<p>I have a friend who's interested in Yale but is a super math-oriented guy. The problem is, Yale is really known as more of a humanities school. However, when I toured the campus, both the guy who gave my presentation and my tour guide were math majors, and they said that the extremely low student to faculty ratio in that department means that they get a better education than most people would think. In fact, the guy who did the presentation said that he got to work one-on-one with a Fields Medal winner. Do you think my friend should apply here even though it's not as prestigious an engineering/math-science school as some other top colleges?</p>
<p>Yale does have a top 10 Math program, I believe. (as well as one of the best undergraduate educations one can receive).</p>
<p>Worst out of HYPSM by far. Not even close.</p>
<p>This is hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt:</p>
<p>The salutatorian from our high school goes to Yale. And he was also thinking of majoring in math. His freshman year, he went to visit a math professor to discuss the possibility of majoring. Allegedly, the professor said to him, "You think you want to major in math? Then why the hell did you come to Yale?" </p>
<p>Again, hearsay. The boy's mother told my husband this story.</p>
<p>Well Yale is ranked #7 according US News Graduate Math Rankings. I don't think there's THAT much of a difference between a #1 school and a #7...especially at the undergrad level (because those rankings are graduate rankings). </p>
<p>Heck, Yale shares its math rank with CalTech.</p>
<p>unluckyone1, yale is most certainly "close." you have no idea what you're talking about.</p>
<p>My father was a math professor at yale.
Rankings are based primarily on number of publications; yale's faculty size is many times greater than Caltech's, yet they have the same number of publications. So, in reality, you have no idea what you are talking about.
And by the way, for math especially, the graduate school will determine the education you receive on the undergraduate level since you ALWAYS take grad school courses as an undergrad.</p>
<p>Yes, and Yale is also significantly smaller than Harvard and Stanford; therefore, you contradict yourself.</p>
<p>And no, graduate quality won't have as much of an effect as you think. It may be nice that one school has more math publications, but how can that possibly affect the undergrads? What IS relevant to undergrads is the quality of TEACHING. Not the quality of Grad Research. Yale has a higher undergrad focus than H and S because more than half of the students are undergrads.</p>
<p>I have no idea what you're talking about by saying that you ALWAYS take grad school courses as an undergrad. This is news to me. There are way too many math courses available to exhaust the curriculum at Yale.</p>
<p>And even if you continue to argue with what I just said, my original point still stands: Yale, at #7, IS close to HPSM in Math Grad rankings. You have a very bizarre perception/definition of the word "close."</p>
<p>Well he's also unsure that he'll be able to get into a more prestigious math program with far more applicants. Doesn't it help to apply to a less desirable program? He's looking to get the best general and mathematical education he can.</p>
<p>Actually, no, it doesn't.</p>
<p>Yale structures admissions such that it doesn't care what your prospective major is. All appplicants are evaluated in a common pool -- and hence being a prospective math major at Yale is even harder than being a prospective math major at MIT, Caltech, Princeton, etc because Yale has the second-lowest overall admissions rate (and lowest regular decision admissions rate).</p>
<p>Now there is a small counter-argument to be made. Namely that the Yale admissions officers realize that they need some balance in their class so they can't admit all History majors. However, since there are no quotas, it really doesn't matter much at all...</p>
<p>When I evaluate mathematics programs at particular colleges, one thing I do is look at online course syllabuses for the various courses at the various colleges. Yale's courses compare well to courses available at other colleges with known strong math programs. </p>
<p>I also look at where students from my state who are strong in math (as evidenced by advanced coursework, AMC scores, and state math league records) go. Some apply to Yale. Some enroll at Yale if admitted. Yale is not a bad college at which to study math, although I agree that it is the outlier in the set {Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale}, as the other four colleges are especially sought after by strong math students. But some strong math students like the other aspects of life at Yale, and the math students who eventually enroll at Yale, after comparing all their offers of admission, are surely well prepared as compared to the great mass of would-be math majors around the country.</p>
<p>When my son was making his decision in April, I received a PM about mathematics at Yale from a knowledgeable CC poster. Here is an excerpt: </p>
<p>
[quote]
I think it is true that the top students in the pre-college mathematics competitions (USAMO and USMTS) often pick Harvard, MIT, Caltech, and to some extent Stanford over Yale. The top students on the university-level Putnam exams also come from these schools, somewhat more commonly than from Yale.</p>
<p>That said, the undergraduate education and research opportunities at Yale would satisfy the overwhelming majority of top math students. </p>
<p>I think that Math 301 at Yale is reasonably comparable to MIT's 18.100 (the most-dropped math course at MIT)--you can read about that course on MIT's web site. Math 230 at Yale also has a fair share of quite talented students coming in. There are plenty of students to ensure that higher-level math classes are offered, and to ensure that a student has people with whom to collaborate. </p>
<p>Research opportunities for undergraduates at Yale are quite good. I spoke with a freshman math major who was conducting research with a faculty member already. He was unusually well prepared coming in. I paid some attention to the recent winners of the Alice T. Schaefer award from the American Mathematical Society (for research by an undergraduate woman in mathematics), and noticed that Yale had a recent winner of that award, an indicator of the research opportunities offered for undergraduates.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>TheWerg, does your friend want to pursue a PhD in math and wishes to pursue an academic career at a top math department? If not, Yale is certainly quite good enough vs Harvard, Princeton, or MIT, and offers other unique benefits.</p>
<p>He actually wants to study math as an undergraduate, then do engineering as a graduate student. This is because he wants more freedom as an undergraduate to study things outside of engineering and isn't entirely certain that he wants to be an engineer yet, so he'd rather not get stuck in an engineering program for four years and discover that it's just not for him.</p>
<p>In that case, Yale's math is more than adequate.</p>
<p>I am not sure how feasible your friend's graduate plan is, however. In many engineering departments, it is very difficult to pass the master's exam or PhD qualifiers without having gone through the courses in the corresponding undergraduate program.</p>
<p>Yeah, he knows it will probably be tough. But his parents are both engineers, and they say that they probably know as many or more engineers who majored in math as they know who majored in engineering, so it's certainly possible.</p>
<p>You might also want to look at the Applied Math and Applied Physics majors at Yale. The BA programs are pretty flexible, and may be good preparation for certain engineering graduate programs.</p>
<p>How good is the applied math program? Is Yale math slanted towards pure or applied at all?</p>
<p>What tokenadult said about looking at course syllabuses is good advice. Yale's undergrad math courses are pretty good, and you can learn all of the topics necessary to succeed in a top PhD program (algebra, topology, and all the different subfields of analysis). That said, Yale's first year sequence isn't as good as Harvard's or Princeton's, and the undergraduate topology courses seem a little lacking (you'd probably want to take a graduate level course). Another downside to majoring in math at Yale is that there are many more very serious math students elsewhere. For the record, I'm a math major at Princeton.</p>
<p>My S has a friend who's a math major at Yale who showed him around and took him to a math class when he was looking at colleges. I have to agree with others who say that Yale's math department is not as strong as HPSM. My S found the course offerings narrow compared to those other schools and his friend described the faculty as being distant and uncommunicative. My S was uninspired by the professor who was teaching the class he sat in on.</p>
<p>Yale does have a very good graduate program, but unlike it's peers their undergrad program does not seem to stack up. However, even though Yale admissions is extremely competitive, it is a little easier for strong potential math majors to get in because most of the strongest math students go elsewhere.</p>
<p>It is generally believed that the top (graduate) applied math programs in the country are MIT's and NYU's, though applied math programs tend to be more idiosyncratic than pure math programs, so depending on specialization, other schools also excel.</p>
<p>Again, for most undergrads, depending upon their objectives -- not everyone aspires to be a top-of-the-field applied mathematician -- Yale's program may be quite good enough, in which case, you should consider the other benefits Yale offers.</p>