<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I've been accepted to all three of these schools, and I'm trying to decide on which one. I'm pretty sure that I want to major in math, so I'm trying to use math academics as the primary determinant for choosing my school.</p>
<p>All other things aside, can anyone comment on the math program at Wash U?
How well does it prepare a student for grad school/jobs?
What types of jobs do students receive?
How are the professors?
etc. etc.</p>
<p>Well, I will break my rule about chiding people for deciding based on their supposed major, lol. All 3 schools have strong math departments, but Carnegie Mellon is truly outstanding. They also receive lots of DOD contracts and there are super connections into all sorts of industries. Cannot comment too much on the relative merits of the faculty as far as personality and teaching ability, but all 3 schools have extremely competent faculty with interesting research areas. (Besides being a chem major, I also did math undergrad, although never considered it as a career, stayed with chem.)</p>
<p>JMO, FWIW</p>
<p>For pure math, all three will offer strong departments. But while I’d agree with fallenchemist that CMU is clearly the winner in CS, I presume this is not an interest of the OP.</p>
<p>National graduate MATH US News rankings:</p>
<h1>18 Northwestern</h1>
<h1>33 CMU</h1>
<h1>40 Wash U</h1>
<p>If Statistics is a specific interest, note that CMU and Northwestern operate independent departments in Arts and Science (most schools only offer this as a concentration within math or as a departmental major in their engineering schools).</p>
<p>wbwa - You are correct, I was talking about applied mathematics (CS and otherwise) not pure mathematics. I should have made that clear. Thanks for adding the clarification.</p>
<p>Certainyl for math, carnagie mellon and northwestern beat out Wash U. The rankings above are a bit of a shock for me. I thought CMU would rank better than Northwestern for math.</p>
<p>Well, rankings are generally worthless anyway, actually. How do you really rank high level math departments? But in any case, my understanding is these 2 math depts. are pretty different, CMU being more applied, NU being more theoretical. Who know, I doubt most undergrads can even understand what these guys do, lol.</p>
<p>Thanks for your input.</p>
<p>Also, can any of you comment on Operations Research/Industrial Engineering?
I’m still trying to figure out the difference between OR and IE, but CMU has an Operations Research concentration that looks promising, and Northwestern supposedly has a very good IE department.</p>
<p>you are looking at undergrad schools. not graduate schools. these rankings have nothing to do with the decision at hand.</p>
<p>math has got to be one of the most standardized curriculums available to undergraduates nationwide. you aren’t going to learn anything different in calculus, diffEQ, linear algebra, stats, ETC, at any university in this tier level. </p>
<p>you have to look at a different set of criteria when you are looking at undergraduate colleges: size of campus, size of classes, “feel”, availability for research, how much you care about dorms/food, greek life, attention from professors, how easy it is to switch majors, if you want lots of GenEd classes or not, etc.</p>
<p>These 3 colleges are all great schools, but they’re going to differ a lot more in these aspects than they will in the Math department. </p>
<p>there is no realiable to evaluate specialized academic departments at the undergrad level with few exceptions (pre-med, business, art, architecture, theater… probably a couple others). But… Math? Come on. </p>
<p>The best thing for you to do, since you want to go into math, is to visit all of these campuses. Sit in on a couple of classes… especially a freshman level math course (Calc 2 or Diff EQ would be typical) and an upper level Math class that juniors and seniors would take. Talk to the students who are majoring in Math. </p>
<p>In undergrad, something like 75% of your classes will be outside of your major, anyway. What you need is a good foundation in your academic major(s), because you are going to spend much more time away from your major than in your major. </p>
<p>To answer the OP’s original question:
The most popular jobs for Math majors are in Finance, Analysis, and Economics. Consulting, Engineering, and Research companies are also popular. This is true at Wash U, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, and any other school. Most likely, though, you’ll go to Grad School before you start working. What matters in undergrad is how well you do in the classes and your extracurriculars (like doing research, serving in leadership positions, etc). To some extent, the quality of your Undergrad matters — and these are all 3 greats schools with roughly equal reputations, on the whole, in my opinion — but it’s a general consensus that the Tier of your graduate school is more important than the Tier of your undergraduate. </p>
<p>Here is information on the Math program at Wash U. There are a few different tracks you can specialize in after getting the foundational Math courses out of the way: Traditional, Probability/Stats, Applied Math, Economics Emphasis, and Secondary Education. </p>
<p>[Majors</a> and Minors](<a href=“http://www.math.wustl.edu/~freiwald/majmin.html]Majors”>Majors and Minors)</p>
<p>Thank you for your help, vbball90.</p>
<p>Can you comment on Operations Research/ Industrial Engineering for the three schools or do you think it doesn’t matter at the undergrad level? (See my post above)</p>
<p>At Wash U, you would most likely do Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM). in the business school. It is incredibly easy to double major across divisions, especially in Arts&Sciences and the Business School. You really just sign up for the classes (and rarely are there problems with classes being full, and if they are, you just email the professor or they open up another section) and start taking them.</p>
<p>Operations is an interesting combination of Business, Math, and Analysis… it’s not rare for Engineers and Math majors to get a second major in OSCM. </p>
<p>Here is the curriculum offerings for the OSCM major at Wash U:
Quantitative Business Analysis 1 and 2
Management Science
Operations Management
Operations Planning and Control
Supply Chain Operations and Analysis
Technology Management and Process Design
Operations Planning and Control
Advanced Operations Strategy
Cost Analysis and Control
Competitive Industry Analysis
(and a few more electives that you can choose from in other b-school majors)</p>
<p>Mechanical Engineering could also be an option. Honestly, if you want to do OSCM and Mechanical Engineering, you’ve nearly completed a Math major by default (or at least have significant amounts of coursework in math).</p>
<p>My d was accepted at CMU & WashU (for a different major), but one thing about CMU - it is very hard to xfer between schools - so if Math is in a different dept from Operations Research at CMU it will be very difficult to switch. What everybody likes about WashU is the flexibility and ease of combining/changing programs. IMO, CMU had very strong divisions between each school. If you are not 100% sure of your major, this could be a drawback to this school. (Although it is a great school overall, and had a really cute acceptance letter !!)</p>
<p>vbball - I agree with everything you said in post #8 (I pretty much always agree with you) except I would slightly differ on one point, or at least a different slant on it. At CMU there might be more choices of research projects to get involved with as a junior or senior IF his interest is and continues to be applied mathematics. However, I agree with you (and NEMom2) that given the frequency with which students change their major from what they intended coming in (and I would think in a very intricate field such as generaljoe is considering, this could well be the case. There will be tons of interesting things he will be exposed to that he may not have even considered yet), it is best to go somewhere that represents the best fit overall, not based on intended major.</p>
<p>OP, quite a few IEMS used to be called ORIE. I think one of the reasons is the decline and diminish role of manufacturing sector in the US economy.</p>
<p>About Operations Research at Wash U – you might want to look into the Systems Engineering program in the School of Engineering, which includes applied math, operations research, statistics, etc. My son is doing this program, along with a second major in Economics (in Art & Sciences) and a minor in Business/Finance (Olin).</p>