<p>I am interestd to know if SM is considered to have a strong math dept ?
THanks very much</p>
<p>Marsha</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>Swat’s math department is nice for two kinds of students: (i) those whose backgrounds aren’t strong ––the department has many resources to help students who want to study math but didn’t have good high school prep; this is in sharp contrast to other top universities like Princeton, Yale who don’t tend to offer these kinds of resources; (ii) those whose backgrounds are strong. Swat’s undergraduate math tends to be more rigorous than even undergraduate math at top departments like Columbia (with whose courses I also have experience). Swat’s profs also tend to offer “topics in algebra, analysis” courses wherein professors teach about their various interests. Graduate math courses are available at Penn, but few students pursue these as Swat honors in math apparently is fulfilling.</p>
<p>Note that the department may not seem to place students well into graduate programs because it seems to spend not so much time, relative to other departments like that of MIT, for instance, on prepping students for the Math GRE, which requires a skill (solving “doable” problems very quickly) that isn’t really fostered at Swat (it isn’t really fostered elsewhere; rather other departments put more emphasis on prepping students for the exam). Nevertheless, driven students who want to head to grad school tend to place very well. [I claim you should look at the record of a chosen subset of students; namely those who are focussed on math and only math.] Recently students (i.e., some of my friends) have accepted spots at UChicago, Michigan, UIllinois, and Harvard, if I remember correctly. I think this reflects a selection bias though: It seems like most of the math/science olympiad kids who head to math PhD programs accept spots at Ivies and not Swat. </p>
<p>The bottom line here is that Swat serves non-math geniuses (you are a “math genius” if you’ve placed highly in quantitative olympiads, a sufficient though not necessary condition) “better” than than the Ivies. If you are a “math genius,” Swat will serve you well, though perhaps not as well as Harvard, Princeton, MIT, CalTech, UChicago (the top math schools by USNWR). I think the difference for the “math geniuses” is very slight: Choosing one school over another is unlikely to have a strong effect on graduate placement.</p>
<p>Everything I’ve heard indicates that Swarthmore’s math department does very well in preparing students to do well in graduate math programs. But I don’t think the placement of math graduates into pure math PhD programs is as good as it should be. Swarthmore’s career planning and placement office publishes a list of post graduation plans by major for the classes of 2004 - 2012, where you can compare the track record of the math department with physics, for example:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/careerservices/Post-Graduation%20Plans%20by%20Major%202004-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/careerservices/Post-Graduation%20Plans%20by%20Major%202004-2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>For students going on to a PhD program in pure physics, 5 of 18 students went to top 5 graduate programs, 9 of 18 went to top 10 graduate programs, and 15 of 18 went to top 20 graduate programs (using the USNWR graduate rankings).</p>
<p>For students going on to a PhD program in pure mathematics, 0 of 16 students went to top 5 graduate programs, 4 of 16 went to top 10 programs and 8 of 16 went to top 20 programs.</p>
<p>My perception is that part of this is due to the scant emphasis on math GRE prep noted above, but also that mathematics graduate programs look for success in graduate courses. Although Swarthmore honors seminars in mathematics may be very good, graduate school admissions committees do not consider them graduate courses.</p>
<p>In the distant past this was not so much of a problem. Graduate school admissions was more of an old-boy network, and Swarthmore professors could and did call their colleagues at graduate programs and help get their students in to top programs. But in many graduate admissions decision processes these days, including apparently mathematics, more quantitative measures (grades in graduate level courses, Math subject GRE score) outweigh whatever influence a call from a Swarthmore professor might have.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what Swarthmore could do, short of de-emphasizing math honors seminars and sending top students to Penn for graduate level courses. Honors is such a central part of Swarthmore’s identity that the college would probably be loath to do that.</p>
<p>A couple of caveats with the data: this represents those going on to graduate school directly after graduation from Swarthmore. I do know of at least one recent Swarthmore math grad who is in a top 5 pure math PhD program, but he started after a gap year. There are probably also physics majors who go on to a PhD program after a gap year, and they also would not be counted in the statistics cited above.</p>