Univ Maryland AMCS:

[Mathk1d]

The Applied Math and Computational Science program at Univ of Maryland is rather huge. In fact, it's almost overwhelming to see all the possible research areas! I just wanted to start a discussion of the advantages/disadvantages of such a big program. It seems that a lot of the really good schools (CalTech, Brown) have very small programs. Why is that?

[BongRips69]

The whole math program there is huge! Over 100 each in both AMSC and pure mathematics. There's also a separate statistics department, too!

I visited UCSD (also pretty big) and couldn't get a feel for the program as it was difficult getting a hold of people ahead of time. I was a little weary visiting UMD... but got a better reception. I knew what I was interested in and managed to setup meetings with professors in the research area (though not in the mathematics department). If you can narrow down your interests, you can pretty much start to view a small group in a big program in a similar vein as a small program.

What are you interested in?

[Mathk1d]

The whole math program there is huge! Over 100 each in both AMSC and pure mathematics. There's also a separate statistics department, too!

I visited UCSD (also pretty big) and couldn't get a feel for the program as it was difficult getting a hold of people ahead of time. I was a little weary visiting UMD... but got a better reception. I knew what I was interested in and managed to setup meetings with professors in the research area (though not in the mathematics department). If you can narrow down your interests, you can pretty much start to view a small group in a big program in a similar vein as a small program.

What are you interested in?

To admit, I'm probably not developed or well-exposed enough to declare my interests for sure. At least not enough to call a meeting with certain professors in the department. Especially at UMD... There is such a huge range of research lol... I guess it's nice that I can put off making a decision about what type of project I want to work on. I like mathematical biology and control theory a lot though.