Uni

To have an example I googled the math curriculum for Harvard and then the one from University of Miami (#51) to compare.

First things first: wtf america? Just have a fixed curriculum so that I can compare easily, you faggots.

Second, I can see the difference. The courses at harvard seemed to progress much faster into analysis and topology while the ones in miami all looked like introductory linear algebra, probability, etc.

I suppose there is a big difference.

>First things first: wtf america? Just have a fixed curriculum so that I can compare easily, you faggots.
Huh? Fixed curriculum at the university level?

>Huh? Fixed curriculum at the university level?

Yeah, like pic related, you pricks.

I can't believe I actually had to read the the 'courses in mathematics' document to understand how their plan worked, I would otherwise only need to check which university takes number theory first or some shit.

Seriously american, enforce a core curriculum that no one can opt-out from and then just add 2 electives per semester for the dummies to take dumb classes and for terence tao to take his introduction to interuniversal teichmuller theory for freshmen.

I'm not american, but it makes absolutely no sense to have a fixed curriculum. Why would you? Universities give out their own degrees, why should they conform to the same curriculum as every other uni? What would be the point in going to the best uni when it literally had the same curriculum as another uni?
People decline unis based on their rank and curriculum, heck, I completely skipped the interviews of some unis because I didn't like their curriculum.
Even in first year I had a hell of a lot of choice, I could even choose modules from any other department. I could even pick art if it I wanted to.
Seriously, why do you want some "core" curriculum so much?
Everyone has their own idea of what's the "best" way to teach mathematics.
Showing spain as having a fixed curriculum isn't a good example - they're not even top 50.

>Universities give out their own degrees

You misunderstood me.

In Harvard you choose your classes entirely. What I meant is to have a core curriculum unique to your university and crafted by your professors that everyone has to take, instead of letting retard freshmen run around.

If you go Harvard's page you will see like 50 warnings advicing students NOT to make certain decisions when building their curriculum, which they obviously ignore because there are so many warnings.

Plus, like I said, it would be easier that way to decide which school was better. You simply see which one takes number theory first.

Well perhaps you should clarify what you mean by overrated. What the author has said anecdotally was that it's easier to get a job out of college if you go to a brandname school. Isn't that having it better?

I remember hearing that in Europe, you need to declare your major before entering. In USA, you don't declare your major right away and you can even change it.

When it comes to a "core curriculum", some universities enforce that, e.g., Columbia has a core curriculum.

Another aspect that you are missing is the rigor and depth of the classes. When you are in a university with a bunch of dumbasses, you can expect the courses to be dumbed down, but at a place like Harvard, they probably can teach much more in depth and cover more content. It doesnt matter who teaches number theory first when Harvard probably covers number theory better than a bunch of state schools.

>You misunderstood me.
Oh, sorry in that case.
>What I meant is to have a core curriculum unique to your university and crafted by your professors that everyone has to take, instead of letting retard freshmen run around.
Agreed.
>You simply see which one takes number theory first.
Why? You can't get a good grounding in number theory unless you've covered a good amount of algebra beforehand.
It also doesn't really matter, as long as number theory isn't done so late that you can't do Galois theory I think it's fine.

>Isn't that having it better?
That is having it better after graduating.

I was wondering if studying there really has some benefits.

I'd say yes, now that I saw closely. Quoting from Harvard's page:
>We are the only university to offer this course because we are the only university who gets such high caliber first year students

That is clearly a difference.

>I remember hearing that in Europe, you need to declare your major before entering. In USA, you don't declare your major right away and you can even change it.

Where I am it is the same. Call me biased but that makes much more sense to me. There are also no double majors or triple majors or shit like that.

>Why?

From my perspective, the university that moves first to the main areas of modern mathematics that produce research will be the best university out of the two.

I guess not number theory alone but I suppose which one takes Abstract Algebra, Analysis and Topology first will be a much better school.

If anything, it shows which school moves faster from fundamental topics to the meat of math.

As it stands, you can take real analysis as a freshman without knowing anything about calculus in Harvard..

Literally one of the warnings reads like:
>YOU FUCKING RETARDS, TAKE YOUR CALCULUS COURSES BEFORE JUMPING ON OTHER SHIT!

So you know there was one fucking Ramanujan there who thought it would be clever to skip calc 1 in favor of real analysis and then failed like the moron he was, prompting the faculty to write this warning in order to keep the other retards with delusions of grandeur from making the same mistake.

I went to a state university for 2 years, then I got the fuck out of there and went to an elite private school. Let me tell you a few things.

First of all, the overall student quality really is better at elite institutions. This makes classes better because then the professors can teach more in depth, and they can actually give challenging problems.

This brings me to my second point. Professors cover more in their classes and expect more out of students in elite institutions. I took Real Analysis at my first uni. We used baby Rudin and the plan was to cover the first 5 chapters. We never got there, and I was so frustrated that I decided to teach myself all of the missing content(up to differentiation). Well guess what, that's not good enough to take Real 2 at my second uni. I can't comment on algebra or topology because I took them at my second uni.

At my first university, I was effectively on the top. After I transferred, I was struggling through the courses. In addition, no one in my first uni told me that my mathematical proof writing was bad. All of my professors at my second uni told me that my proof writing needed work.

Are you joking nigger? Princeton has the best mathematics program in the world (yeah I said it, fight me you MIT cucks). How can you claim to make such statements when you don't even know that?

HYPe

Suck My Cock

I'm not in the ivy league sphere, but a friend of mine who is says there's lots of grade inflation.

What does it realistically take to get into one of these places for grad school?

I presumed it would only be 3.9+ fuckers, but people talk they want money enough to let a lot of people in.

...That's the whole point of them silly OP. They teach just about the same shit. It's just that they're well known for having very strict admissions so employers really want the graduates. It's simple.

yale hardvard and princeton are ivy league colleges, you have to be rediculously smart to get into them. gpa requirements are above 4.3 and the acceptance rate is less than 5 percent.

I'm not going to an Ivy League school. Am I fucked for life?

(OP)
Honestly I feel that if you're going for grad school it doesn't really matter where you go for undergrad. But you'll have to work harder than those at top schools to prove to the professors at top grad schools that they want you.

True that.
Depends on how many papers you've published in top journals, conferences etc., but more importantly how your research aligns with the professor you want to work under. You should also have a high GRE score and a high GPA; they're used for cutoffs.

if you plan on going to graduate school, then no I really don't think name-brand is too important.

Other than that, of course it will help. Is the tuition worth it if you don't get financial aid or some sort of scholarship? Doubt so.

t. cal state university student

Yes i go to arizona state, might not be the biggest name but we have just as good research funding as any ivy league

Why does the school not matter as much for grad? I heard companies,like Intel would hire no one except people from schools ike MiT. Were they only talking about undergrad?

>HYPSMC
More like CHYMPS

Companies want "qualified" candidates. If we're talking about something, say programming, then they'd obviously head up to schools where they'd find these "qualified" candidates - like HYPSMC. Of course, you could always hand in your resume - no job requires you to have a degree at an elite university, but they'll know you've been through harder shit (problems) at MIT rather than say, Louisiana State.

Grad school on the other hand cares about your research, which you don't even have to go to university for (knew a friend that knew a friend that published a paper in Mathematics without any help when he was in grade 11 or 12, and now he's doing his undergrad majoring in Math at CMU).

tl;dr your university name matters far less, research matters far more. GPA/GRE to prove that you actually know the fundamentals of your major and aren't shit at English/Math.

So, the best thing I can do at college, is try doing those research club things with professors, and having a high GPA.

If I want to be, lets say an electronic engineer, would I be doing research for any engineering club in general, or try to find a specific research group at my school?

How do certifications and internships factor into you resume?

I can't really help much since I'm just a undergrad at a top 15 world uni, but yeah I guess you could try that. Make sure to be at the top of your class btw, because that shows to professors that you're hard working, and read up on the topics that your professors are working on. Most importantly make sure that you personally are interested in the research.

Your professor's recommendations play a huge part in getting accepted to a top program (remember, they're putting their academic reputation on the line when they recommend you. You shouldn't disappoint them.)

Adding on to my previous answer above, the benefit of HYPSMC is that you have a smaller undergraduate population (probably because they're private). I don't have any friends that go to Berkeley or UCLA, but from what I've read online it's extremely difficult to get attention unless you're at the top of the class. It's insanely competitive even for company internships.

Hey, baby, wanna' help me demonstrate inelastic collisions?

okay. thank you for the information. lets see if I can "make it" in life.

>a top 15 world uni

Just say #15, senpai.

>Make sure to be at the top of your class btw, because that shows to professors that you're hard working

Jumping on this. If you can't hit the top of the class GPA-wise, hit the research even harder. Be in your department's research area and instrumental rooms as much as possible.
I got lucky with my research advisor's subject, in that I didn't really need to synchronize times with lab mates, so I could easily devote all my free time to getting work done in the wet lab and in the main instrument room. Professors start recognizing it pretty quickly

uni rankings don't really matter but ok
don't give up senpai. if you work hard, you'll get anything you want in life.

r-really? ;_;

yep. i'd actually recommend reading Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art, motivated me to work insanely hard. Speaking of work, I need to get off Veeky Forums

Ill do my best senpai.
hes not me. hes the uni rankings guy.

The only problem is. I like self studying a lot
youtube.com/watch?v=N3msAkpUumI

look at how interesting this video is. "ram me like auger, senpai!" You can't get that form of entertainment from a classroom!

what anime is that from

oreimo. But, Ive stopped watching anime, so I could study more science.

I would do this, but the biggest reservation for me is the question: what happens if all the hard work you do doesn't pay off in the end?

When I was in high school I pretty much spent the time I had studying to get 5A*s on my A Levels instead of living a normal life. But when I started hearing back from all the universities I applied to, I had literally only three choices to choose from out of 12.

And yes, those three ones were pretty bullshit tier desu. And no, it wasn't because I applied to only ultra selective universities.

Meanwhile some nigger from an African country waltzes into (insert Ivy here) with a full scholarship, and I'm stuck in a dump to be completely forgotten by everyone I once knew.

I would've had the same outcome if I just jerked off to anime all day for 6 years.

If you had 5A*s, how did you get rejected from 9 unis? Aren't British uni requirements just AAA or A*AA at most?

(i'm not brit as you can see)

>acceptance rate is less than 5 percent
there are chinese unis with acceptance rates under 1%
>muh acceptance rate
means fuck all anyway, just a way to rob rich white cucks for another status symbol. grade inflation makes it nearly impossible to fail

I applied to US universities. I'm from a third world country but I study under the British system.

I could've pretty much satisfied any offer, but I couldn't apply to Brit unis like Cambridge because I had to actually fly all the way to Britbongistan just to conduct an interview in person.

Also because the deadlines for applications were insanely early and completely bullshit imho

I think Yale is, but the others really aren't. Harvard and Princeton are all around good (Harvard for everything from mathematics to law/business schools and Princeton for just about everything, but most notably the Institute for Advanced Study). MIT and Caltech are exceptional for STEM, though probably not as much for other fields (though at Caltech, at least, every student regardless of major has to take a quantum mechanics class). Stanford is a bit behind Harvard, but it's kind of like the Harvard of the west coast. Honestly, Yale isn't that great. I think the only reason it's highly regarded is because it's the second oldest school in the US (in terms of how good it is, I'd put it as a lower ivy league school like Brown or Cornell).

Not to mention India's IITs which have acceptance rates of

I see. It's retarded that they want you to fly to England for interviews. My friend told me that Oxford conducts interviews over Skype, but idk how accurate it is.

your odds are pretty bad unless you're already at one of them. "Where you go for undergrad doesn't matter for getting into grad school" is a myth. Something like 5 or 10% of the domestic math grad school admits at harvard went to public universities, for example.

kekkarinos. I'm not going to go into details but I'm a current undergrad transfer at stanford and it's like being on a different planet compared to my previous institution.

The odds are pretty bad, but it isn't impossible.
How are Stanford undergraduates? Every one that I've met have been complete assholes.

They do, but not Cambridge for some reason. And I was only really interested in Cambridge.

What was the acceptance rate of your previous institution? If you got in I'm assuming it was from a similarly ranked institution.

I'm pretty sure the difference is more because of acceptance rates than actual rankings.

My school is ranked #5 for this particular area, but most of the undergrads in my department are fucking retarded for example. Because we literally accept anyone (60% admit rate).

Okay so I had typed up a reply to you yesterday but I accidentally clicked the fucking Veeky Forums "privacy" thing above post so it got deleted. So here it is again:

>I guess not number theory alone but I suppose which one takes Abstract Algebra, Analysis and Topology first will be a much better school.
You first need to know analysis before you can do topology, how do you expect so much real analysis and metric spaces to be covered in such a short amount of time?

>As it stands, you can take real analysis as a freshman without knowing anything about calculus in Harvard..
Yes, you do not need calculus for something like real analysis, which is a fundamental course for a first term undergrad. It helps them mature very fast as they struggle with analysis - their first bit of difficult maths.
It's not hard proof of course, but I'm very glad real analysis was done first year first term for me. I learnt how to struggle and later modules throughout my life were made nicer because of that.
Though perhaps I'm misunderstanding what calculus is.

>>YOU FUCKING RETARDS, TAKE YOUR CALCULUS COURSES BEFORE JUMPING ON OTHER SHIT!
Perhaps such free choice is given for those who have already read far ahead before coming to uni and wish to have a jump start.

>Princeton has the best mathematics program in the world
According to which ranking system? Source?

I thought that Harvard had the best mathematics program.. if not Harvard then Cambridge, but this is what I've heard irl and not based on any source

Yeah, Harvard and Cambridge are top 2 regulars.

Plus, Harvard's Math 55 is "the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country".

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_55

>you'll never be elite
>you'll never even be good
>when you get your BS, future Ivy students still in highschool know more about everything than you
Why bother, to be frank.

If you know you're going to be under informed by the end of your undergrad, why not use the free time that you have to study up and make postgrad easier to enter?

>They do, but not Cambridge for some reason. And I was only really interested in Cambridge.
I see my young self in yourself user. I was also previously a "Cambridge or nothing" guy.

+1
A lot of Ivy League students subconsciously relax, thinking that that they have their life made just because they got into their top choice. But you in that shitty university aren't, therefore you are more hardworking than they are at that time.

why do people care for cambridge so much

>why do people care for cambridge so much
Prestige and the mathematical tripos.
Their maths course is great, but some other top 10 unis are also very close in terms of course content.
But since Cambridge is top in the UK, any aspiring pre-uni student will be aiming for that.

I don't. That's why I didn't bother to fly my ass 24 hours to the other end of the world to even get interviewed.

Oxford would've given a Skype interview, but I don't like Oxford. It gives too much of a liberal arts vibe.

Which college did you apply to? And which country are you living in?

I'm in the US atm.

Too lazy to list down the places I applied to, but I remember getting rejected from fucking Purdue.

Fucking. Purdue.

But I am Asian and male for what its worth.

My roommate shares a similar story. He got a silver medal at the IMO and shares my acceptances, rejections, and waitlists.

Meanwhile one of his female colleagues that represented my country in the same year got into literally everywhere, including Harvard and MIT.

I just don't know anymore senpai.

>inb4 reee get rekt fucking pajeet

No, I am not Indian.

Damn dude. I'd assume he got rejected because essays. I never bothered trying for IMO because I was a third culture kid and it wouldn't feel morally right to represent a country I'm not a citizen of

Oh sorry, I should have been clearer.
There's a reason I said college and not colleges - I meant which Cambridge college did you apply to?
>He got a silver medal at the IMO
Not sure if it's UK only, but this gives you almost instant access to Cambridge, iirc it allowed you to skip the STEP exam and possibly the interviews (can't find a link, but I remembering reading this on their site when I applying for unis).

Currently at Cambridge and can inform that Cambridge mathematics is actually a form of cruel and unusual punishment

Warwick second year here.
We seem to have the same amount of content as you, or close, but you guys do that in EITHER FUCKING WEEKS WITH TWELVE SUPERVISIONS WHAT THE FUCK.
I feel that the workload is high here, but we have 10 weeks.

>EITHER
That should be EIGHT, not EITHER.

Possibly. He is autistic and has trouble speaking. Even in his native tongue. Applying to US universities exclusively probably magnified his disability since you people absolutely hate autists.

I'm a third culture kid as well. He's a little less so since he's never lived abroad, but we belong to the same ethnic minority in our country, which produces a vast majority of the mathletes.

As far as patriotism is concerned, nobody really cares. In fact its quite well known that most medalists use their IMO medals to escape overseas from here. Brain drain, yadda yadda, but it is what it is.

But its really the fault of the government that treats us all like Jews and wants to exterminate us. Just what you'd expect from a third world country desu.

>third world country
Which?

Since you insist.

youtube.com/watch?v=SD5oMxbMcHM

>Harvard
rich fucks
>Stanford
muh EE and CS
>Yale
muh history
>MIT
muh fundamental research and grants
>Caltech
muh feynman
muh a-bomb

Yeah it does give him instant access. But as said, Cambridge pure math is pure suffering.

He knows a lot of people who went down that route and ended up depressed as fuck, so he decided to crash at a more chill university instead.

Probably isn't a bad choice. All he does now is play Undertale, browse tumblr and jack off to inklings while presumably breaking all the curves in his classes.

Also, it didn't help that I didn't know the IMO existed (third world country, no one cares about the IMO, they only care about the entrance exam which you have to take to get into the most prestigious engineering university nationally)

It also didn't help that I chose the cheapest international school that my parents could afford, = shit quality teaching. Had to retake my English IGCSE twice since my school couldn't find an English teacher.

desu it's just high school and now i'm in college it doesn't matter, but i'm still salty that i got screwed over because bad luck.

if only i had stayed in my original country (first world) none of this would've happened

where's princeton senpai

>He knows a lot of people who went down that route and ended up depressed as fuck
Yes, Cambridge is well known as a breeding ground for depression.
They also scale the grades in the sens that only the top 10% get a first. So it doesn't matter if you score 90+%, it doesn't guarantee a first, which makes people a lot more competitive and collaborative work a lot less rare.
However, if you think you have the nerves and guts to get a first in Cambridge, then by all means you should go.
>Also, it didn't help that I didn't know the IMO existed
No matter which country you're in, first or third world, if you're at a shit school, you won't know either.
Heck, I only knew about the senior maths challenge and scored highly enough to participate in the british maths olympiad round 1. I didn't know it existed, nor did my school, which ended up in me being told about it only a couple of days beforehand.
>if only i had stayed in my original country (first world) none of this would've happened
Why did you move?

>IGCSE

Colleges don't care about this, unless you're shooting for med school. I'm surprised you think it could've possibly harmed your odds.

>original country (first world)

Why the fuck did you move then?

>Also, it didn't help that I didn't know the IMO existed (third world country

Don't know which third world country you're from, but in mine it's all the rage since its the ticket out.

I moved because the recession in the late 2000s affected my family; my dad had a high chance of losing his job, and since my house was rented, according to my parents (not sure if this is true) if he had lost his job a lot of complicated shit with money would have went down.

So he quit and we moved back to our original country (third world).

AFAIK colleges do care about IGCSE because of too many applicants with AAA or A*AA. Didn't matter anyways because since my sister wanted to go to America for her MS degree, my parents didn't have enough money by the time I finished high school and so I had to stay in my third world country.

>now i'm in college it doesn't matter, but i'm still salty that i got screwed over because bad luck.
Out of curiosity, what are you studying and what year are you in?

May as well add that I didn't do the national curriculum because it promotes memorization of science and doesn't promote creativity. Plus English is treated as a second language and is easy af.

>original country (first world)

>original country (third world)

something doesn't match up here.

On summer vacation currently, starting second year in a month. Computer Science.

It's highschool, you can't really get creative.
Furthermore, for subjects like maths and science, you do need some memorisation at the fundamental level so that you can actually understand what's going on at the higher levels where you can actually be creative.
There's no point trying to teach number theory to someone who hasn't memorised the counting system yet.

Okay so there's actually not much of a problem here.
Since you're in CS, you have plenty of time to get ahead on work and learn more in the mean time.
It's suggested that you do some reading outside of CS into maths and science so later on you can show that you can actually apply the CS and that you're not just a disposable code monkey.

Sorry. My parents moved from a third world country to a first world country. I was born in that first world country, but since recession happened, had to move back to the third world country where my parents are from.

In a sense they are both my original country.

Honestly, you could almost be me. Minus failing IGCSE English of course, lmao. And CS.

Let's just hope we can turn this shit around, brand name or not.

Yeah, but there's one problem: I don't know the local language.

Even after living here for 11 years. Hell, even my English is pretty shit. I'm just shit at languages in general. Though I'm good at spelling in English.

Plus I don't have friends (that's why i'm on Veeky Forums) since I don't fit in culturally. There are a ton of westaboos here that think America is the best country ever, but never think of the ramifications of moving to such a capitalist country.

Replace America with the western country of your choice btw.

>I don't know the local language.
But you're fluent enough at Snglish to be able to type in it right (evidently it seems)?
So why not learn some things in English instead?
It'll make you much more employable internationally too.

I guess I could try.

Good luck user, I believe in you.
Leave the saltiness behind and focus on what you have, most of us are trying to do the same.

Are you me? Seriously. What the fuck.