. One thing that swayed my math-loving son was the presence of a freshman calc class for those who had already scored a 5 on AP Calc BC. This was an honors class that moved very quickly and had a handful of dedicated students who were fast-tracked into grad level courses by junior year. </p>
<p>Another element in your decision should be the approach and strengths of a department, and how they fit your child and his goals. This is nearly impossible to determine when he’s a HS sophomore, but will become very important by the time he’s a college sophomore. Many math students hit a ceiling around age 20, when they find they don’t have the drive to pursue pure math and a PhD with all it entails. Having a school with other strong, math-related fields can set him up for an excellent career even if he decides against the PhD.</p>
<p>Midwesterner’s advice seems very sound. But it occurs to me that any school that is solid academically should be able to offer good prep for grad programs, as long as there aren’t well-known concerns and shortcomings within the department. The nature of math is such that (I think) the content at the undergrad level is pretty well-defined. If you were going to major in Political Science and aspired to go to Georgetown where all the PoliSci profs filter in and out of Presidential cabinets, then it’d be pretty easy to understand why that’s a particularly strong department. But I would assume that calculus is calculus, linear algebra is linear algebra, stats is stats, etc. Math courses can get fairly esoteric and creative as one goes well into upper-level courses, but I’m not sure that they alone would constitute a good reason to pick one college over another. Since your son craves theatre and sailing, I’d be inclined to look for a school with good opportunities there in addition to overall academic quality and a math department with an appropriate scope of curriculum.</p>
<p>I agree with GADad. Most good schools will have a good math program because it is part of the basic curriculum. For NMF recommendations, go to the Financial Aid Forum and look up Keilexandra’s post on NMF Scholarships. There are some very good schools in the list that give good merit aid.</p>
<p>BrewerFan - I’ve heard before that Williams has the top LAC math department; though I see pretty cool things like “Game Theory” and “Physical Knot Theory” among their course offerings, there’s no course called “Topology” (though I’d assume that knot theory is an application of topology). Do you think that searching for the actual word “topology” in the title of a course is a valid litmus test?</p>
<p>I’m late bumping this thread - I never saw these replies (don’t know how I missed them). Thanks to everyone for these tips - I will check them out!</p>
<p>I’ll try to resist recommending specific schools and instead focus on the method …</p>
<p>First, realize that there is no reliable, up-to-date, and objective department by department ranking for undergraduate departments. There are several rankings of entire schools, of which the most popular is the US News ranking . Others include the Forbes, Kiplinger, WashingtonMonthly, or stateuniversity.com rankings. Consider the methodologies of each one to see how well they reflect what you value.</p>
<p>To try to expose Math (or other) department quality, one approach is to look at graduate department rankings. These include, again, the US News graduate program rankings online. A more detailed (but dated) ranking is the NRC-95 assessment of over 40 departments. You can also consult Rugg’s Recommendations, which does focus on undergraduate programs but does not provide ranked lists (only listings of “recommended” departments within broad selectivity bands).</p>
<p>You can look at average Math SAT scores, or the percentage of graduates who go on to earn PhDs in Math ([COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College”>http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a>)). You can download a school’s “Common Data Set” to look up the percentage of students who graduate with a math major (typically, the number is in the low single digits.) For the very best programs, you can look up the number of people associated with the department who have won the prestigious Putnam competitions. You can peruse the college catalog to examine the extent of Mathematics course offerings (which may be a concern in the case of some small liberal arts colleges.) And, you can visit the college to attend classes, talk to professors and current students.</p>
<p>Different strokes for different folks. If you ask me, probably the single best indicator of undergraduate Math department quality is the “PhD productivity” metric cited above. It has shortcomings (for example, it does not tell you where a school’s graduates get their doctorates; it does not adjust for how many even tried to get a doctorate; it does not account for how many graduates are highly successful in medicine or other fields not requiring a Math PhD) But, if a school has a high rate of PhD production, it does suggest it is doing a good job of (a) motivating students , and (b) preparing students, to perform at the highest levels of math scholarship.</p>