For grad or postgrad? |
It is sometimes annoying to my VT student that she is often one of very few females in her math classes. She said that her physics and chem classes are much more even (maybe 40/60 women/men). So if fighting the woman in math battle is not something your DD wants to do every day, then a female dominated school might be a great choice. |
Grad. You get a stipend to live off of and work as a TA in pursuit of your PhD |
Williams does not fit in with the math excellence of that group of institutions. |
| Caltech, Berkeley, Princeton, MIT, Harvey Mudd |
| My advice is to be aware that a high school kid's interest in pure or theoretical math may not survive actual contact with college level pure or theoretical math. Therefore, don't go to a small, STEM-focused school like Mudd or CalTech, go to a large school with lots of other options for majors. |
No, the opposite. Be in a community of people inspired by math, and the attitude will be nearly infectious. A ton of people drop the major from a lack of community and support. If you have the aptitude to stay in a stem program, stay in one and take on the challenge. No one gets into Caltech who couldn’t be a math major, |
There is a lot more STEM than just pure math at STEM-focused schools. |
Grad school in what? |
That's not the useful data column. If your want peers who had grad school bound, you want the raw numbers, not the per capital numbers. #19 New College has less than one future math PhD per year. That's quite lonely. Having peers in your program is more important than having fewer non-peers on the same campus. |
SLACS, like selective private high schools, have better teaching with smaller classes taught by professional teachers, not large classes taught by researchers forced to teach along with their untrained assistants who just recently started learning the material. |
But raw number just boosts public institutions where there’s so many people, it might not even be that helpful of a community. It makes more sense to look at the entire rest of that per capita column that has many more than 1 person per year. |
Better, tell him to research grad school and ask questions. |
St. Olaf's |
Agree. Are math departments that large at any top school that it really makes much of a difference? |