<p>My kid thinks she likes snow so I found a few safeties that are excellent for her potential majors, more like top 20 and have acceptance rate about 50%. She doesn’t mind the big school. She has stated several times she does not like the smallness of a LAC.</p>
<p>Has she ever seriously looked at LACs? Or is this just based on stuff she has picked up from friends, or from driving by a few LACs and being unimpressed?</p>
<p>I ask because a year and a half ago, my D was in the same mindset. Her top two picks were 30,000-plus schools. But after visiting both large and small schools, she flipped, and wound up not even applying to one of her original top two. She’s headed off to a school of under 6,000 - and the last two to be eliminated from consideration in April were about 2,000 and just under 3,000.</p>
<p>I’m not saying this will happen to every kid - nor that it should, big colleges are the best choice for some kids. But I think every kid should cast a broad net, at least in the early stages, until they find out just what they really are looking for, and why.</p>
<p>annasdad, I don’t have a clue, perhaps it’s too close to where we live. Pomona sent her a mail and she said she will not apply to Pomona(stamping her feet). But I’m not too worried because I know it’s hard to get into Pomona, let alone use it as a safety, her sister was rejected there(my suggestion).
I will take her for a visit once school is over hoping to change her mind on these preconceived notions.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t try to change a kid’s mind on this - just to open it so that they can really consider all the options and weigh the advantages of small school against the advantages of a big school - and come to whatever decision makes sense for them.</p>
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<p>However, schools which are smaller and/or less selective may have more limited math major degree programs, due to lack of interest (math is not a hugely popular major like biology or economics). Also, if you are super-advanced in math, you may want to consider the existence of a good graduate program in math to be worth considering (super-advanced math majors often take graduate courses as undergraduates). On the other hand, there are some small LACs with good math major programs – but one has to choose carefully.</p>
<p>Strong math major degree programs are often found at large state flagship universities, like Stony Brook, Rutgers, Penn State, Maryland, Minnesota, Purdue, Indiana, etc… You may want to see if you like any of them enough and if you are assured admission by stats for them to become safeties. If you are super-advanced in math, you may skip many of the giant lower division math courses anyway and go straight to smaller upper division courses.</p>
<p>Pick different safety schools, you’ve misunderstood the definition.</p>