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<p>And you are distancing yourself from the people you consider “nerdy?” Let’s rethink that one :-)</p>
<p>I should mention that I come from a family and extended family and have family friends of math majors, who went to all sorts of schools. I’ll just name four: Cornell, Yale, Fordham, and Rutgers. All of them are able to tell stories about students who didn’t shower, professors who didn’t look at themselves when they got dressed in the morning, etc., all of them in some ways socially non-standard and maybe (depending on how merciless you feel) socially inept.</p>
<p>But Cornell, Yale, Fordham, and Rutgers are not particularly known for attracting a nerdy type of student, even though, by going from stories from family and friends, you would think any of these four schools would be nerd heaven.</p>
<p>So I think that the nerd quotient says a lot more about the choice to study math rather than the school itself.</p>
<p>Regarding CAPS: CAPS people have been really useful for bulldozing my resume and helping me shape it. Otherwise, I don’t really know what to expect from a career office-- I think your choice of career is largely based on who you know in your network and pursuing activities that are of interest to you. CAPS people can teach you how to do better interviews (they did an info session on this that I found really helpful), they can give you tips, they can help you contact big employers, but they are not going to get you the job-- that’s up to you. I’ve been very successful getting positions that I’ve wanted, and I am not at the top of the GPA ladder.</p>