<p>any math majors out there? how is it?</p>
<p>and also, what would you say is Columbia's strongest department/major</p>
<p>I heard that it was history or polisci.</p>
<p>I want to major in math and when I visited Columbia, I got a look around the math department and it looked good to me.</p>
<p>The math dept is good. When you are comparing the top 10 schools I say minor differences in rankings are insignificant (tho I know some disagree). </p>
<p>The US right now is in a weird place with higher education though. We are doing the same thing Germany did in the first half of the 20th century; we've outsourced higher education. Pretty much ALL of the top schools right now have an insanely high percentage of foreign (mostly asian and indian) professors and grad students in the sciences/engineering.</p>
<p>I was originally going to say that my experiences have been mostly positive with the math department here but was going to say a good half of the professors are definitely asian and communication in english can be hard with some of them. That morphed into the above since it's not an unusual thing for math dept's....</p>
<p>I wouldn't say any one department at columbia is its 'best'--there's a bunch of them that are very highly ranked nationally and globally:</p>
<p>PoliSci, IR, economics, history, architecture, biology, east/south asian studies...</p>
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but was going to say a good half of the professors are definitely asian
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<p>As opposed to possibly asian, or questionably asian? I can see a difference between a prof who is "definitely gay" and one who is possibly gay or questionably gay. But it's pretty clear whether a prof is asian. </p>
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I heard that it was history or polisci.
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<p>I love idiotic posts like this. Why do people post what they've "heard" without saying where they heard something from?</p>
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As opposed to possibly asian, or questionably asian? I can see a difference between a prof who is "definitely gay" and one who is possibly gay or questionably gay. But it's pretty clear whether a prof is asian.
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<p>I haven't posted on here in such a long while I almost forgot about the peanut gallery.</p>
<p>Very strong in the literature, history and economics departments. Weaker in the sciences, since an urban-setting does not lend itself well to laboratory research. Math is middle-of-the-road for Columbia, although to their credit they are recruiting outstanding young faculty members and adding mathematical finance to their academic portfolio.</p>
<p>^by weaker in the sciences you mean top 10-15, instead of top 5, likewise math is about top 10 - this is middle-of-the-road for columbia, so stop asking dumb questions like which dept we specialize in. We don't specialize in anything, and if we did, the ones we weren't specializing in are still solid as Barack.</p>
<p>It's not a dumb question to ask about departmental areas of strength.</p>
<p>Science at Columbia College is dying. There are fewer than 10 chemistry and physics undergraduate majors combined in the last several classes at Columbia. (Biology does better because of pre-meds, with about 30 students) That is not a good sign. If these departments were so good, more students would be flocking to them. </p>
<p>Math is in better shape. About 10 math majors in each class. Contrast that with Economics, History and Literature, each of which has over 100 majors per class at Columbia.</p>
<p>I would say that a top student with an intent to major in math or science would not look to Columbia as their first choice. However, a high school student with strong credentials might look to leveraging their interest in math/science by stating this on their Columbia application. To have few than 10 chemistry or physics majors at Columbia is probably very distressing to the college.</p>
<p>Just took a quick look at Stanford's undergrad major distribution (where my nephew will be going for his math undergrad degree). They also have about 100 students per year each in econ, history and english/lit. However, they also more chemistry (20), physics (30) and math (40) majors than Columbia. It's a much healthier distribution, and probably means the school is having no problem attracting high quality math/science students.</p>
<p>your numbers are wrong. there are definitely more chem/physics majors than what you're describing. also note you're missing the joint majors, as tons of people do math-econ.</p>
<p>Here they are for the last year (2004) that the Columbia website published them:</p>
<p>Chemistry - 3.5
Physics - 5
Math - 10.2
Math/Economics (joint) - 6.5</p>
<p>Fractional numbers are dual degrees, which implies that someone in the math department (the 0.2) had a quintuple major!</p>
<p>I lol at the fact that there were 18.5 American Studies majors. </p>
<p>But the numbers seem to make sense - we have about 10 math majors per class here (Dartmouth) as well (most of which fully intend to pursue Investment banking activities, so the number of <em>true</em> math majors is rather hidden).</p>
<p>To be fair, I have always thought that Columbia Math/Science were pretty strong (perhaps 3rd in the Ivy League after Harvard and Princeton).</p>
<p>Note that these statistics don't include SEAS, which is where a great deal of the math/science orientated Columbia students end up.</p>
<p>that was an abnormally low year for sciences. normally there are more.</p>
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Chemistry - 3.5
Physics - 5
Math - 10.2
Math/Economics (joint) - 6.5
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<p>this is silly a double major counts as 0.5 and 0.5!?, most kids in math and physics are crazy, they end up doing double majors, so 5 and 10 are serious underestimates, plus i'm pretty sure the numbers have increased substantially since then, I personally know like 5-10 math majors in my year, and I only know say 200 kids in my year. </p>
<p>on top of that # of undergrads is not an accurate measure dept strength, if a major is extremely difficult it will weed out tons of kids, as math and phys does all the time. many kids switch to econ, poli sci etc. So fewer numbers in a hard major might be a measure of strength.</p>
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Fractional numbers are dual degrees, which implies that someone in the math department (the 0.2) had a quintuple major!
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or you could have had 9 single math, 1 double + 2 triple majors, it's a sum it could be broken down in a variety of reasonable ways.</p>
<p>Columbia is strong in math, usually considered in the top ten. The relatively small number of math majors may be due to self-selection, as math whizzes tend to be less interested in a core curriculum, and to go where the other Putnam/Olympiad/ competition kids go. Those interested in applied math for the most part head to SEAS.</p>
<p>My S graduated as an econ-math major, and a physics concentrator. He had very good experiences in the math and physics departments. The small number of undergrad majors in these fields = opportunities. He was able to TA in math, to work with a prof on a project, and was offered a paid research opportunity in physics. These departments are much more personal than a mob scene like econ, and I'd recommend them. I'd encourage undergrads to think less about which departments are "best" in terms of rankings, which are basically measures of graduate schools, and to think which offer the best experiences for undergrads. </p>
<p>This is just my opinion, but I think that the dearth of science and math majors has more to do with the lure of finance than any lack of luster in those departments at Columbia. Now that finance isn't looking as shiny, perhaps more students everywhere will head into science.</p>
<p>As for Stanford, which someone referenced above, it's a different animal. Stanford has a huge engineering faculty and enrollment -- more comparable to MIT than an Ivy. Though it has other excellent departments, Stanford is basically engineering-driven.</p>
<p>I was going to add that a small number of math majors at Columbia means opportunity for future students to make their mark on the math department. Rankings are mostly based on graduate school strength, and undergrad experiences can be quite different. SAC's post sums it up nicely. </p>
<p>And as I mentioned before, the faculty appears to be on a hiring spree.</p>
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And as I mentioned before, the faculty appears to be on a hiring spree.
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<p>I actually think that this is a university-wide initiative (at least for the sciences). The chem.eng. department is hiring 2 new faculty members this year and the eee and a few other eng departments are doing the same.</p>