<p>How is the math department at Fordham?
The faculty seem great,but I want to know more information.
Thanks.</p>
<p>I have no idea. However, if you go on the Fordham website and pull up the faculty for the math department and email the dept. head, I am sure they can get back to you and answer any questions you have. Also, you can take a look at who is on the faculty and what their credentials are. Fordham has some awesome faculty with some pretty heady credentials....many of whom are Ivy League educated (undergrad and/or grad school.)</p>
<p>Yes,I have seen that.
Most graduated from schools such as Princeton,MIT.
But this doesn't reflect all the things</p>
<p>If you are looking for more than just the faculty credentials, I can't help you. What is it you want to know? The website also lists the course offerings. Beyond that, I recommend you call or email the Department head and ask your questions directly.</p>
<p>Hey, I'm a freshman taking Calc II, and i must say that math here is horrible. I have learned Calc II in High school and understood it very clearly, i came to fordham, and i have no clue what the professors are saying or what they are getting at. Usually, they take forever to derive equations. I would rather they cover more topic in less detail than do a few detailed pieces of chapter.</p>
<p>more topic in less detail. welcom to college, where detail is important</p>
<p>Just because you don't understand something in a class doesn't mean the entire department is instantly "horrible". My roommate took calc 2 two years ago and had a fine time with it.. just depends on the person and prof.</p>
<p>The math department, could, admittedly, be better. The classes are rigorous and challenging but I think Fordham's main strong pt. are its english, communication and, obviously, religion courses. And yes, the list of Ivy-League educated profs is kind of impressive but many of my best profs graudated from city college. </p>
<p>While its cool that alot of people want to give adivce, I would be careful to take advice from freshmen who have only been here for a few weeks.. your perspective of a university really changes overtime and it's nearly impossible to sum up an entire department with only a few wks worth of knowledge...</p>
<p>My son completed Calc I and II at Fordham, and is now in Multivariable. I know he would disagree with that previous opinion about the Calculus course at Fordham. He did calc I,II,III, and linear algebra in high school, and although he didn't struggle with Calc I&II at Fordham, he did find it challenging at times. He would say that the emphasis was much different than in high school. In his high school (and probably most) he would memorize processes without being truly taught the derivations that would give him a deeper understanding on the mathematics. In his math and physics courses thus far at Fordham, it is the derivations that are very important - they really want the student to understand how these mathematical concepts come to be, because if you understand the fundamental concepts then you can forget the formula and still solve the problem. Or better yet, if you cannot find the solution, you can go back and start with the derivations to find another way to solve it. For instance in his calc and physics courses, he is being trained to understand and solve problems without "numbers" so to say until much later in the lessons. Rather, Fordham is training him to analyze and understand problems with generic letters in front of the variables. This is definitely a much harder concept than what is taught at many high schools in math and physics. College courses usually are, and should be, at a higher lever of understanding.</p>
<p>My son chose to take Calc I, and not jump directly into Calc II, which in the long run he was happy that he did. Calc I is differentiation, which is easier to understand than Calc II, which is integration. Calc I gave him the "maturing" time to understand derivations on somewhat easier material (I'm not an upper level math person so please bear with what may be a bad translation from a non-math/physics mind :)</p>
<p>When I was in HS, so many years ago, we did so much by hand in calculas, I mean, it would put most kids today in a coma all the had calculations, etc we did</p>
<p>Now, so much is done on a calculator, eh, to actually do the work seem rudimentary to some, but is important</p>
<p>I know a LOT of students at several universities (friends of D) who are taking Calc, and having a BEAR of a time......ditto with Chemistry. College is NOT high school, that is for sure.</p>
<p>Agreed, that credentials are not the only measure of a professor. Its just a starting point and we only used it for a preliminary and cursory review of a department...not much else you can do when searching for colleges, right?</p>
<p>I had professors as an undergrad more than 30 years ago who were phenomenal who came from schools no one would recognize. I had some who were heavily credentialed who couldnt teach a cat to jump out of a bag. Point taken.</p>
<p>As for taking advice from freshmen, true enough as well. But this venue is just in essence a blog and therefore anything that is stated is just an opinion and one has to be careful with those! I saw for example comments on Princeton Review about various schools and in our search we found them to be 100% false. Radically incorrigibly false! Who made those comments? Ostensibly students at those schools. So it happens.</p>
<p>And it is axiomatic to say that one man's heaven is another man's hell. Meaning you must judge for yourself and how that school fits into your plan, personality and needs. What we are trying to do here is give people our best efforts opinion for anecdotal information from which we expect them to go to the next level in their assessment.....best if they make a visit to campus. In Fordham's case it is almost essential, in order to get a clear and accurate picture of what it has to offer and the quality of life there. We did and it sold us. But it would be foolish to say it will be nirvana for everyone who comes or everyone who applies. Judging from my freshman D's experience to date, and how she says the students have all bonded very, very well....its a tight nit student body who look out for each other (Princeton Review is correct on that point), I would say that both the admissions office and the students have done an excellent job of determining "fit."</p>
<p>But we are under no illusions (delusions?) that every class and every prof and every department is/will be wonderful.</p>
<p>I once met a woman (an administrator at a VERY prestigious southern school) who went to Harvard undergrad. She spent 10 minutes of the interview saying not so nice things about her experience at Harvard. We were rather surprised. All I could do was look at my shoes, nod my head in acknowledgement and say, "I am sorry you had that experience." But is it the experience of everyone at Harvard? OF course not.</p>
<p>So to the original poster I say again, do your homework and then make a campus visit. I wish for you a stupendous experience and that you decide that Fordham is for you.</p>
<p>Oh,thanks,friedokra.
But I am a Chinese student.Taking a campus visit seems impossible to me.:(</p>
<p>As I am in national honor math class in China,I think challenging courses may be somewhat more helpful to me.I want to be a math prof in the future.</p>
<p>And I think another judgement on quality of education is how the grad students are.So are there many students from Fordham go to top grad schools after graduation.</p>
<p>Yes indeed. If you absolutely cannot make a campus visit to Fordham or anywhere else, then I would do your homework online. CC is a good start. But look at all the online services and go to Fordham's website. Ditto for any other college you are considering, whether that is in NYC or Boston or Chicago or even a small town.</p>
<p>Examine what you WANT from a college education in the United States. In the US, going to college is not just about classes and professors, it is also about student life: clubs, sports, social life, dorms, facilities, nearby attractions, etc. What do YOU want? Big city, small city, rural? Big school, medium school, or small school? Public or private? Religious or non religious? Northern, Central, Southern, or Western School? They are all very, very different.</p>
<p>Why do you want to study in the United States and not in China? What is your objective?</p>
<p>Do you wish to be in an environment with lots of other mainland chinese? Or a school where you may be one of only a few foreign students? You will be very far from home. What will you do during US holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when schools close for weeks and you MUST leave the campus?</p>
<p>Ask yourself these questions and then ask them to the admissions office of the schools you are considering.</p>
<p>Fordham has a fair number of foreign students, I am told. Ask to be put in contact with some of them and ask them how their experience is going?</p>
<p>Fordham is a classical liberal arts college, meaning you have a strong core curriculum you MUST take, including philosophy, english literature, history, theology, science and math. You can major in math, but it will NOT be your only course of study. By a long shot.</p>
<p>So make sure your English skills are excellent! Are you considering Rose Hill/Bronx main campus or Lincoln Center campus?</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>just FYI, i'm not the only one w. this opinion. My peers consist of various classes (soph, juniors, and seniors) and the vast majority share the same opinion.</p>
<p>my D isnt impressed with her math teacher, he is a visiting prof, and they changed the class a bit</p>
<p>but this is her last math class EVER so eh, whatever</p>
<p>having amazing teachers everywhere else makes up for one mediocre teacher in a subject she doesn't much need</p>
<p>I just dropped a math course because it was so terrible. The upper level courses might be great, but the lower level courses all suck as far as I can tell. I'm not the only person who I've talked to about this, I live in a house with 8 other students, non of them were too into the math dept.</p>