Ok, so moving UMD and U Minnesota down to the toss up category because of need for merit aid. Adding Wesleyan and U Rochester to the list. CMU doesn’t appeal for unknown reasons, nor does CalTech. UPenn, Yale and Northwestern were taken off the original list, but will give them another look. Leaving McGill as a toss up, just because of the merit and financial aid need. Looking into UC Merced and Utah, as well. I appreciate all the feedback so far!
Among the less selective UCs, perhaps UC Santa Cruz may have a better selection of upper and graduate level pure math courses.
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Minnesota includes merit aid in their NPC, you can just run that on their web site.
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If you have Canadian citizenship, then McGill is way more likely than “toss-up”, and with an unweighted 4.0 might be close to a safety. If you have Canadian citizenship and have never lived in Canada at all, then the last time that I checked (which was a few years ago) they would consider you in-province which would help with the cost.
If you do not have Canadian citizenship (nor citizenship of France or a few other francophone countries), then at least to me it seems very unlikely that McGill will be affordable.
The only merit scholarship in Canada that I am aware of that would bring the cost below US$20,000/year for an international student is the Lester B. Pearson scholarship at the University of Toronto. It is exceptionally competitive, and you need to get your high school to sponsor you to even apply. For those few students who get it, it is a very good scholarship to a highly ranked university that is very good for mathematics, and for quite a few other subjects as well.
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If you need enough merit aid to get the cost below $20K/year, that’s really only possible at UMD with the full B/K scholarship, so I’d classify it “low probability,” not a “toss-up.” It’s awarded holistically, though, so if your son has interesting ECs, strong community involvement, or underrepresented demographics, those factors will help.
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Agreed. And if the maximum merit award at Minnesota doesn’t make it affordable, it needs to be taken off the list completely. No reason to apply to a school that will ultimately be unaffordable.
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UBC has the IMES which goes up to CAD $25k/year and is somewhat more accessible than the Pearson, but I agree this won’t get costs down to US $20K levels. McGill’s web site says that they actually offer some need based aid to internationals, but I don’t know what this looks like in practice. I do not know about other Canadian universities.
Looks like UBC also has the International Scholars Program which is probably similar to the Pearson in difficulty. Scholarships and awards for international students - UBC | Undergraduate Programs and Admissions
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Is he a national merit semifinalist or finalist?
Look at University of Rochester
And look at programs for low income students like this: Emory LEADs Experience | Emory University | Atlanta GA
You can find more here: College Fly-In Programs and Free Visit Opportunities | Appily
For a CA resident, the local CSU campus would be an admissions and affordable safety. If a family makes less than 100K, most UC students don’t pay tuition, but they would still be responsible for room and board and fees.
So this would include Cal Poly?
It doesn’t apply to the Cal Poly’s. The idea is probably that Cal Poly and CSUs have lower tuition fees that the UCs.
Your original post mentions CSU and UC. Did you mean to include both?
As noted, some CSUs are popular and can be significantly competitive for admission. CPSLO is the most obvious example, but some other campuses are competitive enough, at least for certain majors, to be not reliable safeties.
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Your super safety could be a 1 year transfer to UCSB via TAG. I say 1 year because your student already has more than 1 year of the min 30 credits to transfer (and many, if not all, of the required courses for a Math major transfer).
I didn’t think it did, but apologies for any confusion on CSUs and Cal Poly’s not waiving tuition for families making less than 100K year.
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I am not talking about CP SLO which is I agree is harder to get in, but Math is not an impacted major, his 4.3 puts well above the index needed for admission for a CSU, and this in even without the extra points that the local CSU gives.
OP, if you’re willing to share what part of California you’re in, that could be a little helpful.
We’re in SoCal
But note that CSUs tend to be more less research oriented, so it is important to check the math department offerings to see if they have sufficient pure math offerings (versus applied math offerings).
The UCs have a greater research focus and mostly have good pure math offerings (exception is Merced, where the department is focused on applied math). So it may be a good idea to add some less selective UCs like UCSC and UCR as more likely schools.
Hi there
I was in your shoes a few years ago (my son is the math head @AustenNut linked to). I got great advice here and credit the knowledgeable writers for really helping to shape my son’s future.
When we were looking for schools specifically for pure math my son contacted professors at various schools and was lucky enough to find a few willing to talk to him. One head of math department at a LAC took the time to sit down with him and she told him, despite that she would love to have him, LACs might be a bad fit for a student as advanced in math and as singularly focused on math as him. Although they did offer math courses of interest, due to their size they (and other LACs) only offered the higher ones every second year, so there was a danger of running out of courses for someone who had already done a lot of the early ones.
I was very grateful for this candid advice - we weren’t aware, so after that conversation we looked at the math offerings of LACs like Haverford and mapped out the courses for a pure math major and my son realized that he indeed wouldn’t get what he was looking for as an undergrad. That basically took almost all LACs off the table apart from ones that had accessible graduate courses. (Brown got nixed that way too, as they do have a graduate school but told us that undergraduates wouldn’t be able to take courses there).
I was a big fan of UCSB CCS where my son was able to do a shadow day, for what it’s worth. The small classes and the intense focus on their course subject were a good fit for my math kid, I thought.
Good luck to your son!
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With the caveat that that can change. Their NPC didn’t show C26 getting any merit, but they did ultimately offer the amount cited as the average aid above.