Looking for nerdy matches

i think some partying is fine, and the school doesn’t need to be purely STEM or engineering (he’s not really interested in engineering). It just needs to have a critical mass of like-minded people so it’s easy for him to find friends (he’s somewhat shy) and also to appreciate this kind of person in admissions (“future scientist” as opposed to "future leader’).

Wildly inaccurate. Stanford is one of the most STEM-heavy top universities, with 50% of its students majoring in a traditional STEM field. If you add the interdisciplinary majors (e.g. Science, Technology, and Society), that percentage rises to over 60%.

@yucca10 I think all the schools you’ve listed and the ones mentioned in this thread would match the environment your looking for. I put my son in the “somewhat shy” category going into his freshman year (last year). I recall mentioning to my wife that I was not concerned about him academically, but I was a little anxious about him socially - making friends. But to my delight he is thriving in a community of smart, friendly students from all over the world. He has mentioned to me a couple of times that he feels like he has found his peeps, and it’s great.

It seems to me many of the schools you listed are contrary to what you said you were looking for. For example, most of the schools you listed planning to visit are party schools with lots of activism. According to the personality of the school you say you are looking for, I’d suggest RPI and as a junior ask the GC to consider him for the Rensselaer Medal. That medal is not necessarily for the top student, it is for the top student who is interested in attending.
I’d suggest Cornell as a reach and your state school as a safety. I went to the math conference at RPI last year and it’s pretty amazing what the students do there. The job and salary results that were documented seemed very impressive.

Rose Hulman?

@GoRedhead Right, for example I have a lot of doubts about Berkeley, but it does have one of the top math departments in the world and we know people who teach there and I love the Bay Area, so there you are. But looking for match schools, there are tons of them and we don’t know much about most, so trying to get an idea which ones may be a better fit.
Rensselaer Medal sounds great but it looks like RPI needs to be a top choice, and it won’t be unless S is rejected from all reaches.
@Ivvcsf Rose Hulman looks very engineering-focused, I think he needs good pure science departments to explore because he wants to apply math to sciences, not engineering. Probably a bigger school with extensive science research and options to try courses in different sciences would be best.

@intparent “True that UChicago isn’t that heavily STEM as some on the OP’s list. But it is the college of Enrico Fermi, and was near the top of D2’s list because of it’s egghead reputation in the past. She ended up at another of the colleges on the OP’s list (and is now in a Physics PhD program). But she had a very hard time turning down UChicago – it really spoke to her nerdy little heart.”

I’m not sure why you are talking about UChicago’s egghead reputation “in the past.”

Just to be clear, UChicago isn’t heavily STEM as some schools as far as its percentage of students mostly because it doesn’t offer engineering as a major. But even without engineering, it is a top producer of students who go on to get PhDs in science and engineering. In fact, it is third among national universities, behind only CalTech and MIT. That’s the present, not the past.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-50-schools-that-produce-science-phds/

For physics, UChicago one of the handful of best schools in the world. In addition to the offerings on campus, it operates both Argonne National Laboratory and FermilLab in the Chicago suburbs, which are two of the most significant physics research facilities in the country.

I know exactly why they don’t look as STEM-like – my post is defending that they really are. But regarding egg-headed-ness – UChicago has changed the profile of accepted students a lot since starting to use the Common App. It looks like most of the Ivies now. I think they have trouble finding their “eggheads” in the high volume of applications these days. My kid was honestly turned off by the almost fratlike atmosphere in the dorm and among fellow accepted students when she went for her accepted student visit.

NYU Courant Institute (math)

Seconding Uchicago, RPI, WPI, St Olaf, see also William and Mary and Virginia Tech (depending on student’s interests), Grinnell, Swarthmore, Haverford??