<p>I know of quite a few people who preferred Williams to Brown, and I know of transfers from Harvard and UPenn to Williams.</p>
<p>I really do think this is an individual decision.</p>
<p>DS chose Williams over Brown and Dartmouth; so did a close friend.</p>
<p>I even know of a few folk who chose Williams over Harvard.</p>
<p>Of course, many choose the Ivies over LAC’s.</p>
<p>I am not weighing in on this for the OP. I am sure her son could have a good experience at either. His personality sounds more suited to Williams, but perhaps a grad department and university setting is important to him. There is no right/wrong here.</p>
<p>Corbett, so are you saying that because of this “Haimo” award that Williams has a better undergraduate level teaching Math department than all the Ivies?</p>
<p>and therefore this makes Williams more exceptional in their undergraduate Math department than all the Ivies?</p>
<p>Well, that’s really part of the central issue in choosing between these two schools: Do the opportunities to interact with professors and to engage in research outweigh having a larger selection of classes in one’s major and the opportunity to progress into graduate level classes if one needs more by junior or senior year?</p>
<p>Can you learn as much by assisting a professor in his research as you would by taking graduate-level classes? Is the quality-level of one’s research participation at the level that a grad student might do at a university, or is it largely composed on routine (yet necessary) busywork?</p>
<p>^^ Williams’ courses, tutorials and lab experience are, frankly, at the graduate level (a master’s degree after Williams is potentially redundant).</p>
There are multiple respects in which the Williams math dept. is exceptional, relative to Ivy League standards:</p>
<p>– The Williams math faculty are more likely to win national awards for teaching excellence, as previously documented.</p>
<p>– The Williams math faculty handle every aspect of undergraduate teaching, without the use of graduate student TAs (since there are no math grad students).</p>
<p>– The Williams math faculty offer Oxford-style tutorials, in which enrollments are capped at two students.</p>
<p>– The Williams math faculty rely exclusively on undergraduates as research assistants (again, since there are no math grad students).</p>
<p>These are all features that are not normally found in math programs at Ivy League schools (or at other research universities). So by that standard, yes, they are clearly exceptional.</p>
<p>Now, Ivy League math depts. are just as exceptional in terms of other features (like faculty research). It’s up to the prospective student to weigh the advantages and disadvantages, and to make an informed decision. The point is simply that a top LAC math dept. (like the one at Williams) does things differently from a research university math dept. (like the ones at Ivies). Some people may feel that the LAC approach yields a net advantage to undergraduate students; others may disagree. Neither is necessarily wrong; the “right” answer may vary from person to person.</p>
<p>professors at ivy league schools are much more reputable</p>
<p>although competition has been so tough that LAC’s have also picked up great professors recently. still, they are dwarfed in reputation by ivy league professors</p>
<p>LAC’s definitely have their advantages but I think trying to make the point that they are “better” than the ivy league is just foolish</p>
<p>more people would back me up on this but ivy league people have better stuff to do than come on this board i think</p>
<p>you do understand that this is the Brown Math Department that you are comparing to the Williams Math Department, don’t you?</p>
<p>and why is this important you say?</p>
<p>Because of a very important point:</p>
<p>Not only is Brown’s Department of Mathematics a very good department, it is among the top Math departments of any university in the country, ranked #2 in Applied Mathematics and **#13 **in Mathematics in the NRC Departmental Rankings of Graduate Schools that came out last fall.</p>
<p>Regarding size of department, you have concluded that Wiliams has about 60 math majors per graduating class, more than Brown’s 40 or so math majors. Very well. Williams has more undergraduate majors than Brown…</p>
<p>however</p>
<p>now lets look at an even more important factor: number of math majors to math faculty</p>
<p>Dept. of Mathematics Faculty
17 - Williams
29 - Brown</p>
<p>Number of Math majors graduating per year
60 - Williams
40 - Brown</p>
<p>Ratio of Math majors graduating per year to Math Faculty 3.5 - Williams 1.4 - Brown</p>
<p>Wow! Williams has more than 2 times the number of students per faculty in the Math department than Brown. This should tell you something about the closesness and quality of Brown’s math department.</p>
<p>Williams, in my opinion, is the best LAC out there, but when you start comparing to an Ivy League school such as Brown and in a top Department for Brown such as Mathematics, then it is not as easy to say that Williams has the more exceptional faculty, learning environment, interaction of students to faculty and overall quality of the Math department as Brown, is it?</p>
<p>Sorry guys, but even at MIT the first and second year courses are taught in auditoriums (sometimes with remote satellite rooms) and CCTV. Those with the smarts, academic seriousness and thick skin (i.e. your self-worth doesn’t depend on what percentage of people you meet at the super market who have heard of your school- Notre Dame wins over CalTech on that one) to attend a top LAC will have a better (at worst equivalent) undergraduate education than at an “ivy”. This is the trade-off.</p>
<p>First, while the difference between Williams and Brown in terms of numbers of students may only be 20 students, percentage wise that translates to 2-3% and 11%. That’s a pretty significant difference.</p>
<p>Further, more faculty in the department doesn’t translate to more faculty available to undergraduates. If anything, I think the size of the students in the department is a better indicator of its strength–it shows that X students have loved their options in math so much that they are committed to majoring in it.</p>
<p>Even more importantly, though, japanoko’s numbers don’t take into account the graduate students in the department–of which there are 47. So, really, the 29 faculty at Brown AREN’T just teaching 40 students–they’re teaching (or supervising, or whatever else) close to 90. And, when you think about math research opportunities, do you really think the faculty in the Brown math department (or any similar department at another university) are going to give first billing in their research to their undergraduates? The 40 or so undergraduate math majors at Brown then have 50 graduates in line ahead of them for research spots. Not the case at Williams.</p>
<p>I don’t mean this as a particular attack on the Brown math dept, but rather as a general statement on why opportunities for undergraduate math research are significantly better at Williams than other universities, and why that really does make our department exceptional.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about MIT - where you have rigorous courses that may be taught to large classroom sizes due to material covered</p>
<p>i’m talking about HYP, brown, other ivies, and specifically in the liberal arts fields. at ivy league schools you have a lower faculty student ratio than at top LAC’s, this is a fact. you can go check out posts about this/do research on Harvard College. A lot of these schools made adjustments in the early 2000’s because LAC’s were mounting legitimate competition</p>
<p>the exception is science classes, which tend to be larger classroom at ivy league, but in LAC they are also large (capped at around 40-50 students) and tend to not be discussion classes anyways</p>
<p>and to be honest, I know the LAC’s try and do compelling research but it is nowhere near the calibre/reputation as academic research that is published by ivy league schools – so it is a moot point to try and compare “research opportunities for undergrads”.</p>
<p>Listen Williams2011, at this point you are really trying a little too hard to attempt to prove that Williams’ Math Department is exceptionally much better that one of the top Math departments in the WORLD, namely Brown’s Math Department. You are coming out with silly reason after silly reason and they are all getting destroyed with facts. The last reason that you are using is that the percentage of the Math majors to overall majors is why Williams is exceptionally better in the Math Department than Brown, not the quality of faculty, not the low ratio of students to faculty, not the worldwide reputation of Brown’s Math department and not the overall size of the Math department…</p>
<p>As the OP on this thread, I am convinced that math instruction will be fine at either school. On the other hand, my son is quite capable of learning math on his own (and at a much faster pace than in a classroom), just give him a syllabus and a textbook. </p>
<p>What about Williams vs. Brown in computer science (his chosen major) and physics (a second major perhaps)? Math would be no more than a minor.</p>
<p>Undergraduate Origin of Science and Engineering PhD’s</p>
<p>1.Cal Tech
2.Harvey Mudd College
3.MIT
4.Reed College
5.Swarthmore College
6.Carleton College
7.University of Chicago
8.Grinnell College
9.Rice University
10.Princeton University
11.Harvard University
12.Bryn Mawr College
13.Haverford College
14.Pomona College
15.New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology 16.Williams College
17.Yale Univeristy
18.Oberlin College
19.Stanford University
20.Johns Hopkins University
21.Kalamazoo College
22.Cornell University
23.Case Western Reserve
24.Washington College 25.Brown University
26.Wesleyan University
27.Carnegie Mellon University
28.Macalester College
29.Amherst College
30.Duke University
31.Beloit College (My son’s school.)
32.Bowdoin Collge
33.Wellesley College
34.Renssenlaer Polytechnic Institute
35.Earlham College
36.Franklin and Marshall College
37.Lawrence University
38.University of Rochester
39.University of California-Berkeley
40.Dartmouth College
41.Occidental College
42.Hendrix College
43.Vassar College
44.Trinity University
45.College of William and Mary
46.St. John’s College
47.Bates College
48.Whitman College
49.Brandeis University
50.Hampshire College</p>