A few things about me: Asian female looking to go into math at undergrad and either applied math or theoretical CS for grad school. Will (unfortunately) be full pay. First gen college student.
Academics: 1500 SAT single sitting, 3.95 UW GPA (current school doesn’t calculate but previous school did—this is a rough estimate), IB Diploma candidate doing one of the most ‘rigorous’ subject combinations (math, physics & further math HL). I go to a fairly well known international school in South East Asia (school has pretty good college matriculation numbers).
Extracurriculars: Most of my stuff revolve around math and design. Did some competition math, didn’t do terrible but isn’t IMO-level. Went to a quite selective (not extremely well-known on CC though) summer program sophomore year. Chair of school math team & mentor freshmen who are into math. Co-chair of school’s cryptography club (very fun, not super prestigious unfortunately). Most of my math stuff is independent learning. Creative Director of internationally recognized nonprofit (national awards & funding), design lead for online student-initiated publication, part of Exec team for TEDx conference & design lead. A good amount of service hours (probably won’t put on activities list though) and did recreational sports (to fulfill CAS tbh)
I’m looking for match schools that are preferably on the medium to small side in a suburban location, great math and CS departments, an undergraduate focus, and a quirky/nerdy student body. Most of the schools I’ve looked into have been reaches or safeties so far. Any suggestions?
medium to small and “great” math and cs don’t go together particularly well. You’d be more likely to find “great” cs and math at a research university with a large student population.
Full pay Int’l with your stats, NYU would fit the bill on Math and CS, would be a match in terms of admissions, though not on the small to medium or suburban.
@merc81 Yeah, I’ve realized they don’t go extremely well together. Size isn’t a dealbreaker, honestly: do you have other options that might fit under the bill?
I’ve looked at NYU Courant but can’t quite place if I like it. The ‘public university’ feel at a private school cost isn’t something I’m very keen on. Might apply if I like it when/if we visit campus though.
@tk21769 Thanks for the suggestions! Reed is already on the list (tentatively) and will definitely look into the other ones. Brandeis looks particularly interesting.
Merit is one thing I might be looking for, so any suggestions for schools with good merit opportunities + good CS/Math departments would be nice. I’m not too strict on size/location preferences too. I’ve heard UVA/Rutgers might be good options — care to verify?
Courant is a spiffy math program. As to whether NYU feels like a public at the cost of a private, most top US public universities are, in fact, publics “at the cost of a private” for out-of-state and international students, so I’m not sure that the distinction is particularly useful for students who are full pay. With my immediate family having direct experience at Yale, Columbia, MIT, Harvard, NYU and University of Pennsylvania, I’d say that the “feel” at NYU is certainly more of a college that merges in to the city than the more distinct campus environments of the other schools, but I wouldn’t say that it feels any more like a public than the others. NYU also has a very large International Asian undergrad populations which may or may not be something you care about. You might also want to take a look at Carnegie Mellon which has a good rep for math and CS.
@VaporeonKid : Actually I think you could receive a fantastic education in both math and CS at the right small college. It was another poster who suggested otherwise. At the extremes, your introductory CS class, for example, could range from ~26 or fewer at an LAC to potentially over 1000 at a university. It would need to be the case that salient aspects such as this seem unimportant to you in order to assert that a large school would be an unequivocally deeper academic environment for you.
@tdy123 Courant is spiffy? Care to elaborate on this? Yeah, I’m not extremely into the idea of NYU being part of NYC instead of a more traditional campus. Not too keen on the extremely big international Asian population at NYU—my school sends a good number of seniors there every year and they tend to be the type I don’t normally associate with; perhaps a bad judgement for fit but I simply can’t imagine myself at that type of busy, big and somewhat artsy/more ‘mainstream’ school per se. Does that make sense? Carnegie Mellon is on the list for their math/CS dual-degree, but I’d consider that more of a reach than a match— is that reasonable?
@merc81 Oh yeah, woops — sorry about that, got usernames mixed up. I go to a pretty big high school but I’ve found ways to reduce the class size (by taking less popular classes to impact my schedule, lol) and I suppose there won’t be this sort of loophole in college classes, hence my attraction towards LAC-type schools. Although class sizes are important, I think I’d prefer schools with a distinct culture where I ‘fit in’, so to speak, and finding these schools have been pretty difficult outside of reaches. I’m into UChicago, Princeton, and Harvey Mudd — are there match schools with this type of atmosphere?
@merc81 Thanks for being so helpful! I’ll look into URochester. I really like Haverford, too, but I’ve got one concern: when looking at the math department page, it explicitly mentions allowing enrollment at Bryn Mawr for upper-level courses. Although this seems interesting, does that mean anything about the department at Haverford itself?
That aspect of the bi-college relationship would relate to the structure of curricular alignment in general between the two schools and would not reflect negatively in any way upon Haverford’s math department.
Regarding Hamilton, they are notably strong in both math and CS:
@Chembiodad@NEPatsGirl@merc81 Yes! Hamilton’s been on the list since a rep visited my school a few months back—very impressed with their math & CS program, just not too sure about the location.
Hamilton is beautifully woodsy and receives winter snow generally suitable for the adventurous. That noted, the village of Clinton is quintessentially charming, and a College-run shuttle connects the school to nearby suburban amenities, as well as to the small city of Utica.
@VaporeonKid, we have twin DD’s who were both accepted at many of the highly selective Mid-Atlantic, NE, and Midwest LAC’s, and while a bigger nearby town would have been ideal Hamilton has a very large campus for a 2000 student LAC and there are tons of things to do on campus. At the end of the day, the diversity of students it attracts and the smart, caring students the school accepts was the deciding factor for each - one is a STEM student and she has been very impressed so far.