My son applied to 10 schools for Fall 2017. Math major with focus on applied math, stats, or data science. Concerned re: more theoretical departments that are difficult to piece together an applied math experience. Does anyone know the difference between U of Rochester and NYU’s math dept’s with respect to how theoretical vs. applied they are? Thank you!
Can’t help you directly, but if you haven’t done so already it may be worth looking for online course catalogs of both schools to see what math classes are offered. I’d also try to look through the list of professors at each school (again, often found online) as sometimes it lists their area of focus, articles written etc.
Thank you. He did look at the courses and he really would benefit from looking at them side by side again. Your suggestion to look at the professors’ courses and foci is a very good one. I’ll pass it on.
Concur with the recommendation to look at faculty rosters and course catalogs to see what each school offers in terms of pure and applied math areas. Sometimes statistics is its own department and/or catalog subject, but sometimes it is under the math department.
Thank you. I read a post from a few years ago on Niche.com from a student at the U of Rochester who stated that the department was particularly theoretical. They have applied math and stats majors offered there. At NYU, they do not have a statistics major; a senior math major shared with us at an open house that the department is quite theoretical and one has to pick from different departments to create an applied type experience. Again, it seems important to see professors’ course offerings, etc. to get a better sense of the math departments.
Johns Hopkins, I believe, is excellent for applied math. They have an excellent applied physics lab and they also have very good computer science / machine learning. I had a good friend who did applied math there and had a fantastic experience.
I would also look at past schedules of classes to see how often they really offer each class. A class could be in the course catalog, but still be offered very infrequently.
Also, I’d make sure to check for an Applied Math Department in addition to a Statistics department. I’m not sure if you’re in New York, but at Geneseo the Stats courses are in the Math department. Same thing at Binghamton.
Binghamton has a bunch of 500 level courses in Stats and Data Science that are listed as both undergraduate and graduate. They have a really nice selection of courses, but I think I remember not all of them being offered on a regular basis. Don’t take my word on that, though. It was a while ago that I looked. Stony Brook has all of the Stats courses in a separate department of Applied Math and Statistics. They have a very big selection too. The AMS department is in the College of Engineering.
I think a common misconception is that applied math is not as rigorous as pure mathematics. This is not necessarily true. The difference is that applied mathematics focuses on strands of math that are more likely to have direct application rather than purely theory-building. If you want to go into grad school in applied mathematics, you should expect to understand real analysis as well as your pure mathematics peers.
We are in New Jersey. Binghamton is one of his choices, yet he was not impressed with the website, the in person info session and tour and the application itself. It was very telling. The math department does get very good grades. Your suggestions are excellent. Thank you.
I believe that the schools he is applying to have enough theory that he will get a foundation to support his applications. He ruled out schools that were strictly theoretical and found ones that had applied offerings. It is now the finer details to consider. Also, he needs to see where he gets in! Ha!
One potential solution is for him to send an email to one or two math professors in the department or, in the case of a very large department like NYU, the departmental secretary. They’ll be able to give you an answer to this question at least from their perspective.
Thank you for this info!
He has visited NYU’s math department as well as U of R’s math department and spoke with chairs. I suggested he contact them again. Thank you!