The Kitty Cat
Banned deucer.
This grrrl is bullshit, too, because she doesn't even know that Cornell is the only Ivy with a decent computer science program or that prestige should hardly be a concern when it comes to computer science.
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Applying to college
- Thread starter xenu
- Start date
Meh, I think a lot of the points kitty's are interesting but I wish she could bring up some actual evidence considering the controversial nature of a lot of her opinions. For instance, I can totally get behind re: financial aid, but not so much " most decent but neither brilliant nor interesting students of the appropriate milieux know better than to apply to HYP just because they have perfect or near-perfect test scores and grades and a mediocre research profile upon graduation," without seeing some evidence.
At the end of the day, and the point that continually is being ignored, is that which college is right for a person is always going to vary depending on the person. Every person is different and their circumstances are different so what's the point in getting worked up over whether there are 2 ivies or 3 ivies that are equivalent to MIT and Stanford. College is more than arriving at x school, getting degree, go to graduate school/job. It's also an opportunity to develop as a person, meet new people, and become independent. For some people, that part is really important , and so maybe a school that is a lower Ivy will be the right fit for them.
At the end of the day, and the point that continually is being ignored, is that which college is right for a person is always going to vary depending on the person. Every person is different and their circumstances are different so what's the point in getting worked up over whether there are 2 ivies or 3 ivies that are equivalent to MIT and Stanford. College is more than arriving at x school, getting degree, go to graduate school/job. It's also an opportunity to develop as a person, meet new people, and become independent. For some people, that part is really important , and so maybe a school that is a lower Ivy will be the right fit for them.
Harvard has a strong compsci program on the graduate level, which correlates to a strong undergrad curriculum regardless of undergrad ranking. Princeton's aerospace program is the strongest of all the Ivies. Cornell holds high rankings in undergrad teaching because mostly every singlw cornellian lands a job out of college.
and acting as a mod on college confidential is nothing. It's similar to telling people you're a specialist on Italian food because you worked at Olive Garden.
and acting as a mod on college confidential is nothing. It's similar to telling people you're a specialist on Italian food because you worked at Olive Garden.
School prestige is an interesting concept that prospective students tend to place excessive value on (we've all done it at some point).
The effect of school prestige is usually small at best and varies by industry and the person doing the recruiting. It does seem to matter less in CompSci/IT fields to most CIOs when looking to hire recent graduates, where internship experience and technical, demonstrable skills are generally more important. Admittedly, it is true that for some specific industries (especially investment banking), most top firms won't even consider you if you didn't go to a top-ranked school. In general, students value prestige more highly than employers. More important for getting employed are your skills, your personality and ability to work with others, networking with peers and recruiters, etc.
Obviously you should try to get into the best school you can, but one that is also a good fit for you. There are so many factors that go into finding a school that you will like and prestige is worthless if you hate it there. If your reason for going to college is solely so you can go to a "top" school, you are going for the wrong reasons. You can use any university for "social mobility" if you love it enough to work hard and make yourself stand out.
(As an aside, prestige does seem to matter more if you intend to go into graduate school for a future career in academia, and even then, who and what matters more than where. You will not finish a graduate program if you hate your advisor or your research topic, and a famous professor isn't necessarily a good advisor. I am not a graduate student, but I still recommend this blog post by well-known University of Utah CS professor Matt Might. I found much of his advice helpful.)
The idea that "HYP is all that matters" when it comes to Ivy-level prestige is, quite frankly, insulting. You are almost certainly not going to be condemned to life at McDonald's because you wanted to go to Cornell or Columbia instead. It is true that the association stems merely from the athletic division holding them together, but the connotation of each school being academically excellent is not without merit, and you would be deluding yourself to think that reputation was earned because of HYP alone.
tl;dr Prestige is overrated, go somewhere that is a good fit for you. College will do you no good if you hate your school.
The effect of school prestige is usually small at best and varies by industry and the person doing the recruiting. It does seem to matter less in CompSci/IT fields to most CIOs when looking to hire recent graduates, where internship experience and technical, demonstrable skills are generally more important. Admittedly, it is true that for some specific industries (especially investment banking), most top firms won't even consider you if you didn't go to a top-ranked school. In general, students value prestige more highly than employers. More important for getting employed are your skills, your personality and ability to work with others, networking with peers and recruiters, etc.
Obviously you should try to get into the best school you can, but one that is also a good fit for you. There are so many factors that go into finding a school that you will like and prestige is worthless if you hate it there. If your reason for going to college is solely so you can go to a "top" school, you are going for the wrong reasons. You can use any university for "social mobility" if you love it enough to work hard and make yourself stand out.
(As an aside, prestige does seem to matter more if you intend to go into graduate school for a future career in academia, and even then, who and what matters more than where. You will not finish a graduate program if you hate your advisor or your research topic, and a famous professor isn't necessarily a good advisor. I am not a graduate student, but I still recommend this blog post by well-known University of Utah CS professor Matt Might. I found much of his advice helpful.)
The idea that "HYP is all that matters" when it comes to Ivy-level prestige is, quite frankly, insulting. You are almost certainly not going to be condemned to life at McDonald's because you wanted to go to Cornell or Columbia instead. It is true that the association stems merely from the athletic division holding them together, but the connotation of each school being academically excellent is not without merit, and you would be deluding yourself to think that reputation was earned because of HYP alone.
tl;dr Prestige is overrated, go somewhere that is a good fit for you. College will do you no good if you hate your school.
The Kitty Cat
Banned deucer.
I guess you didn't see the racialist stuff or anything a few pages back, or you're just a bit slow.
The principle of charity is strong up in this bitch.
I am really interested in studying mathematics in college (currently a senior in highschool) and right now my first choice is Kansas State because my father graduated from there; legacy scholarships ftw!! Does anybody have suggestions of colleges with good mathematics programs or are any of you studying math?
The Kitty Cat
Banned deucer.
Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton
UChicago, Caltech, UCLA/UC Berkeley, NYU, Harvey Mudd, CMU, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Duke (in no particular order)
I don't think Kansas State is considered to be a "top" math school (barely cracks top 100 from USNews rankings), but if you like it there, funding is at all a concern, and you are confident you can get a legacy scholarship, it's definitely worth consideration.
If you're going to help, be a bit more constructive.
Many of the schools that have strong engineering or physics background usually also have strong mathematics. I'm not too sure what your level of experience with mathematics is, but I can give you a general list of good schools for the major as well as the GPA, SAT, and extracurricular involvement that correlate to a decent chance of acceptance at said school.
NOTE: If anyone has suggestions for BanSpecsMachamp or think I've tiered an institution too high or too low, just let me know and I'll adjust accordingly. This list should be relatively accurate with some adjustment needed.
Tier 1
Princeton University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley (Out-of-state)
Columbia University
University of Chicago
Amherst College*
Williams College*
Swarthmore College*
Tier 2
Cornell University
Duke University
Brown University
University of California, Berkeley (In-State)
University of California, Los Angeles (In-State and Out-of-State)
University of Michigan
Georgia Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
University of Texas, Austin
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
New York University
Army + Navy*
Carnegie Mellon University
Tier 3
University of Maryland, College Park a.k.a. blarajan University
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities a.k.a. GuangCong Luo University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
University of Colorado, Boulder
Purdue University
This is a rough list I generated for schools with focuses in Mathematics. I'll explain the tiering list.
Tier 1 assumes that you are in the top 2-3% of your class, have a 2250+ SAT score with 800 Mathematics, extensive STEM extracurriculars (science competitions, AMC, AIME), and Math II SAT II of 790-800 (with other SAT II Subject tests required by institution). You are basically a mathematical wizard.
Tier 2 assumes that are in the top 8-10% of your class, have a 2100+ SAT score with a 760+ Mathematics, ample to extensive STEM extracurriculars, and Math II SAT II of 750-800.
Tier 3 assumes that you are in the top 30-40% of your class, have a 2000+ SAT score with a high Mathematics score relative to Reading and Writing, and some STEM extracurriculars. SAT II scores are largely optional for admission consideration, but will help you.
*The asterisked schools are liberal arts schools. These schools have a strong focus on teaching rather than research, so you will get a strong mathematics education regardless. Although U.S. News is far from an accurate ranking, I would keep an eye out for the top ten liberal arts schools (bar women's colleges if you identify male or are anatomically female). The military academies in general have a decently concentrated focus on engineering (last time I visited West Point at least), so the mathematics education you get from those institutions are top-notch too.
Hope this was helpful, BanSpecsMachamp . PM if you need any other help. :)
EDIT: FireBurn mentioned Harvey Mudd, which I forgot was a thing. I'm not very well versed in the non-liberal institutions that do not have graduate programs.
Lmao.
I am a graduate of one Ivy and attending school currently at another one for graduate school, with an acceptance rate that's about half of what Harvard's is for undergrad. If you're not even in college yet or didn't attend one of these schools, you really don't have too much that you can really say regarding "prestige" or whatever the hell you're arguing about. Fact is that graduates of all these schools are wicked smart, wicked motivated, and many become wicked successful.
The fact that some of you think that going to Harvard vs. Columbia actually makes a difference in the grand scheme of things is laughable. Newsflash - our president (assuming you're US) graduated from Columbia. Yeah, maybe that neighbor two houses away you never talk to is more impressed by you going to Harvard rather than your brother going to Penn or w/e - good thing the reason you went to college was to name drop it for random people and not to develop as a person and set yourself up for professional success. Also Yale not being as "prestigious" as Harvard or Princeton? Give me a break. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about.
Fireburn is right on the money here. You have no idea what kind of luck it takes to get into even one of these schools. I too got a 2400 SAT score (+multiple perfect subject tests if we're comparing e-peen size) and I didn't get into every Ivy I applied to. Plenty of people who get into Harvard don't get into Brown and vice versa. I got rejected at lower ranked schools in favor of higher ranked ones (not like these rankings even really mean anything). Get into even one of these schools and then we'll talk. Honestly, you're spewing a lot of misinformation and nonsense here. I would bet if you took a random student from Harvard and a random student from Columbia or Dartmouth or Penn (or Yale but seriously, you are the only person who thinks that Yale is not in every way on the same level as Harvard) and placed them side by side and had them list their accomplishments, you couldn't reliably guess which is which. This isn't even bringing MIT, Stanford, or Duke into the equation (or whatever other ones of these schools you want to add here).
If you want to look at the number of people from Princeton vs. the number of people at Cornell who end up at like Goldman Sachs or w/e, then sure there's maybe a bit of a difference, but they're far more similar to each other than they are to random state university. Seriously, you need to grow up a bit. Putting HYP on a pedestal and saying the other five Ivies are essentially trash is naive and idiotic.
Also college confidential is a cesspool of vitriol. Sorry, but it's true. Being a mod on there means jack in terms of credibility.
As an aside, I'm not trying to debate Ivy vs. non-Ivy. I'm just making the point that saying everything other than HP is terrible is incredibly dumb.
I apologize for the antagonistic tone in my post, but really, there's just so much misinformation here that someone needed to step in.
I am a graduate of one Ivy and attending school currently at another one for graduate school, with an acceptance rate that's about half of what Harvard's is for undergrad. If you're not even in college yet or didn't attend one of these schools, you really don't have too much that you can really say regarding "prestige" or whatever the hell you're arguing about. Fact is that graduates of all these schools are wicked smart, wicked motivated, and many become wicked successful.
The fact that some of you think that going to Harvard vs. Columbia actually makes a difference in the grand scheme of things is laughable. Newsflash - our president (assuming you're US) graduated from Columbia. Yeah, maybe that neighbor two houses away you never talk to is more impressed by you going to Harvard rather than your brother going to Penn or w/e - good thing the reason you went to college was to name drop it for random people and not to develop as a person and set yourself up for professional success. Also Yale not being as "prestigious" as Harvard or Princeton? Give me a break. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about.
Fireburn is right on the money here. You have no idea what kind of luck it takes to get into even one of these schools. I too got a 2400 SAT score (+multiple perfect subject tests if we're comparing e-peen size) and I didn't get into every Ivy I applied to. Plenty of people who get into Harvard don't get into Brown and vice versa. I got rejected at lower ranked schools in favor of higher ranked ones (not like these rankings even really mean anything). Get into even one of these schools and then we'll talk. Honestly, you're spewing a lot of misinformation and nonsense here. I would bet if you took a random student from Harvard and a random student from Columbia or Dartmouth or Penn (or Yale but seriously, you are the only person who thinks that Yale is not in every way on the same level as Harvard) and placed them side by side and had them list their accomplishments, you couldn't reliably guess which is which. This isn't even bringing MIT, Stanford, or Duke into the equation (or whatever other ones of these schools you want to add here).
If you want to look at the number of people from Princeton vs. the number of people at Cornell who end up at like Goldman Sachs or w/e, then sure there's maybe a bit of a difference, but they're far more similar to each other than they are to random state university. Seriously, you need to grow up a bit. Putting HYP on a pedestal and saying the other five Ivies are essentially trash is naive and idiotic.
Also college confidential is a cesspool of vitriol. Sorry, but it's true. Being a mod on there means jack in terms of credibility.
As an aside, I'm not trying to debate Ivy vs. non-Ivy. I'm just making the point that saying everything other than HP is terrible is incredibly dumb.
I apologize for the antagonistic tone in my post, but really, there's just so much misinformation here that someone needed to step in.
Stratos
Banned deucer.
im sorry, i do like UMD (computer engineering undergrad atm) but i havent met a single person here (myself included) who had a math professor with english as a first language. i cant imagine trying to sit through four years of that shit
damn. Poor soul never took wyss-gallifant
BanSpecsMachamp
The great thing about Math is that it will be roughly the same everywhere. The professors won't be neoliberal or socialist or any other ideology. Math is math is math.
All that matters is the quality of instruction you will receive, which will be highly variable within the school, no matter where you go, and your own personal motivation, which you decide for yourself. I know people who have studied math at more average tech schools like Georgia Tech, at small liberal arts schools like Pomona and Wellesley, and at "top tier" schools, including Penn, Columbia, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and CalTech. They've all had ups and downs with instruction.
It all comes down to what you want to do with a degree in math. Do you want to go into academia with math? Or do you just like studying math and then want to go into business, selling your quant skills?
The great thing about Math is that it will be roughly the same everywhere. The professors won't be neoliberal or socialist or any other ideology. Math is math is math.
All that matters is the quality of instruction you will receive, which will be highly variable within the school, no matter where you go, and your own personal motivation, which you decide for yourself. I know people who have studied math at more average tech schools like Georgia Tech, at small liberal arts schools like Pomona and Wellesley, and at "top tier" schools, including Penn, Columbia, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and CalTech. They've all had ups and downs with instruction.
It all comes down to what you want to do with a degree in math. Do you want to go into academia with math? Or do you just like studying math and then want to go into business, selling your quant skills?
unless your professor was John Nash (rip) who thought everyone who wore red was a Communist
EDIT: Also, BanSpecsMachamp if you're really interested in mathematics, check this out: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/free-math-books.796225/
It's basically free books on various advanced topics in mathematics.
The Kitty Cat
Banned deucer.
How do you not know what is going on here? I mean -- College Confidential mod, c'mon.
You do understand that college confidential is essentially a bunch of high schoolers (and a couple college freshmen) engaging in a dick measuring contest with other high schoolers (and college freshmen) about which college is best with no context regarding how college actually relates to the rest of the world, right?
The Kitty Cat
Banned deucer.
That's why I think it's fucking hilarious.
Fair enough. Just as long as you recognize that and don't attempt to use it as a metric of validity.
I might be biased as I graduated from UT Austin (though not in mathematics), but it's engineering, physics, and mathematics departments are highly ranked, and everyone that I knew that was a math or engineering major at UT loved their major and what they did. If you want to know more about UT's department of mathematics (and the College of Natural Sciences, which the department is in), here are some websites you should look into to see what kind of research the faculty does and to give an overview of CNS as a whole: https://cns.utexas.edu/students/future/our-philosophy
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/
UT does this thing where if you're in the top 8% of your class (they change this every year; it's been as low as 7% but I think it's going to be 8% for 2016 admissions), you get automatic admission (more info: http://admissions.utexas.edu/apply/decisions); HOWEVER, you do NOT get automatic admission into the colleges and majors that you're interested in. That's done on a competitive basis and it's more competitive depending on what program you want to get into (McCombs School of Business and the Cockrell School of Engineering are VERY difficult to get into for example, but CNS is easier to get into, which is where you would be if you do Mathematics). If you're in the top 8%, you should be good admissions wise, but make sure you're as competitive as you can be if you want to get into the major of your choice (if you want somebody to compare to, I graduated in the top 4% of my high school class, had strong science and math grades and AP scores, letters of rec from science teachers, extra curriculars, my SAT was decent, had good essays, and got into CNS as a Biology major. I'd say if you're of a similar or better rank and credentials, then you should have no problem getting into CNS).
If you have anymore questions about UT, just ask me, and I'll try to answer them the best I can. Good luck with college admissions!
I'll just bring up a tangentially related question here....
Anyone knows what it takes for a kid with no prior CS experience - like no courses, no programming knowledge, nothing - to enter a CS program? Could it be top-notch math scores? Extensive non-CS STEM extracurriculars?
Many universities advertise their programs on accepting these types of students, but I'm quite skeptical about it.
Anyone knows what it takes for a kid with no prior CS experience - like no courses, no programming knowledge, nothing - to enter a CS program? Could it be top-notch math scores? Extensive non-CS STEM extracurriculars?
Many universities advertise their programs on accepting these types of students, but I'm quite skeptical about it.
Stratos
Banned deucer.
Many colleges' CS programs don't actually have limited enrollment. I know at UMD that as long as u get into UMD you can major in CS, and we have an extremely good CS department so its not necessarily all good CS departments are LEP
Besides most LEPs just look at general achievement for undergrad, not necessarily in-field achievement. Im sure high math scores would help.
Besides most LEPs just look at general achievement for undergrad, not necessarily in-field achievement. Im sure high math scores would help.
Ok, as someone who majored in Applied Math and Applied Physics in undergrad and applied to graduate programs in both, I feel obligated to say that this list, while incredibly accurate for a prospective graduate student, is not very accurate for someone looking to major in math in undergrad.
The problem is basically that any rankings list you'll find for 'math' among universities assumes that undergraduate students care about the reputation of their department when trying to find employment coming out with a bachelor's degree; this simply doesn't matter. A potential employer with, for example, a trading firm or data analysis institute (typical employment options for a bachelor's math degree) do not know or care about particular departmental prestige; they do, however, know about general university prestige. In other words, while specific departmental prestige is a factor to consider when looking to attend graduate school BanSpecsMachamp, it isn't something that you should focus on for undergrad. This is because these rankings have a STRONG lean towards the research productivity within these departments, which is incredibly important for graduate students (who couldn't care less about the quality of teaching) but is virtually worthless for undergraduate students (for whom teaching is 99% of the focus, particularly if not planning on doing research in undergrad due to not wanting to go to graduate school/follow the academic career path).
In this sense, Stratos' point resonates: the University of Maryland Math department has a fantastic reputation for research, but I wouldn't be remotely surprised if the teaching there were sub-optimal, simply because teaching doesn't factor into the departmental rankings that Eaglehawk produced.
So how do you separate out the strong math undergrad programs from the weak ones (ie the ones that put a focus on teaching their undergraduates)? Simply put, this will tend to be the same as the undergraduate rankings list (those rankings are compiled specifically with undergraduate students in mind, and the quality between departments with regards to teaching does not tend to vary a ton), though you can probably ignore the liberal arts institutions unless you're certain you want to do abstract, proof-based math (and want to be pigeonholed into it without having good options in the other math/science-based departments, such as Applied Math/Comp Sci/Statistics/Physics/Chemistry). Great schools with an undergraduate focus (and thus that Eaglehawk missed in his above tierings) include Wash U in St. Louis, Rice, Vanderbilt, and my own personal alma mater, Notre Dame (which I highly recommend in terms of teaching quality in the maths and sciences, so long as you can stomach being in a school with 50+% Catholics). Similarly, schools which I would not recommend but which I'd look to for graduate schools instead and which Eaglehawk thus included in his tierings would be any of the large state schools (these schools simply have too many students to effectively focus on teaching undergrads), Georgia Tech, or Virginia Tech. The thing that the Ivys have going for them is that they are the strongest in both undergrad and graduate teaching AND research, so definitely at least try to apply to one or two (Cornell isn't that hard to get in to, and is a fantastic university if you can deal with bone-chilling winters).
Since it might be hard to parse text, look to these national rankings for good schools to apply to regardless of major, as honestly these are pretty much accurate in terms of where you'll want to look for an undergraduate education in math. The first ~10 will require the 'tier 1' statistics that Eaglehawk posted above, while the next ~20 will require the 'tier 2' statistics and those below that will gradually be easier and easier to get in to.
Finally, there is nothing wrong with Kansas State if you think that financial aid/scholarships there will be easier to obtain, but don't go all-in on it unless a scholarship offer there is only valid to Early Decision applicants (in which case you'll have to make a hard-and-fast decision on it very soon). Their acceptance rate is over 95%, so at least try to apply to a few higher-ranked schools just to see if you get any competing offers, no harm in aiming high and then settling. Of course if you have been to Kansas State, talked with Professors and students there, and really enjoyed being there, then that is far and away the most important thing in undergrad. Departmental prestige, class size, and even the quality of teaching pales in comparison to simply liking being at a school when it comes to undergrad.
Good luck with this process!
fuck I only attend a tier 2 university, better go kill myself and spare my parents the shame
Here's a crazy thought. No matter where you go, your quantum mechanics book is going to be one of: Shankar, Griffiths, Sakurai. Your professor probably won't know English. Your classmates won't have any more of a clue than you do. And it's going to be the same for every upper level class like that, with a professor zany enough to get tenure researching a hard science, a short list of classmates and an even shorter list of textbooks. Turns out the courses you take are a better predictor of your class environment than the university you attend! Who would have thought that math and physics follow the same natural laws in Cambridge, MA that they do in Albuquerque, NM? Furthermore, someone who is gonna kill it in college will kill it at Harvard, UMD, or anywhere else. If you wanna develop the next snapchat, solve Fermat's last theorem, or make the fuckers in Animal House look like children, you can do all that just about anywhere you go.
bottom line stop stressing and go somewhere you'll have a good time. college is more than just a springboard for your career. it's 4 years of your life. your prime. do your best, have fun, learn a lot, make some great friends, and the rest hardly matters, especially the name and font on your degree
as for specific recommendations, I recommend anywhere that will give you a decent sum of money to attend. I strongly recommend schools with broadly strong programs, because a lot of people who liked math in high school actually end up studying physics, engineering, CS, chemistry, finance, or something less "pure" but still uses a lot of math when they find out that sitting around looking at a chalkboard all day doesn't tickle their fancy. unless you're a USAMO or higher level math whiz, I would never fully discount the possibility of liking something else better along the way. in that vein, a lot of the stronger state schools will give you a ton of bang for your buck. michigan, berkeley, UCLA, UVA, UIUC, UNC chapel hill, UT austin, wisconsin, etc etc. Don't leave out ivies, stanford, MIT, chicago, caltech, duke, and the rest out either. apply as broadly as your time and money allow and choose the one that you think fits you the best within reason financially.
full disclosure: I applied to 7 schools with the intent to study math, but only because I knew I had guaranteed admission to UT Austin which allowed me to pretty much just apply to that plus some reaches. I ended up not attending there but if I could go back and do it over it would be a tough decision.
Here's a crazy thought. No matter where you go, your quantum mechanics book is going to be one of: Shankar, Griffiths, Sakurai. Your professor probably won't know English. Your classmates won't have any more of a clue than you do. And it's going to be the same for every upper level class like that, with a professor zany enough to get tenure researching a hard science, a short list of classmates and an even shorter list of textbooks. Turns out the courses you take are a better predictor of your class environment than the university you attend! Who would have thought that math and physics follow the same natural laws in Cambridge, MA that they do in Albuquerque, NM? Furthermore, someone who is gonna kill it in college will kill it at Harvard, UMD, or anywhere else. If you wanna develop the next snapchat, solve Fermat's last theorem, or make the fuckers in Animal House look like children, you can do all that just about anywhere you go.
bottom line stop stressing and go somewhere you'll have a good time. college is more than just a springboard for your career. it's 4 years of your life. your prime. do your best, have fun, learn a lot, make some great friends, and the rest hardly matters, especially the name and font on your degree
as for specific recommendations, I recommend anywhere that will give you a decent sum of money to attend. I strongly recommend schools with broadly strong programs, because a lot of people who liked math in high school actually end up studying physics, engineering, CS, chemistry, finance, or something less "pure" but still uses a lot of math when they find out that sitting around looking at a chalkboard all day doesn't tickle their fancy. unless you're a USAMO or higher level math whiz, I would never fully discount the possibility of liking something else better along the way. in that vein, a lot of the stronger state schools will give you a ton of bang for your buck. michigan, berkeley, UCLA, UVA, UIUC, UNC chapel hill, UT austin, wisconsin, etc etc. Don't leave out ivies, stanford, MIT, chicago, caltech, duke, and the rest out either. apply as broadly as your time and money allow and choose the one that you think fits you the best within reason financially.
full disclosure: I applied to 7 schools with the intent to study math, but only because I knew I had guaranteed admission to UT Austin which allowed me to pretty much just apply to that plus some reaches. I ended up not attending there but if I could go back and do it over it would be a tough decision.
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So what are your college lists this year?
I emphasized the bolded parts.
I would say the bigger thing for studying math is to make sure you feel you are at the right entry level in terms of what class you take first semester. A bad math grade is one of the easiest ways to kill a GPA from personal experience (i.e. make sure if you pass BC Calc in HS you know all of the Calc II material before going to Calc III because that's not always a guarantee).
Had I had to do college over again I would have taken a supplemental class with Calc III that I didn't know existed at the time or relearn Calc II at a college-level pace to prep for Calc III. Or just not take Calc III.