<p>Not sure where to put this. Anyway, I go to a Catholic high school, so I feel kind of obligated to apply to some Catholic schools...problem is, they all seem to have ridiculous core curricula that have everything to do with, like, Western Civ (AP Euro all over again?!?! nooo!!) and nothing to do with, like, math. Are there any that don't have this? Or that at least have well-respected math programs? (The colleges most popular at my school now are ND, BC, Georgetown, and Villanova...but they're not necessarily popular because of their math departments.)</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Should I take that as a no?!</p>
<p>Notre Dame is the only one of those mentioned that has a graduate math program. This is a great asset to math majors, especially those placing into advanced courses.</p>
<p>College of the Holy Cross is supposed to be good for math as well.</p>
<p>holy cross is in worcester, unfortunately</p>
<p>Worcester is a dream location compared to South Bend. You are less than an hour to great beaches on Cape Cod and NH, 1 hour to skiing in Vermont, on the MBTA line to Boston with 12 trains a day and within commuting distance to most of the jobs in the greater Boston metro area.</p>
<p>have you ever been in worcester?
its quite possibly the worst city in the entire country, there’s nothing visually appealing and it has very high crime rates</p>
<p>Marquette has a great engineering program.</p>
<p>Worcester named 9th most livable city in the US </p>
<hr>
<p>(Excerpt from this blog: Pink Slip: [Pink</a> Slip: We’re Number 9! Worcester named 9th most livable city in the US](<a href=“http://pinkslipblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/we-number-9-worcester-named-9th-most.html]Pink”>Pink Slip: We're Number 9! Worcester named 9th most livable city in the US))</p>
<p>Well, I have to say I was just bit surprised to hear that Worcester - yes, that Worcester: Wuh-stah, Wormtown, the Heart of the Commonwealth - ranked number 9 on a Forbes list of livable U.S. cities. My first thought was: what were the criteria? Clearly, availability of interesting places to shop; number of steep hills impossible to drive on during icy weather; and percentage of high school seniors who agree with the statement “I don’t care where I go to college, as long as it’s somewhere other than Worcester” weren’t part of the statistical mix that went into this pick.</p>
<p>In fact, the cities were chosen by assigning ratings to:</p>
<p>Five-year income growth per household and cost of living from Moody’s Economy.com, crime data and leisure index from Sperling’s Best Places, and annual unemployment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>
<p>Here are the vitals listed for Worcester, with the rankings vis a vis the 379 cities evaluated in parentheses:</p>
<p>Metro Population: 787,000
Income Growth: 3.5% (No. 145 of 379)
Cost of Living Index: 106.1 (No. 147 of 379)
Culture Index: 98 (No. 7 of 379, tie)
Crime per 100,000: 2,334 (No. 29 of 379)
Unemployment: 7.8% (No. 13 of 379)</p>
<p>I love the “Culture Index” rating - whatever it means. Cambridge may have ranked higher than Worcester overall - it came in 7th - but Worcester had 'em beat on culture. Cambridge was number 11th in this category. Take that, Cambridge snobs!</p>
<p>As with most/all such rankings, they’re wildly interesting but fundamentally arbitrary and a little dumb. Although I can’t argue with Portland, Maine’s landing at Number 1. This is one very nice little city, and every time I visit I’m reminded that I could live there quite nicely. Yes, Portland strikes me as very livable.</p>
<p>As, in fact, does Worcester. Likable, lovable, and livable. Although I don’t particularly want to live there, I don’t think it would be a bad place to live. And it’s an excellent place to be from. </p>
<p>What it does have going for it is, in fact, culture. Among other things, the Worcester Art Museum is a complete gem. </p>
<p>It also has some beautiful neighborhoods, none of which I ever lived in, with some beautiful old houses that are a lot cheaper than equivalent beautiful old houses closer to Boston. Not that Worcester’s that far from Boston: 50 miles - just a breeze down the Mass Pike. </p>
<p>Worcester also has great restaurants, few traffic jams, lots of colleges, and a minor league baseball team, the Tornadoes, peculiarly named after a devastating 1953 storm in which nearly 100 people were killed, including a baby that was spun out of his mother’s arms as she ran for safety.</p>
<p>So, where else besides Portland, Cambridge, and Worcester is up there in the Forbes list?</p>
<p>Take a look at the Top 15:</p>
<ol>
<li>Portland, ME </li>
<li>Bethesda, MD </li>
<li>Des Moines, IA </li>
<li>Stamford/Bridgeport, CT </li>
<li>Tulsa, OK </li>
<li>Oklahoma City, OK </li>
<li>Cambridge, MA </li>
<li>Baltimore, MD </li>
<li>Worcester, MA </li>
<li>Pittsburgh, PA </li>
<li>Denver, CO </li>
<li>Harrisburg, PA </li>
<li>Madison, WI </li>
<li>Peabody, MA </li>
<li>Little Rock, AR</li>
</ol>
<p>“Notre Dame is the only one of those mentioned that has a graduate math program.”</p>
<p>Ah, that ain’t right.</p>
<p>[Graduate</a> Programs - Boston College](<a href=“http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/math/graduate.html]Graduate”>Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences | Boston College)</p>
<p><a href=“COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES | Villanova University”>COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES | Villanova University;
<p>[Georgetown</a> University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences :Tradition, Excellence, Innovation.](<a href=“http://grad.georgetown.edu/pages/graduate_programs.cfm?show=all]Georgetown”>http://grad.georgetown.edu/pages/graduate_programs.cfm?show=all)</p>
<p>Perhaps the best bet would be to apply to St. Michael’s College (Catholic) at the U of Toronto. That way you get bigtime university math in a Catholic college setting.
Canadian colleges typically don’t require as many “core” courses as American colleges.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.utoronto.ca/stmikes/about/index.html[/url]”>http://www.utoronto.ca/stmikes/about/index.html</a></p>
<p>that list is obviously total bull, new york isn’t on it.</p>
<p>New York is not a Catholic school!</p>
<p>Heh I think sictransitgloria was referring to the Forbes list of places to live. </p>
<p>Also, what’s Holy Cross’s rankings for math?</p>
<p>It is listed in Rugg’s Recommendations for best LACs for math.</p>
<p>LACs for math from Rugg’s:
Bates
Bowdoin
Bucknell
Carleton
Colgate
Dartmouth
Davidson
Dickinson
Harvey Mudd
Holy Cross
Kenyon
Mount Holyoke
Occidental
Pomona
Rice
St Mary’s (MD)
St Olaf
Trinity (CT)
Union
Wabash
Wellesley
Wheaton
Whitman
Willamette</p>
<p>Are there any LACs where kids go specifically for math? I’m just afraid that that list is a list of LACs with a few select brilliant math majors who make the program look good. I’m more into schools where math is a well-respected major within the school (that is, kids go there mainly because of the school’s strong math program). Does that make sense?</p>
<p>Now, before someone goes on and on about Mudd, lemme tell you–I know, I love the place myself. But that’s ONE school. Any otheres? LACs or Catholic schools? </p>
<p>If the answer is no…well, that’s okay too. At least I can cross some schools off my (ever-growing) list!</p>
<p>You may never have heard of Davidson College, but it ranked above Amherst, Williams, Smith, and Wellesley in the total number of doctorates in mathematics received by its graduates over a decade-even though each of these better-known colleges has more students than Davidson.</p>
<p>Oh yes, I’ve heard of it! A friend of mine is going there next year. I didn’t know it was good at math. Thanks for the info!</p>