<p>Berkeley is generous with AP credit. You’re a strong student and I would not be concerned about taking longer to graduate. If you’re in the College of Engineering, it requires you graduate in 4 years.</p>
<p>When touring colleges a few years ago, we sat in on classes and were impressed with the quality of teaching at Oberlin. Not so much at WUSTL. I would recommend Oberlin over several of your “uncertains.”</p>
<p>@Alexandre: Yeah, I was thinking of applying to Michigan, but I heard that they don’t give much aid to OOSers…
@UCBChemEGrad: That’s good to know.
@greennblue: Oberlin is now up for consideration as well.</p>
<p>On a related note, should I try applying for EECS at Berkeley and/or SCS at CMU? They’re harder to get into than the colleges with math/physics programs, but I don’t want to get stuck if I want to major in CS (maybe even EE) and don’t do quite well enough to transfer between colleges.</p>
<p>energize, for OOS students your stats, Michigan sometimes (not often, but not rarely either) gives $25,000-$45,000 scholarships. Definitely apply to Michigan. Its Mathematics sequence is second only to Chicago/Harvard.</p>
<p>Suggest one thing you might do is, for each school considered, look at the number of courses actually given each of the last two semesters in departments of interest, and count them. To do this you will have to find the class listings in the department of the registrar, not the course catalog which may list every course they’ve ever offered.</p>
<p>As a point of interest you can use this [College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/)
to look up how many majors each school graduated in each area.
And count the # professors in the department.</p>
<p>FWIW: It feels nicer to me too to sit in an intimate classroom with an engaged professor, but personally I didn’t find it it actually made that much real difference in math & physics courses i"ve taken. At the end of the day, you still have to be able to do the problems; that’s on you, whether the prof. is highly engaging or not. [I am flashing back to the senior quantum mechanics class, a small class with the best prof in the department, where I got a C+]. Some of the larger lecture classes I’ve taken had lecturers who are actually really good. Others not so. But either way I had to learn the material, and that was on me. Few people are smart enough to absorb this type of material merely by sitting in a classroom, whoever is teaching it. Most of that learning was done by me, at home, absorbing it all after the fact and doing problems. Regardless of the class size or the prof.</p>
<p>I’m sure it makes more difference in other areas, for example discussion- based classes need to be small enough for that to go on. But it would not be desirable to be in a round-table class where students were discussing their various opinions on Faraday’s Law. Who wants to sit there getting bogged down with that? In these classes the Prof. is mostly lecturing. Whether to 20 students in a small room or three hundred in an auditorium, it actually makes little difference IMO.</p>
<p>I disagree with one poster’s inference that small Physics Departments aren’t necessarily rigorous. It just a fact that, for better or worse, there are colleges with little recognition who nevertheless produce stellar Physics graduates, even if the Department is extremely small. The HBCU Virginia State University comes to mind. VSU’s tiny Physics Department produced very talented graduates in recent years. The a notable recent VSU alumnus was accepted in the Applied Physics doctorate program at Johns Hopksins University. Unfortunately, the VSU program fell to the financial pressures of being part of a small and publicly financed institution. VSU was compelled to merge and essentially close the Physics Department a couple of years ago. What a loss.</p>
<p>Anyone looking for excellence in teaching in the sciences should not overlook Grinnell. This is just the latest accolade: [White</a> House honors Grinnell Science Project - News | Grinnell College](<a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/news/releases/white-house-honors-grinnell-science-project]White”>http://www.grinnell.edu/news/releases/white-house-honors-grinnell-science-project) </p>
<p>In addition, they have their own observatory, state-of-the-art facilities, abundant funding for student research, and generous merit aid.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input.</p>
<p>Right now, I’m pretty sure about:</p>
<p>MIT
Harvey Mudd
Caltech
UChicago
Rice
Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>I eliminated Wesleyan, WUSTL, and Cornell for various reasons, and Northwestern might be on the way out as well because I’m not sure if the pre-professional vibe suits me. (Correct me if my impression is wrong!) Swarthmore may or may not be on my final list, because I’m not quite sure about adding another very selective school. (This also applies to Princeton, below.)</p>
<p>The following schools are in rural or small town areas, and I’m not quite sure whether I want to live in those areas, but are otherwise attractive:</p>
<p>Princeton (additional downside: really selective)
Carleton
Grinnell
Oberlin</p>
<p>The other schools I’m considering are Michigan, Macalester, and URochester; all of these are decently safe, are in or close to large to medium cities, and have decent math/physics/CS programs along with opportunities for undergrad research.</p>
<p>Another worry about the smaller schools (excluding Caltech and Harvey Mudd) is that they have somewhat limited course offerings; I will have taken multivariable calculus and linear algebra, so I’ll probably start off a year ahead of virtually all math majors at the school (and a math major/minor is almost certainly going to happen). The liberal arts curriculum might take up enough space to make up for this, but I’m still uncertain…</p>
<p>Additional suggestions, comments, etc. are welcome, as always.</p>
<p>(I’ll be visiting as many of these schools as I can convince my parents to go to during the summer, except for Caltech and Harvey Mudd, which I visited last summer, so hopefully that’ll be helpful as well.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I know Swarthmore is part of a college consortium that includes Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Penn and it allows you to take courses offered at these institutions. IIRC it’s called the Quaker Consortium.</p>
<p>Since you are applying to Cal and UCLA, you must look at
[College</a> of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara](<a href=“http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/]College”>http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/)</p>
<p>Specifically, their [College</a> of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara - Mathematics](<a href=“http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/math]College”>http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/math) and [College</a> of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara - Physics - Home](<a href=“http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/physics/]College”>http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/physics/) programs.</p>
<p>CCS is highly selective, but it meets your requirements of professors focused on teaching and good programs in math and physics. If you are in-state, it’s a bargain.</p>