Top Maths Universities that are Nurturing

[MarchHares]

My y12 ds would like to study maths at university and his school recommends he should be aiming high. We have visited some and just need to narrow down his list.
I recently read a thread about a student at Bath struggling with 2nd year and not finding the department supportive.
So if anyone has inside knowledge of the top 20 English maths universities, I would be grateful to know which are most/least supportive.

OP I posted on the Bath maths thread and my take on it tbh was that the YP in question perhaps had hit a wall in maths – sounds as tho this is something that can happen and it is such a different discipline from (for example) Eng lit that I can believe it.

I'd agree with that. Many (many!) years ago I took O level Maths a year early and got an A, one of only two people in the entire year which consisted of future Drs and vets etc. I honestly found it quite easy.

At college I somehow fluked a B at A/O level (no idea how) because A level Maths was honestly like a foreign language to me, functions and advanced algebra baffled me and I ended up with a very lucky E.

Noble publishes her warning every year not to take Maths A level unless you have at least a 7 at GCSE, I'd go even further and say if you think you want to study for a Maths degree at a highly ranked Uni, don't even think about it unless you got a 9 easily in your GCSE.

We seem to have forgotten to tell young people that high quality learning (in any discipline) is hard. Learning new things at the edge of one's competence - in order to extend that competence - is difficult.

And also this^. My DD is doing a humanities (linguistics and MFL) and every Friday the linguistics lecturer emails everyone a list of the stuff that they need to have read and understood by the following week's lectures and seminars. If they don't do it, they'll quickly fall behind. The linguistics lectures are crammed with students, I'm not sure that nurturing all of them is logistically possible.

That doesn’t mean you’re buying the staff though.

I think it does help if the uni set up multiple layers of them though. Durham has "tutorial" groups (quite big I think) but also a form of maths family where a second year is assigned a few first years. Plus there are college-based study groups and college welfare. So with luck one of those will be helpful. If the uni only facilitated one route there's less probability (maths pun unintentional!)

What are you paying for if not to be able to access help IF you need it.

Tutors / lecturers / Professors are not there to be at the beck and call of the students. Pastoral / student support services will provide support and your DSs £60k will be going towards the cost of these services.

The help is there, in the form of student counselling, disability services, student medical centre, study skills facilities etc, but your student will need to be proactive about accessing it.

As a senior university lecturer we are workloaded for 1 hr of support per student per year. This includes 3 x 1-1 individual 30 min tutorials a year.

Thankfully we are not a maths course as whichever muppet set these rules can’t do 30x3 and work out that’s more than an hour before we’ve answered a single email!

But I’m very much told to signpost students to other services and told my role is not to support students with non specific academic questions.

I’m not suggesting professors should be the ones doing the support, just that it should be available and from what I hear that varies greatly.

What are you paying for if not to be able to access help IF you need it

Very clever people sharing their knowledge.

I think this is something that is not understood about prestige universities. Academics don’t pursue their career path in order to teach. Their primary motivation is their research. The university makes them do a certain amount of teaching as the quid pro quo for being paid while they do their research. They won’t lose their jobs if they’re shit teachers but their research is getting published and attracting grant money.

This is not the case in less prestigious universities where staff are sometimes employed on teaching-only contracts.

But what support are you looking for? Disability support? Mental health support? Study skill support? Every university will have that and every student will know about it (or can be signposted to it if they have failed to find it themselves).

if you want "finding my maths course a bit hard" support then tutors (at any university) typically have times when they can be contacted for questions, but they won't sit and spoon feed you at a top 20 university. If this is the type of support wanted, you would be better targeting a university that is more of a teaching university than a research oriented one.

I didn't read the Baths thread but it sounds as though the student's options were laid out for them, they just didn't like them and no one was going to handhold them through a decision. That's adult life.

How is anyone supposed to know in advance what support they may need?

Yes I agree with others. What you are paying for is access to the university course, the lectures, seminars, library facilities and all that goes towards allowing you to access the learning needed for your degree.

There are all kinds of support options available as PPs have noted, including very practical support for students with disabilities (for example text-reading software). But what there is not (really) is someone to sit and hold a student‘s hand if they are struggling with the content. They will be pointed in the direction of (for example) essay-writing support (often an issue for students) or the reading that may help, but that's the level of it.

I thought at first you were looking for details of unis where a student could change course (as that was the direction of the thread you mention) but i am not sure now. Do you have concrete reason to believe your DS will struggle? If this is due to disability then support may be available (but IME it is very specifically targeted and quite rightly so). If it is due to the course being too challenging, then maybe he would be better not to aim so high? I am not trying to be snarky, just trying to see where you are going here.

ETA: Oh! I l took so long to post your have replied @MarchHares

The thing is you can know in advance – if it is something like disability which requires specific funded support, or ASC which might mean (like someone on DDs course) that you cannot attend seminars and need someone to take notes.

Many students will go through university without needing any more complex support than a chat with their PT. I am still wondering why you think your DS will need it?

They’re not. They just need to be proactive in accessing it once they realise they need it.

Ds went to UCL and they seemed to be very supportive if that helps.

Well, if you are disabled then you apply for DSA (disabled students allowance) and then they have very helpful advisors who talk you through what is on offer and get info from you about your condition.

so my dd who is physically disabled and has AuDHD got a wheelchair adapted room on the ground floor. She got a grant for a desk that could move up and down to get her wheelchair under abd also for a laptop and some pieces of assistance software.

her uni also had a student support plan written for her that noted that she often gets very ill with infections and so was entitled to automatic extensions to assignments.

if your dc has a disability or MH issues etc then most unis have a student support department and you can go and talk to them at open days.

fir obvious reasons we made it a priority.

Yes the example of @Octavia64’s DD is a good example of the kind of specific and excellent support available to students with a disability.

My DD was offered software by the disability support team to support with a specific issue.

Is this the kind of thing @MarchHares means tho?

Some places will put a priority on helping to form them.

Eg we offer support sessions at various times for various reasons. During those sessions the leaders will often encourage the use of study groups. I do this amongst my own personal tutees and supervision groups (very carefully). Etc

So to summarise the responses on this thread;

I am being totally unreasonable to expect a top tier university to be supportive

and

All universities have support available to those who ask.

Thank you for all the thoughtful responses, it has made a very interesting read and hopefully will help others looking into math degrees.

Uni is not school. If he isn’t able to make the move to more independent living then maybe it’s not for him no matter how academic he is.

You haven’t specified what exactly you mean by ‘support’, though. There is support. He will have to seek it out, and it won’t be from his tutor.

@NeedingCoffee @poetryandwine That sounds great! I do suspect that students who are part of study groups are less likely to drop out, and that's why good lecturers / supervisors do encourage this. (My impression, to be honest, I don't have numbers to back this up.) I also want to emphasize that it's not only for weak students either; at my university, the "genius" maths students were in a study group too and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

I did read some time ago on TSR a claim about a top uni that students were "guarding" their academic study from other students because they felt they were in competition with each other. I think that sort of thing must be down to culture more than individual students @redskyAtNigh . However, I do not remember the uni (Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial??) or the subject, so I would take it with a pinch of salt.

Anyway, @MarchHares , I kind of agree with @clary , from everything you have said about your son it doesn't seem very likely that he will need academic support. You say his school puts a lot of pressure on - is he currently showing signs of being unhappy with that or does he actually thrive with that kind of pressure? That may be something else to consider.

Well yes, both things are true.

All universities provide support for general things that students might reasonably expect to need support for (many examples on this thread).

No top university is going to be able to spend a lot of individual time with a student who is struggling with course work on a regular basis (there is no "teacher" you can go and ask every time you are struggling, you are expected to try to figure it out for yourself). if this is what you want, you need to look at a university that is less research focus and more teaching focussed and/or one that takes a smaller intake so more chance of individually getting to know students.

You may already have some awareness of support your DC will need based on sixth form needs. You may not know how he will cope at university if he's never been stretched before, but you can consider how he responds to challenges in different areas of his life.

Hello, OP - As an Oxbridge maths graduate you know this is misleading. ‘Challenging’ is not orthogonal to ‘nurturing’. Loads of support is available but one must go through channels.

Those channels include your PT and with a reasonable amount of luck, within the normal parameters of the relationship this person can help a lot. Utilising lecturers’ office hours is another ordinary thing that can make a big difference.

I always wonder how many of the students who feel unseen in their struggles are attending office hours and (when offered) help sessions, checking in honestly with their PTs per School conventions, etc. A common theme on this Board is students raising the alarm at home whilst telling their parents they couldn’t possibly do any of this, as it would be too embarrassing.

Eventually they appear spontaneously at the PT door in tears, and this is the behaviour we find more difficult to deal with - not least because we never have a spontaneous moment in the day. It is also arrogant to think you can bypass well thought out support mechanisms and that busy people should see you at your convenience, true emergencies excepted.

My field is sufficiently maths intensive that the same issues arise in our highly ranked School. Yes, a small amount of what students perceive as non-nurturing is a lack of encouragement. Broadly, maths-focused academics would do better to use a growth mindset with students. But more of the problem is that maths is intrinsically difficult. You need to find a way to cope, which may or may not involve leaving false pride behind and seeking help through the proper channels.

I would prioritise university choices still assigning undergraduates to Personal Tutors or Academic Advisers who are members of academic staff and I would enquire at Visiting Days what the expectations of the relationship are. It can’t be too onerous for anyone, but it’s important that both parties live up to their side. This is already a ballast for students, and makes it easier to approach the PT if necessary.

HE is hugely stressed and there is a trend to move towards providing the traditional PT benefits via Student Support Officers who are professional staff. I think this fragments the advising experience and is generally a loss.

I can easily think of equivalent hours of student orientated work SSOs could take off academics if workload is really the issue!

Maybe look at unis with strong MathSocs where honours year students run drop in sessions for earlier years. In my experience personal tutors were a hit or a miss. Mine sat next to me at our graduation dinner and asked to remind him who I was (Glasgow). I found asking other more able students for help and attending office hours more useful. I suspect diligence/attitude comes into play. I hated being lost 20 minutes into a lecture so would go over the material immediately afterwards until I understood. Just as able friends didn’t bother thinking they could get their head round it later for tests/exams (as they did at A-level). Find a course that challenges those with FM Maths in 1st year rather than allowing you to coast might be useful. For me it was the pure maths courses from 2nd year onwards (particularly topology) where I started to struggle but was lucky that my entire final year was optional modules and I chose more applied mathematics. Look at the course catalogues to see the flexibility. I’d recommend joint maths degrees with a related subject Stats/ Computing/ Physics/ Economics if you have any doubts about your pure maths ability.

Great post as ever from the wise @poetryandwine

@MarchHares I think you are being slightly disingenuous when you say we’ve said you are unreasonable to expect support for your YP at uni. No one has said that and it’s not true. Lots of PPs have given examples of specific support that their YP was offered or their uni provides.

But as lots of us have said, you have not spelled out what support is needed for your DS. I mean that’s fair enough of course, but we can't really respond on specific issues if we don’t know. A post from you suggests you don't actually have specific concerns, just simply that you think they might need it and want to find out what form it may take? If so I suggest poetry’s advice to follow up at open days is a good idea. People on this board can after all only offer their own experiences.

But you need to be clear on what the support will and will not be. Uni is very different from school. One example: DD had a crisis with one specific piece of work. She contacted her (lovely, helpful) PT to say she felt simply couldn’t do it. The PT was factual in her response – “if you don’t do this piece, you will get a 0 for it and that will massively affect your overall grade.” Was this supportive? If by “supportive” you mean “taking away all the worry and saying it will all be fine” then no. But that’s not what HE is about.

In my example, DD knuckled down and tackled the challenging piece of work. She produced something. No, it was not her best work by any means but the point was she realised it was in her hands, and she needed to find the way forward.