@socaldad2002 I think that LAC vs large school that still offers smaller class sizes will become more clear once we tour a few more places. Right now it seems to be a lower priority than some of the other things.
@ProfessorPlum168 that would be nice if she got in. Unfortunately English keeps tanking the GPA enough to make it a high reach ;-).
Any opinions at this point on U. Oregon vs Colorado-Boulder for math, physics, CS, music (minor)?
CU-Boulder is a better than average school (30-50) ranking for most of the STEM majors. It’s surprisingly not that cold in the winter months (as compared to the Midwest and Northeast) and surprisingly quite hot in the summer months (many 90 degree days). I think OOS costs will set you back $55K a year from what I heard. The campus is beautiful and skiing resorts are close by (as opposed to the ugly trudge to Tahoe).
In a major case of the “grass is greener” syndrome though, both of my wife’s kids couldn’t wait to get out of Denver after HS graduation and wanted no part of CU. There’s definitely schools with better value for your money. However it’s a fairly popular destination for Cali kids from what I heard.
@washugrad would Oregon State and Reed be potential candidates since you have UO on the list? My understanding is that Oregon State has the better science program tha UO and Reed sounds like a pretty good fit.
@Hamurtle Reed is on our list, I think I forgot to type it into the initial post. We hadn’t looked at Oregon State but will add it to the possibles.
The PR sampling referenced appears in the print edition and seems intended to represent colleges of various types and selectivities:
“Great Schools for Mathematics Majors” (unscreened)
Agnes Scott
Bowdoin
Bryant
Bryn Mawr
Caltech
Carleton
Holy Cross
College of Idaho
Grinnell
Hamilton
Hampton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Macalester
MIT
Randolph
Reed
Rice
St. Lawrence
St. Olaf
SUNY-Albany
U.S. Coast Guard Academy
UChicago
URochester
Wabash
From the posts, I am assuming that @washugrad ‘s student is a daughter. Wabash is an all male school so that is definitely out. Plus Indiana is not the most friendliest state for a student exploring gender identity.
Don’t lose hope on UCB! My kid made it in with a 3.7uw/4.05 UC GPA.
There’s only so many colleges a kid can go to before they all start looking the same. For my kid I think that number was 7 after the 3rd day. In his case, since he had been going to events at Berkeley and Stanford for the better part of his life, virtually all other schools were a hard sell.
Dang, your son seems smat!!!
Go for ivys/top LAC/ top mom-ivies like Georgetown and Emory. Your son should see some success with these high-level schools.
For a math/Physics/Comp-sci student, getting into reach school that’s not known for its Hard sciences (like Georgetown and other LAC) would be doable. Schools with smaller departments are always looking for kids to fill them up.
For safeties apply to your state schools. You guys in Cali are lucky to have such high-caliber state schools. Take advantage!
Other safe schools would be :
-Case western (I got 28k per year merit with 1540 SAT)
-Any school with ‘institute of technolegy’ or ‘polytechnic institute’ attatched to its name (Like RPI, WPI, etc.)
For your son, I would aim for either a reach school or a tech-focused safety.
@Hamurtle kid is a bio male, identifying as female. So men’s colleges are out, not that there are many of them, but @merc81 was just providing the rest of the list alluded to in an earlier post. I think most women’s colleges technically could work (most seem to take anyone identifying as female) but kid isn’t interested.
@washugrad I wouldn’t count out your alma mater quite yet for a student going through gender transition. My kid knows at least 3 kids in his WashU freshman class who are transitioning from female->male. I don’t know about male->female but I’m sure there are students identifying as such.
There was an article in Student Life mentioning an LGBT event on campus this year. If you’re interested in reading the article I can find the link.
Potential post-graduation goals after a math degree?
- PhD then research or college faculty?
- Finance / actuarial work?
- High school math teacher?
- Data science work?
For each type of goal, offerings of upper level math courses at a given school may be more or less optimal, as may offers in other related areas (quantitative economics, quantitative finance, statistics, teacher credentialing, computer science). This may require more evaluation of a college’s math and related department offerings rather than just looking at “colleges with good math” lists.
It’s not like kids spend so much time on campus during the hottest months. And though winter can be tough in Boston, that affects commuters more than kids on campus, going from one building to another. Some schools have a longer walk to some buildings, but it’s not like waiting or public transportation or driving through a blizzard. Buildings are heated and kids dress appropriately.
It’s late May, so many colleges had or are close to graduation, and yesterday and today are the worst of the heat, so far. Similar in the Los Angeles area- August is the worst. Then it calms down and nights are often cooler than days.
But I agree the main thing is making sure you’re properly judging her stats and the rest of holistic. How gpa affects chances has a lot to do with what courses were below A grades. And she needs the right balance of ECs and other experiences. At this point, you have time.
agree with @lookingforward: a lot of the experiential things that seem really important at the hypothetical stage become really secondary as it becomes more ‘real’. There are very few (any?) schools that will tick every students box, from quality of food options, to dorm room size to weather to whatever. It’s like people: when you find the right one to be your friend or partner, you don’t notice their ticks or quirks so much, b/c you like the more important ways in which they are a good friend for you.
As other noted up thread, I’d keep an open mind re St Olaf and visit if you visit Carleton. The math dept is great. Very big, active, and diverse (50/50 women/men). Poke around on their website and you’ll find likes to the Math MESS (their dept newsletter). It gives you a sense of the dept. The school has a good LGBT community. My D’s friend group is mathy, nerdy, music people and many are LGBT or gender-non-conforming in various ways. I mean your D might not like the school, but I wouldn’t make assumptions based on the Fiske guide.
@ucbalumnus I realized I never answered your question about post-graduation goals… at this point I think it’s pretty nebulous, although now that the school year is over maybe we’ll have some time to talk longer-range. I think probably anything except finance is a possibility. TBH I actually think this kid is going to end up in theoretical physics rather than math, but that’s probably my own background talking (I have a physics phd, my dh has a stats phd… kid is doomed ;-)).
What you may want to do is look at the upper level and graduate math course listings of UCB and UCLA (since you are California residents; be aware that quarter system schools may have more courses to cover the same material) and use them to check completeness of offerings at other schools in the context of possible post-graduation goals.
But note that some schools may have some other related subjects combined into the math department. These may be statistics, computer science, or industrial engineering / operations research.
Some math PhD programs are said to be rather elitist about undergraduate math department strength, though it is not necessarily easy to tell which undergraduate math departments would be favored or disfavored (assuming sufficient course work is offered). That may also vary from one PhD program to another.