<p>NYU is supposed to have one of the best math departments in the country. According to rankings cited in another current thread (“applied math”) it is #1 in the country for its graduate applied math and #7 in the country for undergraduate math.</p>
<p>No idea if it’s “fun”, and the university is huge. However, it’s easier to get into than Brown (or Wesleyan). Would living in Greenwich Village have any appeal?</p>
<p>You may have to decide where you’re willing to compromise here, because competition to get into top northeastern schools is brutal. Realize that many applicants with “hooks” (legacies, athletes, celebrity kids, etc.) are competing for spots in that lower 25th percentile. Not saying to forget about Brown, but you need to find some good “match” and safety schools too.</p>
<p>An off-the-wall option might be Hampshire. Completely different kind of school. The advantage there is the 5-college consortium. She’d have lots of freedom to put her own program together, to take her math classes at first-rate LACs (Amherst, Smith, MHC), or pick from the full range of offerings at a big state school (UMass).</p>
<p>Oberlin is not a pressure cooker, in the sense that you mean it, however the upper level course work in their math department is nevertheless quite challenging academically. I would have to imagine that this is no different at Carleton.</p>
<p>She sounds like one kind of kid I’d be looking for if it were up to me. But …</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^ “She is adamant now about only going to east coast schools.”</p>
<p>That really limits the options if you are trying to balance “fun”, non-competitive, Ivy League caliber, less than amazing stats, and realistic admissions chances. Harder still if you want to balance quirky, liberal, and service-oriented with prestige and a conventional curriculum structure.</p>
<p>Brown is close to the mark. Brown has an outstanding math department and provides the unusual option of taking all courses pass/fail. It’s next door to RISD where she’d find plenty of quirky artists.</p>
<p>Her chances of admission are better than zero (what are her stats? high AMC scores?). But if she has no “hooks”, and her SAT/GPA puts her in the bottom 25th, she has to make a very strong pitch in the essays or interview that she will bring something unusual and valuable to the school community.</p>
<p>Thank you for the well thought out information. That is what I love about this site. Remember the days when you asked a couple of ill-informed friends, and they just went to a school. Now we all have the benefit of the thousands of informed “friends” we come to for advise here on CC.</p>