Cornell vs. Brown vs. Johns Hopkins
This is a throwaway account, but recently, I got acceptances to Cornell, Brown, and Johns Hopkins for Mathematics, and I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to have such a hard choice to make. I’ve been thinking about what is best for my aspirations specifically, but I’m still unsure what choice to make. It’s such a big decision, and I don’t want to mess it up, even though I’m sure whatever school I choose, the experience will be beyond amazing.
For some context, I am very passionate about pure mathematics. It has been my spike, and I’ve done a lot with it extracurricularly. I’ve taken classes at an external institution for some standard, first- or second-year undergraduate courses like Linear Algebra to more advanced subjects like Abstract Algebra and Complex Analysis. In my own time, I’ve been really interested in Topology and Differential Geometry, and I’ve read a bunch of Graduate Texts in Mathematics books from Springer in the topics, from Lee’s Introduction to Topological Manifolds to Sharpe’s Differential Geometry: Cartan's Generalization of Klein's Erlangen Program. Outside of that track, I’ve read some other texts in that series, such as Mac Lane’s Categories for the Working Mathematician. I think it is undoubtedly clear that this is what I’m most passionate about, and it would be my dream to stay in academia and pursue it as a researcher while professing at a top tier university. I plan to get my Ph.D. in some form of pure mathematics, and I really want that to be at one of the top graduate programs, such as at MIT or Harvard.
However, because of financial concerns, my family is set on me not pursuing that path immediately. They want me to get an applied mathematics job first, earn enough money to be comfortable, and then go after pure mathematics later. Since I really do enjoy all mathematics (I don’t think I can name a math class I didn’t enjoy), I don’t think that would be miserable, so I’m okay with that. Even as a pure math enthusiast, I’ve still taken external courses in Statistics and Data Science, and I enjoy analyzing data with computer science. Because of this, I’ll likely become some form of Data Analyst for some time after college. I would like to get a Master’s in Data Science to help me here.
Considering all this, I decided that I’d want to double major in Mathematics (to keep with my pure math passion) and Computer Science. All schools I got accepted to would allow me to do that. Also, my cost of attendance at all schools is roughly equal, and all three were very generous with their financial aid offers. However, there are other things I’ve had to consider.
At Cornell, I’d be able to minor in Data Science. This is nice to have considering the career I need to take on after college. While Brown has an Open Curriculum, which is good for my degree aspirations, Brown doesn’t do “minors” in the typical sense, and their Data Science is only a Masters, which I’d have to pursue separately after undergrad. Considering I want to go to a different grad school for mathematics after undergrad, I’m not sure if that’s the best circumstance for me. Johns Hopkins has a part-time Data Science program and a minor in Applied Mathematics, but those are in a school different from the one I was accepted to, so I would have to go through the Interdivisional Registration process to access that.
However, when I looked at the courses offered at Brown when compared to Cornell, I enjoyed the diversity of classes more at Brown. They have a lot more Topology and Differential Geometry opportunities at Brown than at Cornell, and they say on their website that it’s possible for undergrads to take graduate mathematics courses, and a lot of the graduate courses there are what I’m interested in. I wasn’t able to find anything about taking graduate courses at Cornell, and generally the selection was a lot more rigid and aligned with the standard calculus to analysis track. Johns Hopkins is quite rigid for undergrad courses, though they do say that undergrads can take graduate courses, and they have the course opportunities I am looking for in their graduate selection.
All schools have extensive research opportunities, but Cornell and Johns Hopkins are more accessible early on than Brown is for serious research, and that’s something that matters a lot to me. Cornell is especially important here because it is stronger than Brown and Johns Hopkins are in pure mathematics, since Brown excels in applied mathematics and Johns Hopkins is not necessarily a mathematics haven compared to their other strong programs like in medicine, and I need strong letters of recommendation from serious mathematicians for graduate school. Even though Johns Hopkins is lower ranked in its mathematics department than Brown is, the ability to do research earlier is important if I want to get a serious letter of recommendation.
I know this was a long post, so thank you for reading it, and thank you for any advice you have. As of right now, I’m leaning most towards Cornell, and least towards Johns Hopkins, though the course selection consideration with Brown is making it difficult to make the final decision.