VA Tech Math Department: majoring in math a viable option or a mistake?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wouldn't CS be hard to balance as a student athlete at a D1 school? We know D3 is an option but many D3 schools are LACs with focus on liberal arts (i.e. extensive reading/writing). Obviously MIT is D3 but she's not MIT material.

Also, all that aside, is the math department such that it would be fine to major in math there? We keep hearing the math emporium is terrible.

Math majors don't generally take classes at the Emporium. They get actual classes. As I understand it the Emporium is for students that are not in math-heavy majors who have to take a couple classes. My son majors in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics, a cross-dept major combining CS, math, stats, and has never had a class at the Emporium.
.

Do you mind sharing more about this major? What strengths are needed, other than the obvious math strength? Would this fall under engineering or no? Is it a direct admit program?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wouldn't CS be hard to balance as a student athlete at a D1 school? We know D3 is an option but many D3 schools are LACs with focus on liberal arts (i.e. extensive reading/writing). Obviously MIT is D3 but she's not MIT material.

Also, all that aside, is the math department such that it would be fine to major in math there? We keep hearing the math emporium is terrible.

Math majors don't generally take classes at the Emporium. They get actual classes. As I understand it the Emporium is for students that are not in math-heavy majors who have to take a couple classes. My son majors in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics, a cross-dept major combining CS, math, stats, and has never had a class at the Emporium.
.

Do you mind sharing more about this major? What strengths are needed, other than the obvious math strength? Would this fall under engineering or no? Is it a direct admit program?

It is a direct-admit program in the College of Science. It is the undergraduate major in the VT Academy of Data Science and is co-taught by faculty from CS, Statistics, Math. My son is a sophomore right now and says he's having fun this semester because they are finally moving on to doing stuff with all the things they learned in the first year and a half -- CS classes, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, statistics. There are CMDA-specific classes that teach the math and stats classes in an integrated way. Now he's in classes like math modeling and data analytics & visualization (and more CS). My son loves math and statistics and would say he's just OK at CS. He's fine with doing the programming to the end goal of playing with the data. He would not want to be a CS major. He finds those classes fairly challenging but says he's not yet had a hard math class at VT.

There are tracks for specialties like biological sciences, cryptography/cybersecurity, economics, geosciences, physics.

They also have an undergraduate research program called Databridge that CMDA majors (and others) can participate in. The students get trained in a variety of analytical tools and then placed in a research project with faculty to help with the data processing, analysis and presentation. My son started that this semester and seems to be a good experience so far and will definitely be a good add to his resume.

Because CMDA is in College of Science not engineering it tends to be overlooked and has a pretty high acceptance rate (>75% last I looked) but I think provides a great mix of skills and has great outcomes for graduates. Also, it's pretty easy for the students to minor in CS.

https://data.science.vt.edu/programs/cmda.html
https://www.databridge.dev/

[Anonymous]

Also, the CMDA program is pretty small, they enroll about 100 students per year which is nice because you can get to know the other students and faculty pretty well. I just checked and the latest admit rate was 72%.
https://udc.vt.edu/irdata/data/students/admission/index#college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wouldn't CS be hard to balance as a student athlete at a D1 school? We know D3 is an option but many D3 schools are LACs with focus on liberal arts (i.e. extensive reading/writing). Obviously MIT is D3 but she's not MIT material.

Also, all that aside, is the math department such that it would be fine to major in math there? We keep hearing the math emporium is terrible.

Math majors don't generally take classes at the Emporium. They get actual classes. As I understand it the Emporium is for students that are not in math-heavy majors who have to take a couple classes. My son majors in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics, a cross-dept major combining CS, math, stats, and has never had a class at the Emporium.
.

Do you mind sharing more about this major? What strengths are needed, other than the obvious math strength? Would this fall under engineering or no? Is it a direct admit program?

It is a direct-admit program in the College of Science. It is the undergraduate major in the VT Academy of Data Science and is co-taught by faculty from CS, Statistics, Math. My son is a sophomore right now and says he's having fun this semester because they are finally moving on to doing stuff with all the things they learned in the first year and a half -- CS classes, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, statistics. There are CMDA-specific classes that teach the math and stats classes in an integrated way. Now he's in classes like math modeling and data analytics & visualization (and more CS). My son loves math and statistics and would say he's just OK at CS. He's fine with doing the programming to the end goal of playing with the data. He would not want to be a CS major. He finds those classes fairly challenging but says he's not yet had a hard math class at VT.

There are tracks for specialties like biological sciences, cryptography/cybersecurity, economics, geosciences, physics.

They also have an undergraduate research program called Databridge that CMDA majors (and others) can participate in. The students get trained in a variety of analytical tools and then placed in a research project with faculty to help with the data processing, analysis and presentation. My son started that this semester and seems to be a good experience so far and will definitely be a good add to his resume.

Because CMDA is in College of Science not engineering it tends to be overlooked and has a pretty high acceptance rate (>75% last I looked) but I think provides a great mix of skills and has great outcomes for graduates. Also, it's pretty easy for the students to minor in CS.

https://data.science.vt.edu/programs/cmda.html
https://www.databridge.dev/

Thank you! Congratulations to your son. This sounds great and will give my DD something to research and look into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wouldn't CS be hard to balance as a student athlete at a D1 school? We know D3 is an option but many D3 schools are LACs with focus on liberal arts (i.e. extensive reading/writing). Obviously MIT is D3 but she's not MIT material.

Also, all that aside, is the math department such that it would be fine to major in math there? We keep hearing the math emporium is terrible.

The math emporium is for Calc 1 for all the majors, doesn't reflect the math dept. That said, the math --> cs route was easier when there were fewer CS programs/majors. Not sure it's the best route now. I would encourage her to try for CS and apply at a range of schools.

[Anonymous]

My DD will be attending VTech in the fall as a math major. You can look it up by major and school on their website, but math accepts around 75%. So it’s a definite possibility. And, as said above, math is part of the school of Science which is totally different than the school of engineering. We had to talk a lot with my DD about not listening to engineers and STEM people while applying to school because she is 100% not interested in computer science or engineering. She’s a math major which schools generally separate from comp sci and engineering. You should definitely keep it on your DC’s list.