<p>So, in your case, do you imply that the “useful information” you learned in relevant courses don’t help in your research at all? In other words, you could’ve succeeded in your research WITHOUT knowing anything you learned in your relevant classes?</p>
<p>This is an interesting idea, because a professor told me to take say, real analysis before I do some math research with him. Maybe I should just tell him it doesn’t matter, as long as I have perseverance?</p>
<p>I don’t know the first thing about math research, but it sounds to me like learning real analysis for math research is equivalent to learning basic experimental methods for biology research. In other words, this is a class that provides tools for performing research, not a class that is “relevant” to your research topic per se.</p>
<p>That’s pretty indispensable, as no amount of perseverance will help you succeed in research if you’re lacking even basic skills, but that again only has to do with a specific class and nothing to do with overall GPA.</p>
<p>If the same professor told you to take immunology before performing immunology research, protein folding before performing prion research, or cancer biology before performing cancer research, I would argue against the necessity of all three, as I have seen firsthand that not taking such classes beforehand has had no hindrance on the quality of student research in those fields.</p>
<p>Well, in maths, the closest thing to experimentation methods is probably conjecture & proof techniques.</p>
<p>Any way, take a look at a summer research program at: [Rose-Hulman</a> Math REU](<a href=“404 | Rose-Hulman”>404 | Rose-Hulman)
For each research topic, the institute actually requires the applicants to have the background listed in brackets (like group theory for the computational number theory research). Then, such requirement I assume, is deemed necessary by the faculty there to yield some considerable research progress.
Yes, we can argue that students can actually approach these research topics from scratch using just proof techniques and some creativity in problem solving (you can actually do this for any branch of math I assume, provided with some axioms), but that’s just reinventing the wheel. You can however, obtain similar background for the computational number theory research topic from some applied class like cryptography.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just this school doing such background screening. I am not sure. However, what I am most curious about is, is “experimentation tool” ALL you need for performing research? OR, this is actually field dependent? In fact, every where I look online, at least for the Math REU’s, the institutes actually explicitly say the applicants should have taken some advanced maths classes in so and so.</p>
<p>Hope kryptonsa36 or any one else can comment on this.</p>
<p>The general classes need for a math REU vary, but very little. ~99% of the time they require linear algebra and at least one class in advanced proofs, which is typically either Abstract Algebra and/or Real Analysis. It seems to be that it is to make sure you know what pure “math” truly is. Then, of course, depending on the program it can vary. An algebraic program may require algebra, while a more applied one will require diff eq.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your point here is ccpsux. I didn’t want to read the whole thing again. Sorry if I repeat myself. I don’t want to pm or im with you, I just wanted a pointless argument to get off the board.</p>
<p>It seems that your position is that the better grades you get, the better researcher you are. Many people are telling you that this has not shown to be the case. People hone skills when they suddenly need them…or they end up TA’ing a class they got a B in and now they attend the class and grade the papers and are an expert.</p>
<p>REU and other programs are very competitive. One cut is gpa.</p>
<p>I think you mistake that a 3.0 student in any particular class has less knowledge than a 4.0 for research purposes. Both showed that they mastered material. Doing research is another matter. The 3.0 may have taken a grad level class, either for credit, or just on his own to gain the knowledge needed for his summer research.</p>
<p>Can you remind us of what you hope to gain by this conversation?</p>
<p>"It seems that your position is that the better grades you get, the better researcher you are. "
No, I didn’t say that, BrownParent.</p>
<p>Some one claimed that, all one needs, using examples drawn from the biological fields, is just some basic “experimentation” knowledge to conduct research. Hence, taking classes beyond that point won’t help. I was just trying to say this might not apply to ALL disciplines. And as you said, “The 3.0 may have taken a grad level class, either for credit, or just on his own to gain the knowledge needed for his summer research.” </p>
<p>Actually, some one else has answered my question even before your first post. However, all of a sudden, you came in with some different viewpoint so I responded accordingly, all the way till now.</p>
<p>Any way, I guess people have different experiences in how they obtain their research opportunities, so thanks for all the inputs and since this thread has grown so big and gone off topic, we can put a halt to this now.</p>