<p>I know that the department is ranked pretty high on the NSTC list, but does that reflect how effectively students learn/teachers teach Physics or Math?</p>
<p>Also, how challenging would a science or engineering degree be? (I'd want a challenge, FYI)</p>
<p>I'm having a tough time deciding between Cornell and Berkeley. Even though Cornell is an Ivy, Berkeley SEEMS to have a better Physics/Math department...</p>
<p>berkeley, i believe is the number one research university in math</p>
<p>not sure about physics though.</p>
<p>But does amazing reserach = amazing education?</p>
<p>Berkeley's math department is INSANELY good. Amazing research need not mean amazing teachers, but it does mean an amazing selection of courses, elite faculty to give you letters of recommendation, and so forth - you'd be surprised how important that can be. I think it is very clear that Berkeley's math faculty will be on average more elite than Cornell's....generally the top math faculty come from Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Harvard, and UChicago...along with other great schools like UMichigan.</p>
<p>How good of an instruction you get in math courses depends a great deal on how lucky you are with the GSI.</p>
<p>Here's my experience regarding Berkeley undergraduate mathematics.</p>
<p>Pro:
Huge selection of both undergraduate and graduate courses both pure and applied. It will be VERY HARD to find another university that can offer courses on basically every area of mathematics including cutting edge ones like model theory or stack-based algebraic geometry or bio-mathematical modeling.</p>
<p>Your professors will be leaders in their field and their letters of recommendation can indeed for very valuable for you if you do research for them. My Intro Algebraic Geometry professor was for example the former president of AMS.</p>
<p>Large of amount of resources are available if you're willing to be proactive and look for them yourself. The best mathematicians all over the world come to Berkeley to give talks. So there are endless seminars and colloquiums about exciting on-going research in mathematics and some are quite accessible to undergrads who specialize in that area. </p>
<p>Cons:
The math department basically has no money and thus spends very little on undergrad education. 5 of the 6 upper-division math courses I took had NO GSI, and for the other class, we had one GSI shared between 4 classes (about 80 people) !! Your professors will often be post-docs and ill-trained in teaching. However, there are ample GSI-access if you take graduate classes.</p>
<p>Since the department cares not a lot about undergraduates, the professors will often give very low grades. Mathematics is the major in Berkeley with the lowest average GPA at 2.7. Some professors will give no As or one or two based on their fancy. However, a lot of professors are also extremely nice (like my AM prof mentioned above) and are very sympathetic to the plight of the undergrads.</p>
<p>It is sometimes hard to get into classes you want; this is again a problem with the funding. The classes you get in are often packed and since Evans (where most of your math classes will be held) is a crappy-ass building, your classes can get incredibly hot when close to the summer.</p>
<p>So, in summary, if you come to Berkeley math, (1) finish up the upper-divs fast (2) take as many grad classes as you can (3) do independent study and research (4) go to seminars and colloquiums (5) avoid professors with reputations of being hard-asses (6) bring some cold drinks with you to Evans when the weather is hot. World-class resources are definitely there, you just have to find them yourself; no one will give them to you.</p>
<p>Oh, and with respect to physics; I've only taken one physics upper-div but it does seem that the physics department has a lot more money.</p>
<p>NineIsPrime seems to say it exactly how I would above. Indeed, David Eisenbud isn't a small person to be contact with =] I mean, even if these professors aren't built specifically to teach, they carry a certain energy with them, being leaders in their fields.</p>