The rigor of LACs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's with all the LAC threads lately? They reek of insecurity.

They do; but the insecurity is not on the part of the SLAC parents. Rather it is on those who continue to spew nonsense towards SLACs and it is quite entertaining watching people with life experience on both sides step in and set them straight. Its pretty obvious that those with experience on both sides of the argument are solidly in support of SLACs.

No, this type of comment is exactly what PP was referring to when he said these threads reek of insecurity.

+100

+100, rather than +1, likewise reeks of insecurity.

[Anonymous]

From the student side, https://listed.to/@vt/47117/first-math-update-in-uchicago" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> https://listed.to/@vt/47117/first-math-update-in-uchicago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you find a LAC whose freshman analysis sequence covers the topics listed I'm this comment, or similar?

https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1gviqgo/differences_in_undergrad_math_programs/ly78zey/

I had a similar sequence at Maryland, College Park. They no longer offer this tiny honors sequence.

I'm pretty sure you could get something worthy at Harvey Mudd.

Professors disproportionately send their own kids to liberal arts colleges. Small schools are focused on undergrads, where professors aren't managing big labs and travelling to research conferences.

Most undergrads don't need highly specialized education at the cutting edge of research. They thrive with standard classes, good classmates, and attentive professors.

Analysis is not ordinarily offered to freshmen at Mudd.

Perhaps the primary reason is that Harvey Mudd has a strict core requirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math 55, which cannot be less rigorous than UofC honors analysis, covers most of the undergraduate math curriculum (100 level courses at Harvard, already pretty hair raising stuff) but does not delve in any depth into graduate topics (200 level courses, the cliffs of insanity). There's just no way honors analysis is harder than that, so it's an exaggeration to say it would be a graduate class at most schools, unless you're thinking of schools like Montclair State.

HOWEVER, not a single LAC in the country offers the equivalent of Math 55 or honors analysis. They are extremely accelerated classes for a small sliver of the national undergrad population. Those kids didn't go to LACs. So UChicago booster is right in that respect.

They’re correct, but a student that strong in math, should just start in graduate courses. Math 55 makes sense, but the Uchicago class seems like a borderline incoherent offering when they have a graduate department in mathematics that would set up a precocious student in mathematics anyway.

Math 55 was set up to gatekeep precocious freshmen out of advanced undergrad/graduate courses which were not developmentally appropriate for them as eighteen year olds and in which they were repeatedly crashing and burning, even if they were nominally "qualified" to handle the material. I would imagine honors analysis has a similar backstory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you find a LAC whose freshman analysis sequence covers the topics listed I'm this comment, or similar?

https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1gviqgo/differences_in_undergrad_math_programs/ly78zey/

I had a similar sequence at Maryland, College Park. They no longer offer this tiny honors sequence.

I'm pretty sure you could get something worthy at Harvey Mudd.

Professors disproportionately send their own kids to liberal arts colleges. Small schools are focused on undergrads, where professors aren't managing big labs and travelling to research conferences.

Most undergrads don't need highly specialized education at the cutting edge of research. They thrive with standard classes, good classmates, and attentive professors.

Analysis is not ordinarily offered to freshmen at Mudd.

Perhaps the primary reason is that Harvey Mudd has a strict core requirement.

Mudd also isn't interested in training pure mathematicians and they are small, so multiple tracks for math aren't as feasible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you find a LAC whose freshman analysis sequence covers the topics listed I'm this comment, or similar?

https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1gviqgo/differences_in_undergrad_math_programs/ly78zey/

I had a similar sequence at Maryland, College Park. They no longer offer this tiny honors sequence.

I'm pretty sure you could get something worthy at Harvey Mudd.

Professors disproportionately send their own kids to liberal arts colleges. Small schools are focused on undergrads, where professors aren't managing big labs and travelling to research conferences.

Most undergrads don't need highly specialized education at the cutting edge of research. They thrive with standard classes, good classmates, and attentive professors.

Analysis is not ordinarily offered to freshmen at Mudd.

Perhaps the primary reason is that Harvey Mudd has a strict core requirement.

So does UChicago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math 55, which cannot be less rigorous than UofC honors analysis, covers most of the undergraduate math curriculum (100 level courses at Harvard, already pretty hair raising stuff) but does not delve in any depth into graduate topics (200 level courses, the cliffs of insanity). There's just no way honors analysis is harder than that, so it's an exaggeration to say it would be a graduate class at most schools, unless you're thinking of schools like Montclair State.

HOWEVER, not a single LAC in the country offers the equivalent of Math 55 or honors analysis. They are extremely accelerated classes for a small sliver of the national undergrad population. Those kids didn't go to LACs. So UChicago booster is right in that respect.

They’re correct, but a student that strong in math, should just start in graduate courses. Math 55 makes sense, but the Uchicago class seems like a borderline incoherent offering when they have a graduate department in mathematics that would set up a precocious student in mathematics anyway.

Math 55 was set up to gatekeep precocious freshmen out of advanced undergrad/graduate courses which were not developmentally appropriate for them as eighteen year olds and in which they were repeatedly crashing and burning, even if they were nominally "qualified" to handle the material. I would imagine honors analysis has a similar backstory.

The graduate level analysis course at UChicago is a level beyond even 20700.

And to be clear, I'm not a booster for any specific college, I was just clearing the air of the false notion that top SLACs have the same rigor as top non-SLACs, at least for math where rigor differences are objective and easy to distinguish from syllabi.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Math 55, which cannot be less rigorous than UofC honors analysis, covers most of the undergraduate math curriculum (100 level courses at Harvard, already pretty hair raising stuff) but does not delve in any depth into graduate topics (200 level courses, the cliffs of insanity). There's just no way honors analysis is harder than that, so it's an exaggeration to say it would be a graduate class at most schools, unless you're thinking of schools like Montclair State.

HOWEVER, not a single LAC in the country offers the equivalent of Math 55 or honors analysis. They are extremely accelerated classes for a small sliver of the national undergrad population. Those kids didn't go to LACs. So UChicago booster is right in that respect.

It's not an exaggeration, because 20700-20800-20900 is only analysis for a full year, where's math 55 covers many different topics in the same time frame. Therefore, the UChicago honors analysis sequence can go deeper into graduate level material without needing to be way more work than math 55.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very few LACs are anywhere near the rigor of top engineering universities. That's what happens when your school is mostly "soft" subjects.

Of course you have zero context for this statement and you are just pulling stuff out of you behind….butt whatever.

Just ignore this troll.

Having not attended a Reed/Swarthmore/etc I can't comment on those specifically but comparing workloads to my peers who went to those, my LAC not particularly known for intensity still provided me with plenty of work to keep me up all night. I ended up in the top 5 or so of my graduating class, so hard workers can work hard anywhere.

Maybe the difference is that the baseline is higher at the Reeds and Swarthmores of the country, whereas my peers in college could have probably skirted by and gotten Cs with lower effort than it would take to do so at Reed.

That's really the difference. I don't think Reed or Swarthmore students are getting a different math education than Pomona and Williams students; but, I think they probably expect a little more work for a B at the former than the latter.

Which is a shame, because Harvard, Caltech, UChicago, MIT etc undergrads are definitely getting a different math education.

https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1gviqgo/differences_in_undergrad_math_programs/

The linked dicussion compares top universities to lesser ranked. "You can be a great math student at any school in the top 50 or so, but outside of basically the top 10ish you will have to go out of your way to do so..." If you're at a top LAC, the math opportunities are unlimited, if you work at it, and you have easier access to work with professors. See e.g. https://math.williams.edu/small/ "The SMALL Undergraduate Research Project is a nine-week residential summer program in which undergraduates investigate open research problems in mathematics."

Math is a bit unique in this, but top math PhD programs don't care much about undergrad research as they do coursework because the research that can be done by someone without graduate level knowledge and training isn't very predictive of their ability to do cutting edge mathematical research, a large part of which involves picking up the cutting edge techniques of the field in a short period of time. A better predictor of this is advanced coursework.

To see how crazy things can get, here are the courses taken by Dexter Chua at Cambridge prior to his PhD at Harvard: https://dec41.user.srcf.net/notes/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you find a LAC whose freshman analysis sequence covers the topics listed I'm this comment, or similar?

https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1gviqgo/differences_in_undergrad_math_programs/ly78zey/

I had a similar sequence at Maryland, College Park. They no longer offer this tiny honors sequence.

I'm pretty sure you could get something worthy at Harvey Mudd.

Professors disproportionately send their own kids to liberal arts colleges. Small schools are focused on undergrads, where professors aren't managing big labs and travelling to research conferences.

Most undergrads don't need highly specialized education at the cutting edge of research. They thrive with standard classes, good classmates, and attentive professors.

Analysis is not ordinarily offered to freshmen at Mudd.

Perhaps the primary reason is that Harvey Mudd has a strict core requirement.

Mudd also isn't interested in training pure mathematicians and they are small, so multiple tracks for math aren't as feasible.

Certainly. That being said, the "why" doesn't change the "what". And Mudd is about as good as it gets for SLACs in terms of math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math 55, which cannot be less rigorous than UofC honors analysis, covers most of the undergraduate math curriculum (100 level courses at Harvard, already pretty hair raising stuff) but does not delve in any depth into graduate topics (200 level courses, the cliffs of insanity). There's just no way honors analysis is harder than that, so it's an exaggeration to say it would be a graduate class at most schools, unless you're thinking of schools like Montclair State.

HOWEVER, not a single LAC in the country offers the equivalent of Math 55 or honors analysis. They are extremely accelerated classes for a small sliver of the national undergrad population. Those kids didn't go to LACs. So UChicago booster is right in that respect.

It's not an exaggeration, because 20700-20800-20900 is only analysis for a full year, where's math 55 covers many different topics in the same time frame. Therefore, the UChicago honors analysis sequence can go deeper into graduate level material without needing to be way more work than math 55.

If the UChicago sequence covers alleged graduate topics in analysis, it does so at the expense of abstract algebra, which is imo the bigger prize. But life is full of tradeoffs; the choice seems very Russian to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math 55, which cannot be less rigorous than UofC honors analysis, covers most of the undergraduate math curriculum (100 level courses at Harvard, already pretty hair raising stuff) but does not delve in any depth into graduate topics (200 level courses, the cliffs of insanity). There's just no way honors analysis is harder than that, so it's an exaggeration to say it would be a graduate class at most schools, unless you're thinking of schools like Montclair State.

HOWEVER, not a single LAC in the country offers the equivalent of Math 55 or honors analysis. They are extremely accelerated classes for a small sliver of the national undergrad population. Those kids didn't go to LACs. So UChicago booster is right in that respect.

It's not an exaggeration, because 20700-20800-20900 is only analysis for a full year, where's math 55 covers many different topics in the same time frame. Therefore, the UChicago honors analysis sequence can go deeper into graduate level material without needing to be way more work than math 55.

If the UChicago sequence covers alleged graduate topics in analysis, it does so at the expense of abstract algebra, which is imo the bigger prize. But life is full of tradeoffs; the choice seems very Russian to me.

Honors algebra is the next year. It's a two quarter sequence I believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you find a LAC whose freshman analysis sequence covers the topics listed I'm this comment, or similar?

https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1gviqgo/differences_in_undergrad_math_programs/ly78zey/

I had a similar sequence at Maryland, College Park. They no longer offer this tiny honors sequence.

I'm pretty sure you could get something worthy at Harvey Mudd.

Professors disproportionately send their own kids to liberal arts colleges. Small schools are focused on undergrads, where professors aren't managing big labs and travelling to research conferences.

Most undergrads don't need highly specialized education at the cutting edge of research. They thrive with standard classes, good classmates, and attentive professors.

Analysis is not ordinarily offered to freshmen at Mudd.

Perhaps the primary reason is that Harvey Mudd has a strict core requirement.

Mudd also isn't interested in training pure mathematicians and they are small, so multiple tracks for math aren't as feasible.

Certainly. That being said, the "why" doesn't change the "what". And Mudd is about as good as it gets for SLACs in terms of math.

According to Who? They're great at CS, Physics, and Engineering, but Mudd's claim to fame is certainly not mathematics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math 55, which cannot be less rigorous than UofC honors analysis, covers most of the undergraduate math curriculum (100 level courses at Harvard, already pretty hair raising stuff) but does not delve in any depth into graduate topics (200 level courses, the cliffs of insanity). There's just no way honors analysis is harder than that, so it's an exaggeration to say it would be a graduate class at most schools, unless you're thinking of schools like Montclair State.

HOWEVER, not a single LAC in the country offers the equivalent of Math 55 or honors analysis. They are extremely accelerated classes for a small sliver of the national undergrad population. Those kids didn't go to LACs. So UChicago booster is right in that respect.

They’re correct, but a student that strong in math, should just start in graduate courses. Math 55 makes sense, but the Uchicago class seems like a borderline incoherent offering when they have a graduate department in mathematics that would set up a precocious student in mathematics anyway.

+1, I don't really see the point. If a student is that advanced, move on?

[Anonymous]

Why argue over extremely advanced math courses that are relevant to ~100 freshmen across the entire country per year? All of these schools provide a solid education in mathematics that will set their students up for success.