is Princeton the best place to study math as an undergrad?

Parents Forum
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<p>I think the point Mini is making is that for each and every major there will always be a college that is off the grid. That has amazing profs. That produces high caliber graduates that go on to very good graduate schools. If you know what you want to major in and you are planning on pursing advanced degrees it is foolish not to look at the number of graduates produced in a given major per capita and where those graduates go on to higher studies. Finally graduate schools KNOW these programs so it matters not what the general public or even the microcosm of our CC thinks. Chart your own path.</p>

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<p>This is my little off the radar alma mater in the midwest. Go to Princeton if you want, but everyone needs to wake up and smell the coffee and get their noses out of USNWR if thier path includes advanced degrees.</p>

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<p>Math at St. Olafs keeps coming up in my peripheral vision and I keep hearing great things about it. Yes, I agree that St. Olafs isn’t for everyone, but neither is Princeton.</p>

<p>St. Olafs is a better school for someone who isn’t a high school whiz kid determined to take analysis their freshman year. Some students haven’t decided on a major before they go to college. Their interest in math increases as they are exposed to abstract mathematical ideas in college that they didn’t see in high school. Some students benefit from being nurtured and brought along a little more slowly. They may be able to understand math on a very deep level, they just need exposure to the concepts and then time for the ideas to gel. I think a good math department should be able to serve the needs of more than one type of student.</p>

<p>One thing I think the Putnam might test for is a level of mathematical creativity. Solving any of the problems involves some ingenuity, not unlike the ingenuity one needs to do research in math. Also, since the problems are so hard it demonstrates that a student is willing to be really challenged and not easily discouraged. In a typical year out of a possible score of 100 the average is 2.</p>

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<p>The numbers indicate quantity, not quality. St. Olaf may be fine for bright young people who want to be good high school math teachers, or to get a PhD from a not-so-top program and become college professors in not-so-top programs, but it is no haven for world class geniuses.</p>

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<p>S did AIME three times, but never made USAMO. Didn’t try to, either, for reasons I won’t get into here. He did very well with USACO and in college programming competitions, and he had always looked at the math major as a support for the CS research he loves. Will likely do grad school in combinatorics and theory, which lives in math departments at some places and CS departments in others. First, he’s going to work for a couple of years and pick the brains of some pretty brilliant people.</p>

<p>DoinSchool, S went to HCSSiM, which uses the IBL method. Paul Sally told S he was welcome in Honors Analysis, but thought S would make more of a contribution to the IBL class because he understood the pedagogy used there. Sally was right; S was a very happy camper in IBL Analysis and was sorry there wasn’t an IBL section available last year when he was taking Abstract Algebra.</p>

<p>Do well in Honors Calc at Chicago and you get invited to Honors Analysis second year.</p>

<p>Sorghum, your bias is showing. There are a few LACs which are known for their strong math programs and PhD production – Swat, Williams, Mudd, St. Olaf and Reed are the ones that were on our radar. BTW, there are plenty of PhDs from “top programs” who would love to land tenured positions at “not-so-top programs.” Not all “world class geniuses” attend Princeton and the like, either.</p>

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<p>"The numbers indicate quantity, not quality. St. Olaf may be fine for bright young people who want to be good high school math teachers, or to get a PhD from a not-so-top program and become college professors in not-so-top programs, but it is no haven for world class geniuses.'</p>

<p>Evidence, please? Of course, the number of world-class geniuses are few and far between, in any field. A couple of years ago, for example, Malcolm Gladwell published a list of the past 25 U.S. Nobel Price Winners in Medicine, and in Chemistry, and where they got their undergraduate degrees. The list includes Antioch, Hamilton, DePauw, UMinnesota, Union College (Kentucky), Holy Cross, Gettysburg, Hunter, City College of New York (twice), Rollins, Grinnell, Georgia Tech, Ohio Wesleyan, Rice, Hope College, University of Nebraska, Berea, Augsburg, UMass, Washington State, UWashington, University of Florida, and UCal Riverside. A certain University beginning with a P. isn’t on the list.</p>

<p>The only thing we can say for sure is that P. students have higher entering SAT scores, are much, much more likely to have attended private schools, and are much, much more likely to come from wealthy families. And are less likely to get math Ph.Ds.</p>

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<p>When S was looking at colleges, he looked at research articles in his area of interest to see where the profs/researchers had been educated. The biggest “surprises” were Brown, Mudd and our flagship. S’s mentor in HS (and a big name in his field) went to Stony Brook before getting his PhD at Harvard.</p>

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<p>In my d’s graduate program at P (a top five program), there hasn’t been a single graduate student from ANY of the Ivy undergrad schools in five years, and only one faculty member who attended one as an undergrad. And it wasn’t from lack of applicants, or intelligence.</p>

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<p>So I took a swipe at this question. I looked at the Senior Faculty list from Harvard, and the list of tenured professors at Princeton, and wrote down where they went to college. MIT would have been next, but that’s a very long list, and I think you get enough of an idea from Harvard and Princeton (but feel free to continue with MIT if you have the inclination). Many of these professors do not post their full CVs online, so I used only those whose bios are available in Wikipedia.</p>

<p>Here it goes.</p>

<p>Harvard
Elkies: Columbia
Gross: Harvard
Hironaka Kyoto
Jaffe Princeton
Kisin Monash
Kronheimer Oxford
Lurie Harvard
Mazur MIT
McMullen Williams
Mumford Harvard
Nowak U Vienna
Siu Hong Kong
Tate Harvard
Taylor Cambridge
T.Z. Yau National Taiwan
S T. Yau Berkeley</p>

<p>Princeton
Aizenman Hebrew
Bhargara Harvard
Browder MIT
Chang National Taiwan
Conway Cambridge
Weinan U Science Tech China
Fefferman Maryland
Gabai MIT
Kohn MIT
Kollar Eotvos
Lieb MIT
Pandharipande Princeton
Sarnak Witwatersrand
Seymour Oxford
Stein U Chicago
Szabo Eotvos
Tian Nanking
Wiles Cambridge
Zhang Zhongshan U</p>

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<p>At son’s top tier research U, I have noticed that nearly all of his math/physics professors are either Eastern European/Russian or Asian, having obtained their undergraduate degree overseas before getting their PhD at a fine institution in the US.</p>

<p>I’m assuming that early specialization and focus may have something to do with this. I say that as a UChicago science grad who loved the Core and firmly believe it changed my life for the better. However, for my heavily unidirectional son (whose current courses as an 18 year old sophomore consists of 3 upper level math courses including Honors Analysis and a physics course), the Core would have been fate worse than death and he seems to be thriving with his specialization and focus at a low gen ed requiring U.</p>

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<p>"So I took a swipe at this question. I looked at the Senior Faculty list from Harvard, and the list of tenured professors at Princeton, and wrote down where they went to college…'</p>

<p>So there is a TOTAL of two Princetons in the entire bunch. (Which isn’t to say that H and P are the places necessarily considered the most desirable to teach. And to be totally fair, there are probably a bunch of Princeton undergrad/Ph.Ds., as there are St. Olaf undergrad/Ph.Ds, teaching at Podunk U. (or UWisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, etc.))</p>

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<p>About St. Olaf, their course offerings are fairly minimal compared to many schools with top graduate programs in math. For most math majors, it’s probably a great school, but I’m not sure how much it has to offer to the type of student ready to take Real Analysis freshman year. I’m not sure how much the Budapest program changes this though.</p>

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<p>“So I took a swipe at this question. I looked at the Senior Faculty list from Harvard, and the list of tenured professors at Princeton, and wrote down where they went to college…'”</p>

<p>Not everyone thinks that H and P are be-all-and-end-all of human existence. Some people might prefer to teach in smaller towns in the midwest. Your bias is showing.</p>

<p>I know nothing about St. Olaf’s math so I can’t comment, but I will say I know three faculty members at a top u (that gets oohs and aahs on CC) who have all sent their children to St. Olaf’s and were highly impressed with it. It’s certainly no worse than plenty of LAC’s that get a lot of play on CC merely because they are located in the east.</p>

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<p>From the St Olaf math department boast sheet:</p>

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<p>Decent, but not that impressive.</p>

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<p>For the absolutely best PhD graduates in math from Princeton or Harvard, so good they can choose wherever they want to work, how likely do you think they are to prefer St. Olaf over, say Princeton?</p>

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<p>How can you possibly argue that when a total of TWO Princeton Ph.Ds - count them - TWO - have “chosen” (???) to work at H. and P.? Heck, the University of MARYLAND has as many of the faculty of P. as P. itself (and likely many of the professors, who made that decision, knew the P. applicants as undergraduates.)</p>

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<p>Read the question, mini.</p>

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<p>I did. Is P. the best place to study mathematics as an undergrad? For the vast, overwhelming majority of mathematics students, I think the answer is a clear, unequivocal “no”. (Much as the same is true in my d’s disciplines, as evidenced by their own students’ inability to get into the grad programs at their own alma mater.) And I think the small number of math majors at Princeton is proof enough for that. For the very, very small number of geniuses, I wouldn’t have any idea - except that I think most of that very, very small number don’t require an undergraduate degree at all.</p>

<p>(And I expect the math program at P. is excellent. Whether it is the “most demanding”, I also wouldn’t have any idea.)</p>

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<p>Some people may like smaller towns, or have relatives in the midwest, or have a spouse committed to a job, or whatever. A million different reasons. Who knows? This is another one of those really odd and off comments that assumes that there is just one desirability ranking of all colleges across everyone at all times.</p>

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<p>The question is how LIKELY? Obviously there is a non-zero chance that some or other Fields medallist just happens to prefer the lifestyle at some or other mid-western LAC. But clearly the aggregate result of most top mathematicians’ preferences makes them concentrate at Princeton rather than at St. Olaf.</p>

<p>For anyone who is stuck arguing that the math students and faculty at St. Olaf are as good, overall, as those at Princeton - I feel sorry for you.</p>

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<p>I think by now the OP should be have enough objective information from this thread that he can, after filtering out opinions and biases, decide for himself whether Princeton and its peers, Harvard, MIT, etc., are the best places to study mathematics as an undergrad.</p>

<p>If anyone is inclined to spend the time, feel free to check the colleges of the faculty at the other two top-rated math departments, MIT and Berkeley, on Wikipedia. Add Chicago and Stanford, to round out the top 5. I am sure you’ll find more Princeton alums than St. Olaf alums there.</p>

<p>That’s all I have to say.</p>