Hello! I am going to be applying to colleges soon, and I fully plan on my undergrad being preparation for graduate school and academia more than anything else.
With that in mind, what are the best schools to set someone up for graduate school? I am probably going to do mathematics, but I may also do philosophy or physics.
Guiding questions:
How many students go on to a school like Princeton, UChicago, Berkeley, MIT, Columbia, Stanford, etc.?
How well-rounded is the education? I want a school that will give me a broad base from which to develop my knowledge of the world.
I don’t want to go to southeastern US colleges.
What’s the environment like? I prefer a more academic style.
A lecture-oriented environment is fine, but I’d like discussion-based classes.
Is it easy to do research as an undergraduate? If not, is there an option for a senior thesis?
I am purposefully leaving out admissions-related information, because I simply want the best schools under these criteria. Also, you can include the undergraduate programs of these top graduate schools in your answers.
I would take a look at Jesuit schools, if you’re open to that. Usually great for philosophy, located in different areas of the country so can accommodate geographic preferences, usually academic-focused and often have small classes which lend themselves better to discussion. Some have honors programs which include a senior thesis as part of the requirements.
Edited to add this example specific to your first guiding question: I did undergrad at Fordham, a Jesuit school in NY, and later did a PhD at UC Berkeley…So that path is definitely a possibility.
I got a master’s degree at Stanford in a subfield of applied mathematics (Operations Research), so I can at least comment on where the students in the program came from.
Basically, they came from all over the place. I only recall one single case where more than one of them came from the same university. It was probably a coincidence, and it was NOT ranked in the top 50 in the US.
The point is that there are a lot of universities that can prepare a student very well for a graduate degree in mathematics. There are not a lot of secrets that professors at MIT or Stanford are going to teach an undergraduate student that you could not have also learned at U.Mass, Rutgers, UNC, or any one of a large number of other universities. Michigan, UC Berkeley, and at least two UW’s (Wisconsin and Washington, and of course Waterloo if you leave the US) are similarly very good for math. Some LACs are very good also.
I have heard the same thing about other highly ranked graduate programs across a range of fields. Again the people I know who have attended a highly ranked graduate program (including but definitely not limited to various master’s, Phd, and MD programs) have said that other students in their program came from “all over the place”.
As a math major in university, I did know some other math majors. They have gone on to careers in a wide range of fields. One person I knew when we were both undergraduate students went on to law school. Another got a master’s degree in acoustics. Years later I ran into him and he showed me what he did on a day to day basis. Apparently there is a LOT of mathematics involved in keeping your car quiet or making sure that there is consistent very good sound quality across the many seats in an auditorium. Another person showed me what they did to analyze data collected by a radio telescope. Again there is a lot of math involved. Similarly aligning the beam on a cyclotron involves a lot of math. Of course finance is another option, as is machine learning and artificial intelligence. There are lots of other options as well. Some computer science jobs require a lot of math, some do not.
A lot of people who are very good at math would say the same thing, which tends to set the academic style in math departments.
I would look for a good fit, and keep your budget in mind. Master’s degrees are usually not funded, so if you can leave some $$ in a college fund that would be a reasonable plan (but of course many of us can’t do this). PhD’s are usually pretty much fully funded (with a stipend that is sort of minimal, so a small amount of extra help would be nice but is not really necessary).
You might have fun playing around with this study:
Off hand, the “per capita” lists on the right seem more on point for what you listed.
It is not filtered by “top” PhD programs, and also does not include Philosophy, but I think even so it is at least a useful starting point. I might note for Philosophy, I would really just concentrate on it having a strong culture of undergraduate education and then a decent number of Philosophy majors for a school of its size, which you can check in the NCES College Navigator:
Just looking at the Math list, I for sure think Pomona, Princeton, Chicago, and Carleton would all be great choices. Also Grinnell, Williams, Harvard, Haverford, and Rice.
Those are reachier, though. But in the middle of all that was also Reed (although that is a very specific vibe, they for sure place well into grad schools), St Olaf, and Whitman. I think these are also very good less reachy, but still very academicky, choices. Just skipping around a bit, Amherst and Brown could make a lot of sense for certain kids, but very reachy again. Oberlin is another fairly strong personality school but great for some, more targety than reachy with the right numbers and they have merit. Rochester is also a targety school for high numbers academicky kids, and has decent merit. And so on.
Not surprisingly, the Physics list is not too different. But this being an interest in addition to Math might bump up, say, a Rochester (very strong Physics department doing some cool stuff).
I note I skipped over a lot of STEM-focused colleges that would be good for Math and Physics, but not really where I would recommend for Philosophy. But I note many of those are still very committed to a broad education. I just would not necessarily choose them if I was actually thinking of majoring in Philosophy as a strong possibility.
Edit: Oh, if you are potentially interested in combining Math/Physics AND Philosophy, you might want to have Pitt on your radar, specifically their History and Philosophy of Science program:
One of the most famous Physics and Philosophy undergraduate courses is at Oxford. It is also notorious for being one of the most challenging undergraduate course in the university:
There’s also Maths and Philosophy:
These are both deeply mathematical courses, nothing like History and Philosophy of Science.
This site might help you find colleges that have a number of their graduates who go on to get a doctorate. This data set only goes through 2018, but it’s unlikely the names of schools have changed much. I generally select years 2000-2018 and then will narrow down by the field (i.e. philosophy, mathematics, etc). It’s usually pretty broad with the fields (i.e. humanities vs. English or French).
Additionally, to do a per capita search one can either look at the number of undergrads at the school and/or the number of undergrads in the major, using the College Navigator resource that @NiceUnparticularMan shared above.
For instance, these were the top producers in math no matter what type of school:
But if you look at baccaulaureate colleges (colleges where a Bachelor’s is generally the highest degree given), you’ll see a different list with some overlap (ahem, Harvey Mudd). But when you consider the difference in size of the schools from the prior list and this list, you see that on a per capita basis, these schools are a lot higher.
UMich has an honors math track that is well-taught and focused on proofs. Many students describe the math 295-296 classes as some of the best classes they’ve ever had. However, it is 40+ hours a week of homework for one class!
If you’re serious about math this is a great honors track. Standard math classes at UMich are uneven and difficult with Graduate Student Instructors.
Harvey Mudd College actually does meet your criteria. As indicated in the graphs above, HMC is an excellent feeder to math and physics graduate schools, including the schools in your list. It takes a liberal arts approach to STEM, meaning all students takes intro courses covering STEM fields. Students also have Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts requirements for a well rounded education. HMC is located in So Cal and is part of the Claremont College Consortium, which includes Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pitzer Colleges. Students can easily take courses at the other member colleges, so a small school has resources and class options of a mid-size university. All of the professors have research programs and undergraduates will complete a research thesis in their senior year (or a clinic project if in engineering or computer science). Take a look at the research interests of some of the math and physics professors to see if there are areas that pique your interest.
Our ds was accepted to multiple tippy top grad schools for physics from a non-top university, University of Alabama. In reading gradcafe during his sr yr of college, it was completely apparent that he was selected over applicants from tippy top UG programs. I am pretty positive his acceptances were due to extensive UG research and taking grad level classes as an UG.
When he was applying to colleges as a high schooler, asking about getting involved in research was his #1 question for depts. Many of the higher ranked schools openly admitted that grad students were their focus for research, and when an UG got to participate in research, most likely they worked for a grad student. At Bama, ds joined a professors research freshman yr. He didn’t like the focus of the project. He was able to switch to a different professors research, and she made him part of her research team (which meant he got to go to research presentations, etc.) He was accepted to multiple REUs both sophomore and junior summers (he accepted Cornell and Duke, but he turned down great options like UM.)
He entered Bama having completed multiple upper level math and physics courses. Bama allowed him to not only take but also use his scholarship $$ to pay for grad level courses.
My pt is that it is far more about what you do in UG that opens the door to admissions, not the name of the UG school. Choose a school where you can get involved in research and have great mentor professors. Those will really matter.
Hi! I’m a current freshman studying math and physics at Hamilton (i also have a strong interest in philosophy and religion). i am also interested in pursuing a PhD! I’ve loved my time here so far- ask me any questions. it seems like you would really like an LAC!
With respect to your interest in philosophy, you should keep Hamilton’s Summer Program in Philosophy in mind. This program is open to interested applicants from any college or university, regardless of major.
In addition to the above links to PhD feeders, here are a couple suggestions of places to look for info that might be of interest, given your preferences.
You mentioned a desire for more discussion based classes. One way to gauge that is looking at class sizes, which you can find towards the end of the common data sets for each college. Smaller classes tend to have more interaction. The CDS data breaks down how many students are in classes of various size ranges (e.g., 10-19). I think looking at this somewhat raw data is more helpful than an average class size quoted by a particular school. Averages could be either mean or median, but an even bigger problem is they tend not to be weighted by student count. So, college A with two classes of 50 looks the same as college B with one 98 and one 2, even though in the latter case 98% of the students are experiencing something nearly double the average. I would also be aware that comparing faculty to student ratios between universities and LACs can be misleading. Those ratios can include university profs who are focused on grad students (i.e., USNWR’s ratio excludes faculty members who teach “virtually only” grad students but not those who teach mostly grad students.) As a side note, even comparing class sizes between LACs and universities is problematic, though probably less so, as grad classes with even a single undergrad registered are counted, which skews the distribution to something misleading smaller than what typical undergrads at the university experience.
You also indicated an interest in receiving a well-rounded education. One way to measure that would be looking at What Will They Learn which gives a quick sense of which colleges have the most complete distribution requirements. It could certainly be argued that schools with “open curriculums” allow an individual student to explore as they see fit, but then there is also the argument that part of the value of a school with a strong base of distribution requirements is spending time after hours having interesting conversations with many different students themselves taking a wide array of courses. Also, some schools with open curriculums have hard limits on the number of classes that can be taken from a single department or division, so it can be helpful to look at both requirements and limits when researching schools.
The above two factors have a perhaps non-obvious connection. From examining various curricula, it seems one way most LACs keep class sizes small but majors open is to require fewer courses in the major compared to large universities. This is a subtle but important factor in driving curricular exploration.
Some are surprised when they see LACs over-represented in PhD feeder lists (e.g., 14 of the top 20 for Math) given there are fewer LACs, they don’t have grad classes, are less known outside academia, and tend to have fewer requirements within a major. I’ve heard many theories on why they do so well at PhD placement, including LAC profs get to know their students better and provide more descriptive recommendations, research at LACs is more undergrad driven (though generally lower impact), LAC students enjoy the academic experience more and therefore are more likely to continue it, universities tend to attract a more pre-professional undergrad student body given the professional grad (and sometimes undergrad) programs on campus, and children of academicians are more likely to opt for LACs than those in the general population with corresponding income. Perhaps it’s a little of all those things.
Given your preferences, I think you would benefit from looking closely at LACs as you form your list.
As an aspect to consider, some combination of majors and minors across all of these fields may be suitable for you. The feasibility of this may depend on the college you choose, however.
However, it is their notion of distribution requirements, which are listed at What Will They Learn? - Rating Criteria . These are not necessarily the same as what some colleges with extensive distribution or core requirements (e.g. University of Chicago, Columbia University, Harvey Mudd College) choose to require.
Also, some of their grades are suspect, since the various campuses in the California State University system have the same general education requirements, but have different grades.
It’s certainly true that it’s their criteria, but I have found it a useful tool to get a first pass feel for the breadth requirements ar a given school. I will also note that Columbia and UChicago actually did well by their standards; only 21 of 1133 rated schools did better than the former and 81 for the latter. Just to reiterate, they don’t claim to be measuring overall quality of the school, just the breadth of requirements.
I would’ve thought there was in fact a fair amount of distribution requirement variability across CSU campuses given how much there can be across a single UC campus, but that’s not something I have drilled into.
The best schools that meet your criteria are also the best schools in general - I would put forward Princeton, UChicago, Harvard, Yale, the rest of the Ivies, top liberal arts schools, Reed, St. Johns
Luckily, many state schools have honors programs that make research easier, and if you have a specific interest (say, philosophy of physics), then you can look at schools which are strong in that field (say, Pitt, UCSD, UC Irvine)
I would like to specifically mention UCSB’S CCS and Ohio University’s honors tutorial college as strong honors programs. One potential drawback is that they require choosing a major from the outset, and whole I’m sure you can do an additional “regular” major, I’m not sure if you can do two majors both within the honors colleges. One benefit of the Ohio University HTC is their generous offering of one on one or one on two tutorials, which are a fantastic way to learn.
UChicago, Reed, and Princeton have a academic environment, but even at state schools, physics, math, and philosophy are academic majors which attract academic students.
