Change of residence

b_r_um
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 18:22:54 +0000

I do agree with katliamom that community college is not the best place to focus on a major early - they don’t offer the advanced coursework to do that. That being said, there’s a few thoughts I wanted to throw out there:

1. "Prestigious" universities often teach introductory math courses poorly. For example, Math 51 at Stanford (linear algebra and multivariable calculus in a single quarter) is possibly the single worst-conceived course at the university. Students come out of it not knowing much more than how to multiply matrices and take partial derivatives. Students who took linear algebra and multivariable calculus at a community college are better prepared for their upper-level coursework...

Berkeley has a reputation for poor math instruction, and the math department has recently sparked a national controversy for firing a sequence of well-liked math instructors (when one of them decided to sue). Rumor goes that the tenured faculty don’t care about teaching non-majors and don’t want to look bad in comparison to more engaging junior instructors. Again, students are probably better off getting their math foundation elsewhere…

Many other “prestigious” universities like to teach their introductory math courses too abstractly in a way that goes over the head of many students in the room. (The youngsters are smart enough to adapt and figure out how to pass these courses, but that does not mean that they learned much in the process. Abstraction is useful and valuable, but not as a first introduction to a topic). I saw that happen a lot at the University of Pennsylvania.

I am talking so much about math because I studied math myself. I am not qualified to judge the quality of physics instruction.

1. If your son attends a community college near a bigger university, he can most likely take a few intermediate-level courses there, as an auditor if not for credit. That would get him the exposure he needs to make the transition to a more selective university easier. (I did this as an undergraduate - I attended Bryn Mawr and audited a bunch of graduate courses at the University of Pennsylvania, before going to grad school at Stanford.)

2. Life is not a race. I totally understand the competitive mindset that one should do as much as possible as soon as possible - been there, done that. In hindsight, I wish I had taken more time. With a bit of distance from the competitive math world, I probably would have chosen a more applied major (maybe an engineering discipline). Community college would force your son to slow down a bit and take courses in other areas before getting too focused on his physics major. Maybe he'll discover something he's even more interested in, or maybe the experience will allow him to re-affirm his choice of physics for a major. Either way, he'll be in a better position to make an informed decision.

I am not advocating for community college for everybody. I just wanted to throw that out there as a viable alternative path in case paying out-of-state tuition at Berkeley or UCLA would be a hardship for your family. Taking a gap year (or two) can be a valuable experience as well. I noticed that a lot of my friends who studied “theoretical” subjects like math or physics ended up regretting their choice of major once they come out of their academic mindset. Now they want to contribute to the world and it’s really hard to do that as a mathematician or physicist.