<p>What would people say the major differences are between math and science (math esp) at a liberal arts college and a university?</p>
<p>It seems that the best mathematicians all went to universities for their undergraduate education. I know McMullen went to Williams (harvard phd) and went on to get a fields medal, but are there any other prominent LAC undergrad mathematicians?</p>
<p>Is Williams the only LAC that compares? Does it truly compare to an MIT/Harvard/Princeton?</p>
<p>One issue in this comparison is that a LAC is not likely to offer as many Math courses you’d find at a good national university. Example: Middlebury College is an excellent school, tied for 4th in the USNWR liberal arts college rankings. Compare its Math department course offerings with the University of Chicago’s:</p>
<p>[Middlebury</a> Mathematics](<a href=“Course Information | Middlebury College”>Course Information | Middlebury College)
[Chicago</a> Mathematics](<a href=“http://www.math.uchicago.edu/undergraduate/course_description.shtml]Chicago”>http://www.math.uchicago.edu/undergraduate/course_description.shtml)</p>
<p>The Chicago list covers only its undergraduate courses. And Chicago is not even all that large, as national universities go. Though it’s reputed to have one of the best Math programs in the country.</p>
<p>Williams seems to be considered one of the strongest math and science LACs. I cannot find a comprehensive online course list; maybe it is more extensive than Middlebury’s. But in general, a LAC is unlikely to offer the sheer number of Math courses at a good national university. </p>
<p>As for quality, I doubt that any LAC will be able to attract the number of top Mathematicians you’d find at Brown, Chicago, NYU, or Princeton. But … you’ll certainly find excellent teachers at most LACs; maybe Williams College or Swarthmore does more with less. There is some evidence that LACs actually out-perform universities for per capita education of future Math Ph.D.s:
[COLLEGE</a> PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]COLLEGE”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
<p>A Few Prominent LAC Alumni
**Karen Uhlenbeck<a href=“Macarthur%20prize-winning%20mathematician”>/b</a> went to Brandeis, which is a small sorta LAC-like university (~3200 UGs).
**Buckminster Fuller<a href=“if%20he%20counts%20as%20a%20mathematician”>/b</a> got a degree from Bates (after being expelled from Harvard a couple of times.)
David Gale went to Swarthmore ([03.18.2008</a> - Mathematician, puzzle lover David Gale has died](<a href=“http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/03/18_galeobit.shtml]03.18.2008”>03.18.2008 - Mathematician, puzzle lover David Gale has died))
David Bressoud, President of the Mathematical Association of America, also went to Swarthmore ([David</a> Bressoud](<a href=“http://www.macalester.edu/~bressoud/briefbio.html]David”>http://www.macalester.edu/~bressoud/briefbio.html))
Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in Economics whose work (according to Newseek magazine) “is cited by more economists than anyone else’s in the world.” He majored in Physics at Amherst College. His autobiography on the nobelprize site contains interesting paragraphs on his Amherst experience: [Joseph</a> E. Stiglitz - Autobiography](<a href=“http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/stiglitz-autobio.html]Joseph”>http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/stiglitz-autobio.html)</p>
<p>Oscar Erasmus Lanford III, National Academy of Science Award recipient, 1986 [Oscar</a> Lanford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Lanford]Oscar”>Oscar Lanford - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Jennifer Tour Chayes, managing director of Microsoft New England research labs, [Jennifer</a> Tour Chayes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Tour_Chayes]Jennifer”>Jennifer Tour Chayes - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>“Compare its Math department course offerings with the University of Chicago’s:”</p>
<p>The registrar’s list of courses, and sections, actually given each of the last four semesters at each school will be more illuminative than the catalogs.</p>
<p>The reason is: the differences are likely not just the absolute # courses offered, but the frequency that those courses are actually given ( at LAC you will likely find more “every other year” offerings, or offered only when a visitng prof who has that specialty is hired), and the # sections of the various courses that are given (only 1 section means increased risk of irreconcilable scheduling conflict).</p>
<p>also, keep in mind that no matter how many courses are offered at a great big university, how many overlap in the material covered (at least around the margins), and the fact that you’re still limited by how many you can actually squeeze in (even assuming your particular school has no distribution requirements) over the space of four years.</p>
<p>You have to look down the road for three or four years. How advanced a math student are you, and where do you want to go with your math studies? Keep in mind that you will very likely change your goals after a couple of years, as you become more aware of the nature of high level math.</p>
<p>The main contrast between a four year LAC and a larger institution with a graduate math program will be the depth and bredth of courses. My oldest finished all but one of his undergraduate requirements for a math degree by the end of sophomore year. From then on, his math classes were at the graduate level. He would have been stymied at a small institution.</p>
<p>that’s probably why Wesleyan has awarded a Math Ph.D for the last half-century, even though it doesn’t bring in nearly the same amount of outside funding as the natural sciences.</p>
<p>Top universities tend to attract more top math students, like top Putnam scorers are always from Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, etc. The program really depends on how good the professors are and what resources there are to help you learn. At Swarthmore at least, one negative part of the math courses is that they’re not always offered. So for example, Modern Algebra is offered next semester, but won’t be offered afterward for a very long time, so I absolutely have to take it next semester, since it’s required for my major. But I think a plus side is that professors might be more committed to teaching at liberal arts colleges, whereas professors usually care more about research at the universities (even though most of them do care about teaching, too).</p>
<p>dchow08 are you thinking about going onto grad school in math? what schools do math grads from swarthmore often go onto? </p>
<p>i will probably be choosing a school for its math and science programs. however, i am aware of the differences between undergrad and grad and would benefit from the extra attention as long as the “depth and breadth” is not a huge trade off. what do grad schools look for anyway?</p>
<p>here is the link to the williams math offerings. I can’t tell how good or broad it is.
<a href=“http://catalog.williams.edu/catalog.php?&subjinfo=math[/url]”>http://catalog.williams.edu/catalog.php?&subjinfo=math</a></p>
<p>See this forum:
[who</a> wants to be a mathematician? - Page 2](<a href=“Should I Become a Mathematician? | Page 2”>Should I Become a Mathematician? | Page 2)</p>
<p>Read Posts#27 & #30.</p>
<p>Re: #11, I speculated the same way as that guy, until my D1 actually attended such an institution and I became acquainted, though her, of its shortcomings. He and I both attended research Us as undergrads, how could we have known. The grass is always greener. D1 was unable to take certain courses she was interested in, do to being offered every other year or not offered at all since the one person with that specialty quit, and her last semester to finish her math major she was forced to take a course she was not interested in because the several she was interested in were only given in the Fall, or every other year. That guy would never have experienced that, because he didn’t attend such a school.</p>
<p>Re: #10: as I said previously do NOT look merely at catalogs, they may include courses that are only sporadically offered, and do not indicate how many sections are offered of each course when it is given. You need to look at the registrar’ list of courses actually given, prefererably for the last four semesters.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Huh? </p>
<p>MATH 067 - INTRO TO MODERN AlGEBRA is typically taught every fall in multiple sections at Swarthmore. There are two sections this fall in time slots on completely diffferent days, one taught by Bergstrand with 15 students, one by Hunter with 13 students. There are four problem set sections, two taught by each professor with 4 to 9 students in each, depending on the time.</p>
<p>The current course catalog also says the course will be offered in the spring. Swarthmore doesn’t go from offering multiple sections of a required course both semesters to not offering the course at all and thus making it impossible to complete a major. They don’t have required courses that “won’t be offered for a very long time”. Required courses are taught every year. Something is getting lost in translation here.</p>
<p>MATH 102 - the MODERN ALGEBRA II (seminar format) is also taught every year. The MATH 67 / MATH 102 sequence is one of the REQUIRED preparations for the Honors Math outside examinations. The complete two semester sequence is offered every year. </p>
<p>I don’t understand. You just, in effect, posted that students can no longer major in math at Swarthmore, when the reality is that Swarthmore has sizeable numbers of math majors every year and, in fact, nearly twice as many HONORS math majors as COURSE math majors, meaning that the vast majority of math majors every year have taken the MATH 67/MATH 102 sequence. Other than the fact that math is hard as heck, these students don’t have any problem getting the courses they need to major in math. The school bends over backwards to offer mutliple points of entry (down to half semester granualarity) to accommodate students with varying amounts of high school calc coverage.</p>
<p>Swarthmore has 21 math professors on staff this academic year (counting one who is on leave this fall and two who are on leave next spring). Copmpare to Dartmouth with three times the number of undergrads with 28 permanent, visiting, and adjuct profs in the math department. There’s no shortage of math professors. That’s nearly one professor per math major in one of the more popular majors at Swarthmore. And that’s not counting computer science, which is a separate department with 6 more professors.</p>
<p>^ That’s not what a friend of mine, a math major who is a junior right now, told me. I have reason to believe him (for one, he wouldn’t tell me if he didn’t think it was true), but I’ll ask the chair, Steve Maurer, about it. I never claimed that “students can no longer major in math at Swarthmore” – that’s not something to worry about. If it turns out that Math 67 will be offered at irregular times, people can still major in math, but they may have less choice in scheduling their courses. My friend could be wrong, though.</p>
<p>banana3: Yes, I do plan to apply to graduate school. I don’t know where math majors from Swarthmore tend to go for graduate school. There’s a binder in the math lounge with advice from Swarthmore alums who attend / attended graduate school, and here’s where they went: Carnegie Mellon, U Maryland, U Chicago, U Washington, Penn, Duke, Brown, U Wisconsin. Of course, this isn’t representative of the majors as a whole, but it’s all I could find.</p>
<p>Finding and applying to graduate schools isn’t like it is to undergraduate schools. Where you go depends a lot on the specialties of the professors at the graduate schools. At some schools, “there is some wariness that Swarthmore students may be less exposed to advanced courses than students coming from research universities, who are likely to have had exposure to graduate courses” (Peter May, University of Chicago). But Swarthmore students don’t get overlooked.</p>
<p>As for what graduate schools are looking for, here’s what someone who works for Princeton graduate admissions says: “Strength of recommendations are very much the most important factor; following that would be a record of strong performance in advanced courses. GRE scores are less important than either – they become more important if the applicant is coming from a small school where recommenders are unknown to us.”</p>
<p>Swarthmore does not offer required courses only at “irregular” intervals. There are an average of 24 math majors a year, all required to take MATH 67. So if instead of offering two sections every fall, Swarthmore suddenly changed and offered it every other year, that’s 48 students taking the course. Every three years (“infrequent”) would mean 72 students.</p>
<p>That would make no logical sense. When you have enough students every year to fill two sections of a mandatory course, you don’t stop teaching the course!</p>
<p>Let’s try to stick to the facts…
</p>
<p>noimagination: Yes, I am well aware of all that, but when a math major mentions something unusual that doesn’t sound quite right, it’s worth investigating further.</p>
<p>Well, I e-mailed the chair and it turns out that Math 67 will continue to be offered every year. I wonder where my friend heard that it won’t be offered for a while – maybe he meant some other course, like Math 102? Anyways, sorry for the confusion.</p>
<p>S1 looked at math programs at liberal arts schools and found that he would be significantly limited with acccess to graduate work. He was advised by math profs at one school that he should not apply. He placed directly into Analysis (a three-quarter sequence) at UChicago freshman year, coming in with a background equal to the five Swat courses listed above plus complex analysis and a proof class.</p>
<p>This is not a typical situation (and I know of students who have entered college with far more coursework than my S had), but it does help explain why, for students with extremely strong math preparation, a university may offer more resources. I will add that S hasn’t had more than 15 students in a math class yet, and has had only profs teaching courses.</p>
<p>I would just note for the record that the Swarthmore sophmore e-mailed the chairman of the math department about future year course availability at 3-something on a Sunday afternoon and, apparently, had a reply back in a little over an hour.</p>
<p>Counting Down:</p>
<p>Absolutely. If you are going into to college with all of the first and second year courses under your belt, you are a prime candidate for needing grad school courses and not finding what you need at an undergrad only school. I suspect that such a student could e-mail the chair of the math department on a Sunday afternoon and get a definitive description of whether there would be sufficient courses or not. They routinely tell prospects like that to go where they can get graduate courses. A professor actually outline that scenario the visiting pre-frosh at the accepted students days at Swarthmore in a talk titled something like “which of you should NOT choose this college”. I always recommend that the atypical student contact the chairman of the department directly, discuss the specifics, and get some information straight from the horse’s mouth on what would or would not be available. Same with music students and so forth. These guys are the experts; they know. If they don’t have what you need, they’ll tell you.</p>
<p>does anyone know what LAC has the best putnam preparation? i think that is something that i would really like to get into.</p>