Agreed. I was just trying to come up with possible options, thinking that if it is just for a semester or two..:it might be worth it? And it appears that a student at Santa Barbara community college can take one class a semester at UCSB so if that’s an upper level math class that may help mitigate things.
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SBCC uses semesters, while UCSB uses quarters, so academic calendars are not aligned.
Additional Enrollment Opportunities | Office of the Registrar indicates that SBCC students can take one UCSB course per quarter. That may not be enough for a student wanting to pursue both math and chemistry at a level beyond what SBCC offers. It is also likely that non-UCSB students have the lowest priority in registering for classes.
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Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College is pretty similar to UCSB’s CCS, but has the added advantage of the tutorial system (which would allow OP’s son to focus on topics which interest them), only two required writing classes, and no prerequisites for any classes.
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I thought I’d share an anecdote of a friend’s DD who attended Harvey Mudd after taking a decent amount of Math dual enrollment at a local engineering-oriented college. She had taken probably 6-8 university level courses (all of Calc, DEs, Linear Algebra, etc.), but nothing 400 level. Harvey Mudd did not give her much credit and initially wouldn’t let her test out of any coursework. After she high-scored two semesters of “advanced” calc (to the tune of 98s on tests where the average was in the 60s), they did allow her to test out of a few courses.
I LOVE Harvey Mudd and think the Claremont Consortium is amazing. My DH majored in Physics there and went on to get a PhD at Caltech. We have several friends who were math majors and also did PhDs. Undergrad research is great, etc. I just want to share that anecdotally, I don’t know if they’d be a fit for someone who wants to skip a bunch of math right away (and possibly get credit)
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Has planned to choose either math or chemistry if going to UK schools. Is leaning
towards chemistry if so.
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Can you expand on why? It seems as if he’s more passionate about math given his background in each subject.
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Interesting piece on Americans at St Andrews in the British press (gift link):
Uh oh, America’s East Coast elite have taken over sleepy St Andrews
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Interesting. The focus of this story is on the East Coast though they do mention LA. I’m familiar with several studetns from Northern California who applied/went to St. Andrews though they don’t fit the description of these super-elite students since these students are upper middle class so not the kind to pay for a hotel room year round! They mentioned that St. Andrews being on the common app helps but at least a couple that I’m familiar with applied through UCAS as they were also applying to Oxford. Another school I have seen a couple of students go to is Trinity(Dublin) though it’s less popular than St. Andrews. Also Edinburgh and Aberdeen I have seen occasionally. Imperial is starting to visit America too. I think one benefit to these schools is that with the price being so high for EU students now since Brexit, they have lost some of those students as why would German students pay so much more than they would for a German university, for instance. However, Americans are already paying exorbitant prices for private/out of state publics (in the article one student compared the cost of St. Andrews to the out of state cost of UCLA) and even quite a bit for in-state schools, so to Americans the cost of British schools seems like a good deal.
This student might want to look at Imperial as well along with some of the other British schools if the math/chem combo isn’t necessary. I think some of the Scottish schools would have the combo but even if not, they seem like they would be possibilities.
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FTR, the “Ancient 4” in Scotland are Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, Aberdeen. Heriot Watt and Strathclyde also offer solid STEM. 4-year degrees so a bit more flexibility than the typical UK degree.
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There are other UK universities on the Common App, and of course they are systematically less expensive than full pay private or the more expensive OOS programs. But St Andrews did stand out to my S24 for a combination of factors–recruiting in person in the US, being high on “league tables” both generally and in various specific subjects, the Scottish four-year degree being at least a notch more similar to the US approach, and just the comfort from a lot of other US students also going there. In fact that article resonated in part because we got so far as to visit St Andrews post-offer, and it was in fact funny that we kept hearing students with American accents, there were kids working in restaurants and shops from the US, and so on.
But that last anecdotal evidence does suggest that article maybe lacked some nuance as to exactly who all these Americans might be. I have no doubt some are true upper class, and the lack of need aid and travel expenses are largely going to preclude lower-to-middle-middle class students. But I also think many are “merely” upper-middle class, the sort who might well get a job to help pay expenses, are probably not renting villas, and so on.
And for that matter, my S24 ended up choosing to pay significantly more for a US university than St Andrews would have cost us, even factoring in travel. If we had been more cost sensitive, perhaps we would have made a different decision–hard to know, but he did like it enough that he might have chosen it over at least most universities that would have been competitive on cost.
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Enjoyed the article and loved the quote:
“None of them live off pesto pasta as most students should.”
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But from a British perspective, almost any UMC American is extremely wealthy. British students get loans from the government to pay for their tuition fees, so parents are only on the hook for room and board, which you’d try to keep to ~10K pounds ($13K) per year. Parents generally don’t save for college, so many kids have jobs to help pay those living expenses. But then you pay your tuition loan back over your career.
For those who think things are bad for new graduates in the US right now, this is a good piece describing just how dire a position UK graduates are in with their student loans and low salaries (gift link):
Why the odds are stacked against today’s university graduates
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My S25 is coming into college with a number of advanced math credits (not as many as your child - he had what typically amounts to 7-8 classes, but through an advanced program with our state flagship university + one CC class).
He pretty seriously considered Michigan State. I think your student would get some decent merit $$ there and probably be invited to compete for the big scholarships. They have an honors/advanced math track, though in the end my S25 was not actually quite as interested in the particular higher level courses offered there. I know someone upthread mentioned Lyman Briggs. We went to an info session for Lyman Brigs and walked away with the impression that a student coming in with many credits would find Lyman Briggs to be less advantageous because your student wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the courses offered within the residential college. It also has a fairly high percentage of students pursuing health related careers (medicine, etc). This wasn’t exactly a complete turn off, but since my S25 has no interest in this area, it wasn’t a plus either.
I would also echo the suggestion to check out the University of Minnesota. They have a strong depth of math offerings. If it weren’t for the fact that the U of MN is “too close too home” for my S25, I think he would have pretty seriously considered it. He did apply and it was actually his cheapest option (we are in state), but like your child not wanting to stay in Arizona, mine wanted to get away from MN and try something new further away. He ended up choosing Rice University. It was honestly a surprise to us both that he got in and that it was affordable. It might be worth taking a peek at, but it is definitely not a safety or target for your list! He likes that it is easy to double major and they seem receptive to his DE credits (though there are a few hoops to jump through - more than some schools), as well as being generous with credit given for AP.
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Without outing myself too much, my Oxford son was the first to matriculate to the UK from his NY metro area HS in many years. Last year, six kids matriculated to St. Andrews alone.
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I actually meant to acknowledge this but forgot. The basic deal is ALL the Americans are there to cross-subsidize most of the UK students.
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You nailed it. And American families seriously looking at an overseas option (whether UK or other) need to understand this.
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I like UNM’s honor program - graduate and independent studies courses count as honors courses so you might be able do a major in honors interdisciplinary major while taking all the advanced math/chem courses you want and a minimum of gen-ed courses.
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I think Wesleyan would be a good fit for this applicant. It’s a top LAC; classes would be small. Someone with ADHD would not fall through the cracks. But it’s also a university in the sense that they have a half-dozen departments, including Math, that offer courses through the doctoral level. I know for a fact that they like spikey kids who are strong in STEM.
And like Stanford and Harvey Mudd, Wesleyan is generous with need-based FA.
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Yes this is my experience as well - upper middle class families rather than those who are used to summering in the Hamptons. I also know some who did enjoy the reduced cost but that wasn’t the reason for their choice - rather they were aiming for an overseas experience or they did apply to schools in America but were locked out of the ones they desired. For the ones they did get into, while some might have been more expensive and some may have been cheaper, ultimately they were just less appealing than St. Andrews with cost having little to do with the decision though they were happy with the lower price tag. In other words, they’re not rich enough that costs don’t matter at all but they are comfortable enough that they could make the more costly options work if the more desirable options had come through.
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The situation described in this article does not seem that different than the situation in America but it seems that the issue in the UK is quite a bit more extreme. The job market seems worse for example. Also there is this bit about the average debt:
“It’s a feeling shared by graduates across the country, who will leave university with an average debt of £45,000 and feel like the odds are stacked against them.”
This is quite a bit of debt for a student to take on. In America, the average hit 40k recently or is close to it but the salaries are quite a bit higher. I think in the UK a college grad’s salary is shy of £30k while in the US it’s slightly below $70k. Granted these both likely depend on the degree but even at 40k which some say is the going rate for some degrees, a US grad would have a far easier time paying off 40k in debt than a UK student paying off £45k in debt with a salary below £30k.
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