<p>It is not clear the something has or has not changed in recent years as far as LAC math majors going to “top” math PhD programs (as opposed to math PhD programs in general), although sample sizes are not that big and there can be subjective judgements about what a “top” math PhD program is.</p>
<p>The PhD production of LACs is commendable, but where are they ending up? That makes all the difference, especially to the OP. </p>
<p>If you wish to become more well-rounded and less math-centric, a LAC is the obvious choice. But its clear that disari21 doesnt want that. Williams and Harvey Mudd are more concerned with well-roundedness than a research university, too. Thats their mandate. Hence the problem: math is one of those subjects that requires almost complete dedication if you expect to go very far in it. And I suspect that top grad programs are afraid, rightly or wrongly, that LAC undergrads were not as dedicated to math as they needed to be. Couple that with generally weaker course offerings and you have a problem that even a great school like Swarthmore has to face. </p>
<p>Maybe its similar with engineering. I dont know, do the top firms in CA hire Harvey Mudd engineering grads because they appreciate their breadth and interdisciplinary knowledge? Or do they favour the grads from the many excellent CA research schools? Lets face it, employers are quite often lazy and act on institutional or personal biases. Does a new grad in math or engineering want to chance that?</p>
<p>Small size probably works against being recruited from a LAC or other small school. If you were an employer looking for new bachelor’s degree graduates, would you spend a recruiting trip to southern California going to Harvey Mudd and Caltech, or UCLA and USC?</p>
<p>On the one hand, we have some anecdotes from one CC poster (b@r!um), and some advice I shared from the Swarthmore site, suggesting that math grads at top LACs may have a hard time getting into an ill-defined group of “top” grad schools for pure math. On the other hand, we have years of statistics showing that LAC alumni have relatively high PhD production rates in many fields, including math. </p>
<p>As I stated above, even in absolute numbers, Carleton College is producing more alumni with math/stat doctorates than Duke, UNC, Penn, Northwestern, NYU, or Johns Hopkins. Do we know for a fact that math alumni from these universities are getting into “top” math programs at higher rates than alumni from Carleton, Swarthmore, Reed, or Oberlin? It may be the case that only a very small number of undergraduate programs are dominant feeders into the most prestigious graduate schools for mathematics. If so, is one of those programs a likely option for the OP? If not, would he be content with a less-than-top graduate school? Or, would he be content to forgo a career in academia for a higher-paying career in IT or finance? The latter seem to be sucking up lots of math grads these days, including grads from small liberal arts colleges. If in doubt, contact the math departments for information about career outcomes.</p>
<p>Careers of Carleton Math Alumni
17% IT Professional
15% Professor
9% Teacher
5% Finance/Banking
5% Actuary
4% Education-Other
4% Engineer
4% Health Care
4% Attorney
4% Scientist
3% Statistician
3% Business
2% Accounting
21% Other</p>
<p>Source: <a href=“https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/math/alumni/[/url]”>https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/math/alumni/</a>
(see “Careers of Carleton Math Alumni” under “Related Documents”)</p>
<p>This is much more general advice. I’m guessing that LACs will vary in the number and type of high level math classes they offer. You can typically find course catalogs online for schools so you can look at the math offerings for each school you are considering. And if you visit LACs I suggest you ask admissions to help you make an appointment with the chairperson or a professor in the math department and perhaps also with a math major at the school so you can get all the information you need.</p>
<p>Additionally, Harvey Mudd really can be compared to most large universities in scope and depth of their math offerings. Just check out their accelerated math sequence, the math opportunities, etc. I don’t think Harvey Mudd graduates really have trouble getting into grad school or landing jobs, either. :)</p>
<p>We’d need a list of the schools people came from at HYPSM math PHDs then at schoolst hat would be ranked top 25 for math. Then we’d need to compare the success rate, say, for a Williams , a Carleton, a Harvey Mudd… graduate and for a UMN-Twin Cities or a UF or ASU or UMass graduate for example.
Are there such stats anywhere?
UCBAlumnus, can you figure out where people in pure math at UCB came from for the past 5 years or so?
Is it like tk21 said above, ie., some PHD programs in math <em>only</em> recruit from very specific programs and no matter what type of college you come from, if you don’t come from these, you won’t be accepted into <em>these</em> specific programs?
For example would B@rum!'s program have accepted her more readily if she’d attended Penn State or Pitt? Or is it only because this particular program only wants Ivy League graduates, much like some Law Firms/ibanks do?</p>
<p>OP, where do you envision yourself working after your BS? If in academia, would you exclusively want HYPSM for grad school or not? And do you even have a choice, ie, if there’s no difference between attending Williams and UWisconsin, can you even afford attending UWIsconsin?</p>
<p>“We’d need a list of the schools people came from at HYPSM math PHDs then at schoolst hat would be ranked top 25 for math. Then we’d need to compare the success rate, say, for a Williams , a Carleton, a Harvey Mudd… graduate and for a UMN-Twin Cities or a UF or ASU or UMass graduate for example.”</p>
<p>…and for a Peking or Seoul National or Moscow State or Tel Aviv or IIT graduate, for example. Many math faculty as well as grad students in top departments originate at non-US institutions.</p>
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<p>A few of the graduate students have personal home pages where they mention their undergraduate school. But that may not be a very reliable way of counting. A few at Berkeley did come from LACs, although b@r!um or someone else may have said that Berkeley was somewhat more LAC-friendly than other “top” math PhD programs.</p>
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<p>If a math PhD program has strong preferences for undergraduate origins, they are likely based on schools’ math departments and the students coming from them, rather than the general prestige of the schools.</p>
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<p>Agree. The preference is with the department and strengths within the department. If you come from a department in a large flagship state university with a couple of well respected number theorists and they wrote recommendations for you, you would have a higher chance of grad school admission than someone who went to an elite school also with number theorists but no recommendations. </p>
<p>A fascinating page but kind of useless is the math ancestry site. You can look up a mathematician and see who his advisor was and his doctoral students. (can’t see where they go unless they have doctoral students as well). The main problem with that is mathematicians who end up in government, industry, and LACs have their own pages but the pages are blank.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. Since I also have questions which no longer really pertain to maths at LACs, I’ve opened a new thread here. </p>
<p>@MYOS1634: I plan to do research in a top grad school, though not necessarily HYPSM. And no, I can’t afford UW-Madison.
@tk21769: I’m not interested in working in finance, and there is little chance I would enjoy so much working in IT. If I had to decide between a less-than-top grad math institution and a career in IT, I’d choose the first option.
@memake: UChicago appeals to me greatly, and I will certainly apply. Of course, since they’re almost as selective as the Ivies, I need to apply to other(less selective) schools as well. </p>
<p>So we have solid pros and solid cons, but I especially agree to:
“math is one of those subjects that requires almost complete dedication if you expect to go very far in it.”</p>
<p>Therefore, unless I get some totally unexpected information, I won’t apply to more than two LAC’s, and they’ll be Williams and Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>Good stuff OP.</p>
<p>Further to the discussion, reliable data is going to be hard to produce. Instead of grad school acceptances, one could look at how many LAC grads (top 5 math LACs) there are on current research faculties (pick top 20). For comparison, youd also have to look at how many of the universities own undergrads show up.</p>
<p>The big problem is how you model the data to decide whether the numbers are proportional. You would need to estimate how many grads from each school youd expect to find, based on PhD production rates from each school, plus the career intentions of the students. Hopelessly difficult. And this would be one of the easier ways to assess the OPs question with a bit of objectivity.</p>
<p>So its tough. As tk21769 mentioned, all were left with in the end is a collection of opinions and anecdotes and testimony from the elusive b@r!um. I still believe that LAC math grads are under-represented on these faculties, but yes, its just conjecture. Maybe if we knew what their career aspirations were, their relatively low numbers in research faculties may be very acceptable.</p>
<p>For a good math student who is very interested in research, though, its probably not worth the risk to go beyond the very best LACs for math. LACs never seem to receive the benefit of the doubt.</p>