Reply to Are these schools good for math (pure, or applied)?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Take NyU off and add some ivies and uchicago [/quote]

Really? Ever hear of Courant? NYU is very good at math.[/quote] That's at the graduate level, though. I don't see any evidence of their undergraduate program being particularly rigorous.[/quote]

Who said this is just about undergrad? Why do you make the rules?

And how do you determine if an undergrad program is rigorous? One of the smartest mathematicians I have ever met went to a completely random school for undergrad, mainly for financial reasons. They were highly motivated and did the work to get into an elite PhD program and went from there.[/quote]
So we should just conclude that every college has a good math program since there’s always going to be an incredibly intelligent student who can make it work? What a useless comment. [/quote]

I'm saying that it is very hard to differentiate between these schools at such a granular level and most people who are capable of doing so are likely doing better things with their lives than posting here. And that most people doing so might be doing it based on one or two data points, so I am pre-emptively shooting all of that down by providing a contrarian data point.

There are a handful of kids in America for whom the nuanced differences between different math departments truly matter. These kids are off the charts. You know them when you meet them (and you probably haven't met them). Skippy or Sanjay or Hong taking Calculus at TJ or Stuy as a freshman or sophomore does not qualify him in this group.[/quote] On the contrary, that elite group is the best equipped to make a random school work for them by impressing professors to get research opportunities, skipping prerequisites, taking grad courses first year even if that's against department policy, etc.

Skippy, Sanjay, and Hong need a school with a strong official math track that will challenge them without also requiring them to fight their way through red tape at the same time. Not to mention the social benefits of having a cohort of students at the same level as you whom you can bounce ideas off of and, yes, even learn from. And they stand a good chance of running out of math at a LAC, considering they could be taking analysis junior year.[/quote]

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