Which is the better college in terms of mathematics? For reference, I’d like to do research in college and get into a good graduate school. I’ve also been wait listed at UC Irvine, but I’m not sure how UCI ranks against these two in terms of mathematics. I also don’t want to be hopeful for UCI especially if I don’t get selected off the wait list. Anyways, UCSC or Cal Poly?
The UCs are designed to prepare you for research and grad school, while the CSUs are designed to prepare you more for the workforce. Based on that and your goals, I would go with UCSC so long as it’s feasible financially.
The UCs are research universities while CSUs are teaching universities. If you want to pursue undergrad research and apply to grad school, go to your best UC option.
CPSLO’s career survey is at https://careers.calpoly.edu/search.php .
It looks like few math majors there go on to PhD programs in math (about 1 per year out of 40 respondents to the survey per year).
UCSC’s career survey is at http://careers.ucsc.edu/about/fds_reports_page.html .
For math, it looks like 42% (8 out of 19) will go to graduate study within a year of graduation, although it looks like about a third of graduate study plans are in math or statistics.
Thanks everyone! Most likely going to UCSC 