<p>Yikes, I thought we had plenty of time for my daughter to figure out what colleges she was interested in but suddenly we have gone from having a year left to look into colleges to only having through the summer because she is going to Spain as an exchange student for her senior year. We have a lot to do in the next 8 months! So, she really wants to go to college in Atlanta just because she likes Atlanta. She already has Emory and Georgia Tech on her list but that's it besides her safety LSU since we live in LA. She wants to major in math, had a 29 on her first attempt at the ACT without studying, a 3.94 unweighted GPA, and really has no idea what she's looking for in a college. We've used the college search feature on here, but it doesn't really tell us what schools are good for math. So, any suggestions for good math schools, preferably in the eastern half of the US, that she would be able to get into? If they are ones with good financial aid possibilities, that would be even better. </p>
<p>TIA</p>
<p>What type of math? Certain schools are better at certain types of math</p>
<p>In rough order for general math:
MIT
Harvard
Princeton
Stanford
UCB
U Chicago
CalTech
UCLA
UM
Columbia
NYU
Yale
Cornell
Brown
UT-A
Northwestern</p>
<p>I don’t think she knows what kind of math - she just loves math and that’s what she wants to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if she decided on applied math of some sort or even deciding on engineering eventually. We are just looking for some starting points right now. Of course going as an exchange student for a year, she might come back and totally changed her mind about everything. </p>
<p>Thanks for the list. Most of those seem like a bit of a reach for her, but we’ll definitely be adding some of them to her list to look into.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd, Rose Hulman, Case Western - all small-to-medium schools. Mudd and Rose Hulman are tiny, with exclusively STEM majors, and Case Western is a small university with a large number of STEM people.</p>
<p>Consider Minnesota TC, Stony Brook, and Massachusetts Amherst for relatively low out of state cost of attendance.</p>
<p>Consider Virginia and North Carolina for need based financial aid to out of state students.</p>
<p>Put “net price calculator” in each school’s web site search box.</p>
<p>Yes, the schools in post #2 will be big reaches. UCB has a good list.</p>
<p>OP, when you say you’ll need FA does that mean you are low income or just have little discretionary $? People with high income but needing aid should look for merit aid or lower cost schools.</p>
<p>NYU is #1 for applied math. MIT and CalTech are #1 overalls for math in general. The Ivy’s all are up top their and UoChicago should be there too.</p>
<p>UCB - thanks for those suggestions. Being new to all this, I didn’t know about the net price calculator so that will be helpful.</p>
<p>Erin’s Dad - By needing FA, I mean we are single income < $100k, not low income, with no real college savings. I’d love to find some schools where she would qualify for merit aid that are good for math. We have LSU to fall back on, but none of us are too thrilled with that idea.</p>
<p>NYU 2013’s list looks roughly accurate. I don’t know why drac313 thinks MIT and Caltech are the best math schools. MIT is arguable but Caltech although very very good is probably not as good as Harvard or Princeton at math. I would agree that NYU is the best for applied math though. While most of the Ivies have excellent math departments I am less sure that Dartmouth does. In any case college math classes are very different from high school math so unless the OP’s daughter has had considerable experience with proofs she may want to consider other aspects of schools as well.</p>
<p>Be aware that NYU is expensive and has a reputation for poor need-based financial aid (though the very top students may get offered merit scholarships). If you need significant financial aid, consider NYU as a reach because you need to get a big merit scholarship, rather than just acceptance into the school.</p>
<p>OOS public schools will cost a bit as well (GaTech is $40K OOS and the merit aid is very competitive). While LA is a member of the academic common market the tuition reciprocity only applies to majors not offered in the student’s home state. Other public Us with low costs include the Dakotas.</p>
<p>At the risk of sounding naive, for undergraduate level math, couldn’t she go almost anywhere? My daughter is interested in Math and has applied to a range of schools, none of which are listed above including Penn, JHU, and Bryn Mawr. The schools should have plenty of math classes available, but I think rankings of departments is more for graduate students. I wonder what kind of school she would like, big/small, north/south, urban/remote, etc.</p>
<p>My DD attends a LAC which she loves majoring in Math. She doesn’t have the extensive offering of classes she would have at a U but I think she’s certainly getting all the basics for a Math under grad.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Should, but some schools are rather limited in math major courses (often, these are smaller liberal arts colleges with a humanities and social studies focus, or low selectivity schools where students are not interested in majoring in “hard” subjects like math, and math courses are heavily weighted toward remedial offerings for students who got poor math education in high school but need to take freshman calculus for their business or whatever major).</p>
<p>One can look at on-line course catalogs and schedules and compare them with that of well-known-for-math schools. A decent math department should offer junior and senior level courses in real analysis, complex analysis, abstract algebra, linear algebra, number theory, numerical analysis, set theory, mathematical logic, ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations, geometry, and other courses in pure and applied math areas. For students in applied math, good departments in the desired areas of application like statistics, computer science, operations research, economics, various other social studies, sciences, philosophy, etc. would also be useful.</p>
<p>A student entering very advanced in math (having taken college math courses beyond the calculus BC level before graduating high school) may want to consider the availability of graduate level courses that can be taken as an undergraduate. (Not sure if this would apply to the student in question.)</p>