<p>I am an incoming student in the CAS and I'm considering majoring in math (on top of other things, depending on what I decide to do).</p>
<p>I have always been fairly talented in mathematics, and did decently along with my fellow classmates in several NJ math competitions (we were first in our county). I took AP BC Calculus this year, did very well and thought the AP test was fairly easy. But, I'm no genius and IDT my high school math record has any bearing on how I'll do in Penn's math department</p>
<p>How hard is the material and how harsh is the grading in Penn's math department? I can be passionate about mathematics and am aware that a math major can really help me stand out for jobs and graduate school, but I dont want to major in this subject if it means killing my GPA or having virtually no social life.</p>
<p>I am actually planning to declare a second major in math next year. There are two ways you can begin the math major. You can take the regular sequence (math 104, 114, 240) or honors. If you want to major in math I would recommend taking honors (math 116, 260), I took the regular sequence and wish I had gone with honors. The sequence is much more similar to the higher level courses as it is proof based. It’s supposed to be more work but manageable. Math 104, 114, 240, and 241 are not very good courses. Content wise they are not too bad but they are very poorly taught. Math 104 is said to have a pretty harsh curve but grading gets better after that. As for the higher level courses, I have not taken any yet but will be taking a few next semester. I hear algebra (370-371 or 502-503 if you want a more theoretical version) is pretty abstract so it is a lot of work. Analysis I hear is a little less demanding. I hear the other courses are pretty good too.</p>
<p>@Poeme, thank you for your advice. But, not to be intrusive, (and this question is for ANYONE who wants to answer), how hard is it to maintain decent grades in the math courses at Penn. Are B+s to A’s reasonably within reach or require a ****load of work?</p>
<p>It’s definitely reasonable to get grades within that range. However the difficulty of these courses varies for each individual. Also, you will notice in college that it is not just about the amount of time you spend studying but how you study. This also comes into play for problem sets, it’s a lot better to think about them before writing anything down so you won’t get stuck going in circles without any results.</p>
<p>The Math major is hard. Or rather, there are alot of requirements that can become really nasty. More so than any department though, it really depends on your professor. The same class taught by different professors can result in drastically different experiences.</p>
<p>Generally I would say that don’t judge whether you want to major in math from what you did in HS. Unless you did alot of analysis / proof based math, most of HS math, even competition stuff, are just tricks and computational bs. I would strongly take a proof-based course as early as you can without a decent prof and see how it goes for you, which i guess translates to go take math 116/260 i guess.</p>
<p>I completely agree with that statement. Math as a subject is a lot different from pretty much everything you do in high school. Even in 114 and 240 (which are much less theoretical than the standard math major courses) you can sort of see this by watching how the professors do things. They tend to have very unique ways of thinking that actually might have caused them trouble in high school math! I really enjoy math now since I really didn’t like how a lot of the stuff we did in high school lacked any sort of reasoning or explanation. If you had asked me if I wanted to do a math major in high school, I would have said absolutely not.</p>