<p>I'm wondering if LACs are a viable option for my son, a HS sophomore, or if when the time comes he'll want to limit his college search to universities.</p>
<p>He was accelerated in Math throughout elementary and middle school, and consequently finished our local HS's Math curriculum when he was in 8th grade. He's taken joint enrollment Math at a local university the past two years and at the time that he graduates from HS he'll have had five university courses beyond Calculus II.</p>
<p>I would think that under normal circumstances, Calc II may be the farthest that a HS student would go. Would my son be likely to run out of available courses in the Math curriculum at an LAC if he's already completed the first five college courses that a Calc II HS graduate would take? Would he need to consider universities with graduate programs in order to find more extensive curricula?</p>
<p>Even if he ran out of math classes (which I find unlikely since even majors have to make choices about what they take), he could still find plenty to keep him busy in physics, economics, or other fields that make heavy use of math.</p>
<p>Your son would have plenty of math courses at a place like Harvey Mudd, for instance. He would also have individual attention from professors who would recognize his aptitude. I went to a small LAC and two of my classmates had fathers who were math professors and they were both quite gifted in math, (one went on to get his PhD from MIT). Believe me, their fathers wouldn’t have sent them to my school if they didn’t think it would serve their needs. I realize that a big university would also be a good choice for your talented son.</p>
<p>I think he would need/want to consider universities with graduate programs. If you are worried about size, there are small universities like Rice that would be have enough math, but in general for a kid that advanced, you are looking for a top university like Yale, Princeton, Chicago, MIT, Harvard, etc. Why risk holding him back.</p>
<p>For the truly gifted in math—as opposed to the merely talented—I wouldn’t recommend LACs, with the possible exception of specialty schools like Harvey Mudd. (Come to think of it, Harvey Mudd is unique; no others like it). Great mathematicians often make their biggest contributions at quite a young age. No sense in waiting around for grad school when at a university with a top math department you can accelerate into graduate-level courses as an undergrad. And don’t fall for the myth that you’ll be tied up in big, impersonal courses at a top university. Advanced undergrad and graduate courses tend to be very small, and a student who is rocketing through the math curriculum is going to get an awful lot of personal attention from the faculty who in the top departments will include some of the top mathematicians in the world.</p>
<p>Well, first of all, at what university will these courses beyond Calc II have been taken? Many a time if they are not taught at a sufficient level of rigor (I am not saying that this is the case for your son, but it may possibly be), then you still have much to gain by retaking some courses at a LAC and so then you would have a little less room to run out.</p>
<p>And I believe that at the highest level of mathematics (and any other discipline, for that matter), the only way to really learn properly is not through structured coursework, even graduate coursework, but through independent study and working on research problems. I would imagine LAC’s provide this opportunity for very gifted students. I knew of a few such genius savants in mathematics during my time at Harvey Mudd, and they never seemed too disappointed in having to go to HMC, and often they just did a lot more independent study and research and usually wound up going to very good grad schools and doing fine.</p>
<p>“Yes, even at Harvey Mudd.
Courses: Current Mathematics Courses”</p>
<p>I don’t see how quoting the Fall 2009 math courses proves anything.</p>
<p>If you can pass out of the first five math classes at Harvey Mudd you’ve completed the core math requirements (that everyone takes) plus 1 or 2 more classes, depending on whether you’ve taken Probability or not. It happens occasionally, average 1 student per year. Whether you run out of classes you want to take or not depends on which fields you’re interested in and whether you want to concentrate on a specific one or branch out a bit. If you’re intent on a single focused field then you will probably run out of classes to take. If you like two or more fields, I doubt you’ll run out of classes.</p>
<p>Courses offered alternate based on year and semester but the above link shows all of Mudd’s math classes, except for special topics classes, a few of which are offered each semester and which go into more depth in a particular field. Also note that you can take math classes at Pomona, Claremont McKenna, and Scripps, each of which have a few upper division courses that might interest you, particularly Pomona.</p>
<p>You can also conduct research with a professor. There are 10+ math professors to maybe 40-50 junior and senior math majors, so doing research during the school year isn’t a stretch.</p>
<p>No doubt a university with a good math graduate program will serve your needs, but it’s also entirely possible at Mudd.</p>
<p>I knew a kid like your son, who took several math courses at a college while in HS. He went to MIT. </p>
<p>As another person said, there’s lots of extensions to consider: physics, engineering, applied math, economics, financial management, etc. My nephew just graduated from UVa w/ a double major in Math and Economics. Another nephew graduated from Trinity College (CT) with a double major in Math and Chemistry.</p>
<p>Wesleyan has a Math graduate program and for awhile the biggest criticism against it was that it influenced the undergraduate curriculum <em>too much</em>. This was during the big ramp up to widespread personal computing and it was thought to be “too theoretical” for all the future Steve Jobses out there (Jobs is a Williams graduate, btw.) You don’t hear that so much anymore. There’s also a Math/Econ major.</p>
<p>It’s really a question of who gets to decide what you take on what schedule. If you go to a school too small, you have to take what’s offered, when it’s offered or do it as an independent study. If you go to a bigger school, there is more offered more often. Maybe it would help to compare it with University of Chicago</p>
<p>D1 came in with much advanced standing, and did actually run out of math courses at her (relatively large) LAC. Not literally, but the ones she wanted to take, at the time she needed to take them. There was only one section offered of basically all classes above second level, so there were some irreconcilable scheduling conflicts along the way. And a number of classes were offered only every other year. Her last semester to finish her math major she had to take a course she was not really interested in, because there were no offerings then that she was interested in. There were others she would have wanted to take, but they were offered either in the prior semester or the prior year.</p>
<p>“Jobs is a Williams graduate, btw”
Do you mean to tell me that he completed a degree at Willams College some time after he dropped out of Reed College and started Apple computer? Never heard that before…</p>
<p>Most LACs offer independent study. An LAC might offer him more flexibility and better access to professors so that he could design his own course of study.</p>
<p>If he’s that talented at math and is through what I assume are two more levels of calc, linear algebra, and probably real analysis, then he should be looking somewhere with a top math/applied math program and more opportunities to combine math with other subjects. LACs don’t have the same breadth of course work and don’t have graduate level courses which are available to undergrads at many top schools.</p>
<p>I have a friend who came in with that much math at Brown and he did his degree in math and math-econ and is now at UChicago going for a PhD in economics. We had another student in a similar situation our year who earned an Sc.B in math, Sc.B in applied math, and a master’s in applied math after four years. He also took almost no courses that were not math or math-based and almost didn’t get the master’s because of that.</p>
<p>Overall, I’d say avoid LACs if course breadth could be a problem, perhaps with a few notable exceptions. Being through courses at that level means there will be 0 course size benefit.</p>
Many top universities offer this as well. To use Brown as an example again, not only can you design a course from scratch as an ISP, but every professor at Brown has a course code in the book for doing an independent study with them. Independents studies are not rarities outside the LAC world and are actually quite common at many top schools.</p>
<p>I normally am a supporter of LACs, but we’re talking about someone who will benefit tremendously from professors who still actively publishing, wider upper-division course options including graduate level courses, wider upper-division options in other fields which will be math heavy to increase exposure to using math in different settings, etc. Even though math classes at many universities are kept small at all levels, at the level this kid is coming in at there will be no difference in class sizes across the board. I just don’t see the benefit of going to an LAC if you have this kind of interest and this level of exposure over going to a smaller research university that’s strong in math (I can see not wanting to go to a 10k+ person school for other reasons, but not having difficulty with smaller research uni versus LAC size in this case).</p>
<p>With the situation you describe, I would definitely go to a university with an excellent graduate program in mathematics. He will need that kind of advanced environment in which to thrive, I think. At a top tier LAC, what he’ll end up doing is doing independent study with math professors. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; some might consider it superior. For me, I think having peers studying the same material is important.</p>