My son is trying to decide whether to apply EA to GA Tech. He wants to do an applied math major and possibly a double major with CS or Physics. I know GA Tech is considered great in engineering and CS, but I don’t know much about math and sciences. I would love to hear from people in the know about the quality of the math program compared to other great publics such as UCLA or UMich. Is it easy or hard to do a double major across colleges?
What does your son think he wants to do after undergrad? It’s hard to provide guidance without knowing what his ultimate goals are, although it sounds like he probably doesn’t know at this point. That said, unless your son is interested in pursuing an academic career, the distinctions between Tech and other top public in math and the sciences are meaningless. Strong math and science students at any of the top public schools will have similar job prospects and graduate school opportunities.
If you’re just looking for rankings, Tech has one of the best discrete mathematics departments in the nation, but for any other area of math, UCLA and Michigan are stronger. This doesn’t really matter at the undergraduate level. You can get a fantastic math education at any of those schools and all of them will have very strong student cohorts. Georgia Tech, UCLA, and Michigan are similarly strong in Chemistry, but UCLA and Michigan are stronger in Physics and the biological sciences, but again, this is a distinction that really only matters at the graduate level.
I would not recommend double majoring. While it is not hard to declare a double major, Tech generally does not allow students to count major classes torwards both majors, so the effort to get a second major is substantial and would generally be better spent on getting a graduate degree. Your son can minor in another field if he thinks it will be beneficial for the path he wants to take after undergrad and CS is probably a good minor for just about any major.
He wants to go into research (not necessarily academic) but I don’t think this is set in stone.
My daughter graduated from Tech in math, and we really can’t say enough good things about the math department. I can’t give you too many specific because it would be easy to identify her with the info I could give you, but the math department is small, well qualified, and you can go anywhere from there. If your son is (or might be) interested in undergraduate research in math, odds are good that he can make that happen. My daughter had published research with Tech professors and post-docs there while she was a DE student in high school. Message me if you want more details. I can’t speak to the double major, but she did have Ph.D. candidate friends move back and forth between math and physics or chem, as I recall.
@yucca10 my son is taking considerable math and also two threads in CS (theory and intelligence threads) . It will depend on how many credits your son has coming in, to finish a full double major, and how many years he wants to take, but the math program is FANTASTIC at GaTech. Also see Big O Theory Club and the theoretical CS thread for undergrads at GaTech. Big O Theory is a club for theoretical CS/math students. Undergrads present work, and review current research trends. Many of the members have done Math REUs at places like Rutgers or U of Maryland.
Research in math is available to undergrads in CS and in math.
Note that the Theory thread of CS requires plenty of mathematics.
https://www.cc.gatech.edu/academics/degree-programs/bachelors/computer-science/threads/theorythread
Here is the undergrad club for math/theory/CS
https://theoryclub.github.io
Also once a student has credits to be a senior, for many students thats junior year, graduate level math classes are available too.
One thing to note is that CS department has the very top discrete math/graph theory professors and recruiting new ones every year. Math may be similar to that. There is a lot of work going on in bioinformatics, and many other highly mathematical fields. Also look at Industrial Engineering, which is a big data/ applied math degree at GaTech.
https://www.isye.gatech.edu
There is a research option on the CS degree to work for three semesters with a professor, and also take
a seminar in proposal writing for PhD hopeful students at GaTech. Other students do a capstone software project instead of research to earn the Bachelors in CS.