How is Dartmouth’s math program, as it is never ranked very highly, and I want to major in math…
I’m fairly confident that you would receive a great math education at Dartmouth. All of their majors are probably awesome. If you want to go to the most highly ranked math school then you should look at UChicago. They have a really renowned math dept.
Agreed that Uchicago has a better math Dartmouth.
Dartmouth math is fine and you’ll get a great education in it, but it’s not the top major or world renowned for sure. Most programs aren’t.
Don’t just choose a school based on the strength of the major alone.
Point A is because you may not keep that major. And that’s OK! Liking high school math classes is very different than majoring in it. And majoring in a specific area is only essential for some highly specialized, rare jobs. Most jobs out there look at the applicant, not the major. Colleges will teach you facts about math, but they’ll also teach you how to think, work through novel problems that don’t have predefined formulas to memorize and plug-and-chug, and work with groups of people and function in real world situations. It’ll also expose you to other education areas, like Anthropology or Music, and maybe you never realized how cool archaeology is until you took that class in college, and you’ll become an ancient math expert out on digs of roman ruins (is that a thing? It CAN be!)
Point the Second is ignoring everything else about a school for the major. When you can’t see the forest for the trees, and you’re picking based on one single tree, you aren’t realizing that you have to live in that forest (Holy mixed metaphors, Batman!)
These suggestions are a perfect example - UChicago is in a city, incredibly smart, studious people where grades are key. Dartmouth is in the mountains and forests, with incredibly smart people that might take a more “well-rounded” approach to college life. It’s pretty rare that one person will live to live in Chicago as much as in Hanover, and be equally happy and comfortable around both student bodies. This is going to be home for 4 years, with classmates you’ll know forever, so you’d better enjoy the setting, not just the national rank of the major you think you want at 18.
@Tank07 Than what majors are renowned at Dartmouth? Dartmouth doesn’t really seem to excel at anything besides maybe economics and government (at the undergraduate level).
Most popular majors are generally:
Econ
Govt
History
Engineering
Psych
If you mean top ranked, there are dozens of ranking lists each with different criteria. Generally you’re looking at Econ and Govt year in and year out. Engineering students get access to the Graduate School of Engineering’s professors and facilities so it’s a unique experience, and a few years back at least I know it was ranked top 10 for ROI somewhere. Biology is decent, but it also has Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center right down the street, so the research opportunities increase extensively having that connection. Psychology is popular and also has a lot of leading researchers and experts in the field either come out of Dartmouth or be teaching there currently.
I think once you leave the obvious upper echelon (like MIT - Engineering), there’s a huge amount of colleges that are all “excellent” at many majors, and it’s not like majors are ranked like the college as a whole is. So that’s why my main take on the original question is “Math is decent. But it’s not a Harvey Mudd, Co Sch of Mines, or Carnegie Mellon”
PS/FYI - According to USA Today, here are the top 10 undergrad programs for math as of Oct 2014:
Harvey Mudd
Colorado School of Mines
MIT
UCLA
Carnegie Mellon
UChicago
Cornell
Wash U St Louis
UPenn
California Inst Technology