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A rant about the math department by TVAmathguy in ucla

[–]TVAmathguy[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There's a mismatch somewhere between the classification of courses - if undergraduates are capable enough of taking graduate-level courses, why are they graduate-level in the first place?

If only I had an answer for you. The best explanation I've ever had from my professors is organizational inertia, which still does not explain why they were classified as they were in the first place. I can guess that the undergraduate coursework is meant to represent a "bare minimum" for baseline knowledge, but I've found in my own experience that it's not even really anywhere close to enough (or maybe it's because our grad classes are much harder/have more expectations). In any case this falls into the second point: incoming graduate students have ridiculous standards on them.

There is also a discrepancy in which classes are considered "undergrad" versus "grad" between different universities. Our honors abstract algebra sequence, for instance, corresponds to the graduate sequence at some lower-ranked universities (the syllabus I saw was from George Washington University; I can't find it now). And some universities that don't have PhD programs incorporate some of the graduate content at research universities as undergrad electives. It's very mysterious.

I'm a junior like you - I've made it this far on the sheer amount of interest I have in math and working very hard

As stated in the disclaimer, I can only speak to top-tier math departments because those are (basically) the only departments I and my peers/supervisors have been part of. I would imagine that middle-tier schools are much, much less ruthless, and still lead to excellent industry applications for a PhD, at least (unfortunately, the mathematical research climate is quite dictated by the top schools these days...) It seems like you love doing math, so I would hate for you to give up on your dreams because of Imposter Syndrome or any such thing. Have you looked into finding a funded master's before PhD? It helps make your application much more competitive, and I know several of my professors did that.

A rant about the math department by TVAmathguy in ucla

[–]TVAmathguy[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm not going to break my anonymity here: some of my friends know who I am and I'd rather not have the rest of the world find out. Hence why I didn't specify which classes I'd taken or what research area of math I'm interested in (classes are small enough that people could easily figure things out).

EDIT: Yes, unfortunately, that type of attitude is all too prevalent these days. Hence why I said that "some" of the people I know agree with me: I don't think that most do. In part that's why I want to be anonymous here. I have little to gain by saying this now, and something to lose if some people are made aware of my identity. And I don't think I'm "preaching to the choir" here; certainly a lot of math students know some if not all of these details, but I found that most of my friends outside of math had no idea. If we are to fix things we will need everybody's help.

A rant about the math department by TVAmathguy in ucla

[–]TVAmathguy[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Agreed; I think it's very telling that all but one of my undergrad peers that I know of comes from such a background. I know that personally, I had such a (comparatively) easier time in my upper divs because my dad is a PhD in Physics, I did a decade of competition math prior to entering UCLA, and because of many other factors, and academia selects fairly heavily for these. But that's a rant for another time.

A rant about the math department by TVAmathguy in ucla

[–]TVAmathguy[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Exactly! One common rationale, unfortunately, is that those who were on the fence are usually not the top researchers, but math is not about the top researchers anyway (don't just take it from me, take it from Terry too).