But doschicos, he’ll be too frozen to go to those classes!
OP, I can’t wait to hear how he likes Carleton. Please update us on his eventual decision.
@catlmom - In addition to math courses at Carleton, take a look at what St. Olaf has to offer. As a Carleton student, you can take classes at St. Olaf as well and it is known for having a very strong math major.
The more you tell us about your son, the more I sense that Carleton could be a wonderful fit for him.
A Nordic skier? Cool. Has he already touched base with Carleton’s team? They have a network of groomed trails in the Arb and send a big group up to the Birkebeiner every year, but I’m guessing he has already figured that out.
Seriously? A UC that means nothing outside California (despite all the Californians on CC who think so) versus a top 10 LAC that’s well known among people who know colleges? There’s no contest IMO.
Congrats on the Carlton accept for your son. Top rate school. In many ways an excellent choice.
My son was/is also a math whiz. That he went to a small school, an LAC is probably the only reason he got a math degree. The department really encouraged him. THough their offerings were not as many as what state schools have with graduate programs in math, what he got is a very firm grounding in the whole theory thing. He was actually one of the very few math students who were able to start out running in the offerings. A lot of kids who took Calc, Lin Alg, Analysis, DifEQ, and other such math courses at CCs during high school years, could not show intensive knowledge and understanding of those tenets up to department standards. A lot of math programs and courses do not go into the theory that is often needed to go further in that field and such courses often have to be retaken when a student enters a program that truly gets down to the nitty gritty in math. The only thing he lost going to the LAC was getting leading edge opportunites in engineering and possibly computer science, but he was not interested in either discipline. FOr pure math preparedness, he could not have gotten better instruction and exposure and a non math oriented LAC.
Though a UC is not on the menu for the OP, yes, the UCs do have some lustre beyond LACs with no name recognition with a lot of people. My son’s LAC is hardly known here on the east coast and Carlton not well known at all either, not in my circles, anyways, and they tend to be college prep type circles. I think Carlton is a great school and has been on my list for my kids along with Macalester and some other such schools, but it’s not the norm. Most folks don’t know alot about colleges, and LACs do suffer from lower name recognition than their quality, IMO , out of region.
You can always do independent studies if you run out of courses.
If UC is out of state it’s unlikely to be a better deal than what is on the table.
"The only reason Carleton isn’t as highly regarded as Williams and Amherst is because most folks in East Coast “prestige belt” can’t find it on a map. "
Williams is in the middle of nowhere and Amherst is only slightly less in the middle of nowhere. Carleton is close to a major metropolitan city. But in East Coast parlance, Carleton is in the middle of nowhere @@
"WL Bowdoin. Denied Williams. Oh, and WL Univ of Chicago (forgot about that one–not a LAC). Applied to 9 schools "
The mistake was to apply to a large number of schools where the acceptance rate is 20% or less. Which by definition is a reach school – for everyone. Maybe you get into Williams if you are a left handed, Jewish, Japanese-speaking, vegan poet from Montana who also rows and wants to major in Greek. But if they already have accepted one of those, you are toast.
At that level of selectivity, Einstein might not get in anywhere even if he applies to 20 reach schools.
Reach. Match. Safety.
@northwesty I don’t think it was a mistake necessarily to apply to a large number of low acceptance rate schools, you just have to be willing to receive a high number of rejections or waitlists. The OP’s daughter has three acceptances. That’s great. And the fact that she was waitlisted at Chicago means she was a very viable candidate for the most selective schools in the country. She should have no regrets.
My kids pursued a similar strategy - 6 or 7 reaches, 2 safeties, no real matches.
So look at the range of math classes, incl the opp for independent projects, in the course catalog. And how it may be possible to do work for a prof. This can be an advantage at an LAC.
“I don’t think it was a mistake necessarily to apply to a large number of low acceptance rate schools, you just have to be willing to receive a high number of rejections or waitlists.”
It may turn out to be a mistake if the kid doesn’t want to attend Carleton. Or if the family can’t afford Carleton (since the OP says big aid is needed).
The OP was definitely “mistaken” in being surprised that applying to a large number of very highly selective schools would produce a large number of non-admissions. Those schools only become highly selective by not accepting most applicants after all.
Not helpful to the OP, but I think the lesson is that there is a bit of “groupthink” in the admissions of a lot of the selective schools. Despite the threads that talk about people being admitted to Yale and rejected at Harvard and MIT and Princeton, I suspect that the actual statistics suggest that its much more of an all or nothing (maybe several or nothing would be a better term) than anyone wants to face up to. Diversification in applications really does mean picking some where you’re virtually certain to be admitted.
I think geographic factors in safeties and matches tend to be not well considered. My oldest got into about half of the schools, but I did ask midway through the waiting if they were OK going to a school 600 miles away if that turned out to be the only one. (They were.) But this could also be turned around and asked if they were ok going to a school that was in your backyard. The point is simply to realistically try to cover the waterfront within the limits of your resources, energy, and personal tolerance.
My son’s g/f is a Carleton grad, as is her mom. She got into great grad schools and post-docs. She likes the cold weather, unlike my son. I must admit, I’ve learned a lot more about the school since knowing the g/f. It is not on the radar here in SE Florida. She seems to have loved her college experience.