<p>I am very highly interested in mathematics, but I am also considering the liberal arts college experience. What liberal arts colleges are at the top of the top in terms of their math departments? Are there any that come close to, are the equivalent of, or even surpass the likes of MIT and Princeton at the undergraduate level? From my own low-level research, I've heard a lot about Williams, Swarthmore, Reed and Pomona. Should anything be added or taken away from this list?</p>
<p>I'm especially interested in the liberal arts colleges that have a focus in mathematics. On this note, I've heard the name Harvey Mudd tossed around. Are there similarly focused schools, and how does this one compare to top universities and other top LACs?</p>
<p>To make more specific what I am asking, I'm looking essentially for the following characteristics:
- High selectivity (I like being regularly intellectually challenged by my peers)
- Large math course selection (I expect to move through classes quite fast (I've done Real Analysis, etc. already), and I don't want to run out of options)
- Qualified math professors (in terms of recognition among both the mathematics and teaching community)
- Opportunities for research (I want to be a qualified applicant for top graduate schools; also, research is fun)</p>
<p>@Cosmological
The >50% acceptance rate and Catholic-ness turn me away from St. Olaf, but Carleton looks good. Thanks for help!</p>
<p>One more, related, question: Is there a somewhat definitive list of the top 2-4 math LAC’s after which others start to drop off? I’m mostly interested in research universities, but I am willing to experiment with applying to a small number of LAC’s.</p>
<p>St. Olaf College is not Catholic, since it is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.</p>
<p>Upper division math courses are usually small even at the biggest research universities. Lower division honors math courses, if offered, are also usually small. So the typical LAC advantage in class sizes may be less for math courses than for other subjects. However, if you are advanced enough to have already completed real analysis, LACs may not have sufficient math offerings for you, since someone as advanced as you are will probably want to take graduate level math courses and seminars and join graduate level research projects as an undergraduate. Even Harvey Mudd may not have enough math offerings for a student as advanced as you are.</p>
<p>To get an idea of a school’s offerings (LAC or research university), you can take a look at catalogs and schedules (the schedules may show class sizes). LACs with convenient cross-registration with research universities can effectively have larger catalogs than they would otherwise have (but check on administrative, academic calendar, and commuting situations to see how convenient the cross-registration actually is).</p>
<p>I would put Williams and Harvey Mudd at the top of the LAC math pyramid. They are very different from each other in personality and location, though, and are different again from Reed, Swarthmore, Pomona, Carleton etc. LAC’s have distinctive personalities, so in addition to researching their math departments, you should consider how the culture fits with what appeals to you.</p>
<p>For example, I note on your chances thread that you an Eagle Scout and active in swimming and marching band. These are the kind of activities that fit well with Williams’ culture.</p>
<p>@momrath
Thanks for the advice. I think, for now, I’ll stick to those two. Do you have any suggestions on how to find out what a college’s culture is like? I’m guessing visiting would be the first suggestion, but it seems like that would only give a small glance at the total atmosphere.
(Also, swimming, boy scouts, and band are more things I do for fun on occasion; they aren’t really my primary interests. If there is any culture I would most fit into, it would be one surrounded by math.)</p>
<p>I am pretty sure Williams is ranked the #1 math department in the LACs overall. Look up the awards it gets, I recall something along that line. The math department won some top award last year too, I believe. Just like its econ dept. Just a very tight and high-end department. Mudd math is most likely equal, but maybe just a tad more engineering-based. Check courses, Williams might be a more theoretical in its approach. Really cannot go wrong with either.</p>
<p>How to better understand LAC’s individual cultures? Aside from visiting, I guess by reading about them, identifying characteristics among students you know, asking questions on this site. Of course there are overlaps and exceptions, but the type of student who is drawn to, say, Williams as opposed to Reed would be quite different. Students at all of these academically rigorous schools are intellectually curious and take their studies very seriously. It’s more what they choose to do when they’re not in class (“for fun on occasion”) that makes the difference. This is what “fit” is all about. </p>
<p>Williams has a high number of students who are balance academics/arts (music for example), and sports or outdoorsy activities. There are probably more Eagle Scouts per square mile in Williamstown that anywhere else on the planet. This is different from the profile of the typical student at some of the other equally academically excellent LACs. </p>
<p>According to National Science Foundation data, LACs with the highest PhD production rates from 2006- 2010 included Reed, Pomona, Carleton, Swarthmore, Williams, St. Olaf, and Oberlin. Alumni of each of those LACs (and no others) earned at least 10 PhDs in math/stat during that 5-year period. According to my own calculations, here’s how those 7 LACs stacked up to leading research universities for per capita math PhD production:</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology (39 math/stat PhDs per 1000 currently enrolled undergrads)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
**Reed College<a href=“13%20math/stat%20PhDs%20per%201000%20currently%20enrolled%20undergrads”>/b</a>
University of Chicago Pomona College Carleton College
Harvard University Swarthmore College
Princeton University Williams College
Yale University
Stanford University St Olaf College
**Oberlin College<a href=“4%20math/stat%20PhDs%20per%201000%20currently%20enrolled%20undergrads”>/b</a>
Columbia (3 math/stat PhDs per 1000 currently enrolled undergrads)</p>
<p>What I’m measuring:
The number of PhDs earned by alumni of these schools in 2006-2010 according to NSF data, divided by the number of currently enrolled undergrads according to Wikipedia.
Source: <a href=“NCSES”>NCSES;
<p>^^ PhDs are not a barometer I would use to indicate much about an LAC math department. Many of Williams math grads go into finance, banking, consulting, i.e., Wall Street. That is why Mudd, which is tip tops, is not even on the list, as many are engineers knee deep in developing algorithms after graduation.</p>
<p>The data the OP should look at is the acceptance rate of Williams and Mudd grads into top graduate programs, not the number of PhDs produced per school. A school could easily produce more PhDs than Williams or Mudd, yet have a lower rate of acceptance to top grad programs. I would bet Williams and Mudd match or beat anyone on that list, with Caltech probably being the one possible standout. </p>
<p>Yes, St. Olaf is NOT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL. Neither are its academics a walk in the park. St. Olaf is rigorous and has a track record of sending folks on to graduate and professional studies.</p>
<p>There are a bunch of LACs that have solid Mathematics departments. Some of them are rather unheralded.</p>
<p>@momrath
Thanks for the helpful information. It looks like I should start working on finding out more about the cultures of these various schools.</p>
<p>@awcntdb
That does sound like a very nice statistic (graduate acceptance rate). Do you have any suggestions on how I could going about acquiring it?</p>
<p>@LakeWashington
I’m sorry if I have at all offended you. I’ll take another look at St. Olaf’s.</p>
<p>Even Harvey Mudd, which offers some math courses that they consider graduate level, may not offer enough to keep a student who has completed real analysis (generally considered a difficult junior/senior level math course in college) while in high school interested.</p>
<p>LACs certainly are good choices for many students, but they do not look like good academic fits for the OP.</p>
<p>Pomona’s math department is fantastic and in my opinion just as good as Williams. I think it’s our 2nd most popular major because it converts a lot of people due to how fantastic the teachers are. And it’s very soon about to become the most popular- econ keeps having decreased amounts while math just keeps skyrocketing each year. The fact that the Claremont Colleges have a joint math department (which means the traditional limits don’t apply as most consortiums would have them) means that there is a huge pool of math classes and math faculty to choose from. I disagree with UCBalumnus- the 5C’s offer over 140 unique math classes, so you’re very unlikely to run out of high level math classes to choose from.</p>
<p>just to clarify what I mean about the whole joint thing if it wasn’t clear-</p>
<p>Usually at Pomona you have a limit where you can not take more than 50% of your classes at another college, and limits for the first semester of how many classes you can take elsewhere. Math is an exception to this rule because it is a joint department, so there’s no such thing as a “Pomona only” math course or an “off campus” math course.</p>
<p>to address the finding out about college culture point: you could ask current students, post in the CC boards, or check out review sites like uniggo. I recommend visiting above all else though</p>
<p>The only reason Harvey Mudd was not on my list, above, is because it falls into a different Carnegie class than either the LACs or research universities shown above. Harvey Mudd is grouped in the “Engineering and Technology” class, not the “Baccalaureate/Liberal Arts I” or "Research I " classes I pulled from the NSF data to generate that list. For the same 5 year period shown above (2006-10), Harvey Mudd alumni earned 30 Math/Stat doctorates. Adjusted for institution size, that is approximately the same production rate as Caltech’s (39 PhDs per 1000 currently enrolled undergrads). So it would be tied for #1 by this measure. </p>
<p>The only other school in the “Engineering and Technology” Carnegie class to produce 10 or more math/stat doctorates for that period was New Mexico Tech. Normalizing by institution size (1565 current graduates), NM Tech’s rate works out to 6.4 math/stat PhDs per 1000 ~current undergrads. That would place it slightly above Williams (6.3 per 1000) and slightly below Princeton (6.6 per 1000) by this measure.</p>
<p>It is quite possible that confounding factors (unrelated to department quality per se) affect these rates (or virtually any other post-graduate outcome metric). So I would not make too much of fine differences in the rank order. On the other hand, I don’t think schools on the above list are there by coincidence. For what it’s worth, all 6 of the research universities on that list also show up among the USNWR top 10 graduate math departments. </p>