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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm about to start my senior year of high school. I hate to admit it, but I'm a bit of a slacker academically. From my observations, it seems like math majors, particularly pure math majors, have a much easier time in college than anyone else. Is this the path I should follow if I don't want to have to work hard in college?[/quote]

This reminds me of [url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/27/opinion/college-choice-regrets.html]a Mar 23 piece in the NYT[/url]: "We Talked to 10 Graduates About Their College Regrets"

"There were some pretty big holes in my mathematics major."

[i]When I was applying to college, there was a news article about the best colleges that were outside the Ivy League. Skidmore was one of the “new Ivies” in the article. I liked Skidmore when I visited. It seemed to be strong academically, and it was a small school, which I thought would be uniformly better than a large school.It wasn’t until I went to graduate school and worked at several universities that I realized Skidmore had left me severely underprepared. I still feel like I’m catching up. There were some pretty big holes in my mathematics major. People I know who studied math at other schools took twice as many courses as I took in mathematics, because I was filling my credits with liberal arts classes. When I was 17, I thought well-roundedness was really attainable only at a small liberal arts school. If I could go back in time, I would have gone to a medium or larger school and tried to make the well-rounded thing happen on my own.[/i]

So don't major in pure math at Skidmore.[/quote]

With math you can't go by course name/count at any school big or small. It can be taught at a high level in an intimate setting and poorly at a huge state school. Not surprised about the Skidmore experience as it's not known for math. A school like Reed is similar size and may have more distribution requirements, but produces very good majors--with rigor from day one. On the other hand I know someone who did a PhD at Hopkins, who has said something to the quoted student re undergrad at his large state school in the south. He may have taken more courses, and all the usual titles, but the level of instruction was clearly lower, and there was catch up to do in grad school. Best advice is try to visit, and sit in on HS senior year math class for comparison.[/quote]

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