<p>I'm a first year currently in MATH 161 non-IBL and am considering taking Honors Analysis next year. What criterion should I use to evaluate whether I should take Honors Analysis? Obviously evaluating just after barely half a quarter is premature and stupid, but I just want to know how much of a difference it is between 163 and 207.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be a lot more direct to ask your fellow students and professors?</p>
<p>Without disagreeing with J’adoube --</p>
<p>The first step is to hold an A through 163. If you don’t do that, or close to it, then you don’t have to worry about Honors Analysis.</p>
<p>The next step is to ask yourself whether you really want to take on single course/sequence in which (a) you will probably spend 30+ hours/week just to keep pace, and (b) you are pretty much guaranteed to be in the bottom half of the class, with Bs a victory. That’s not an easy combination to live with.</p>
<p>You should also evaluate the other choices available to you, which are many. There are hundreds of math majors at Chicago, and only a handful of them ever take Honors Analysis. Most people don’t have the option to take it, but some who do turn it down. From a pedagogical standpoint, it’s not a clear choice. Universities like Princeton, MIT, and Berkeley, with math departments as strong as Chicago’s, choose not to offer a comprehensive, elite boot-camp course like Chicago’s Honors Analysis or Harvard’s Math 55, and no one suggests that their students’ development in mathematics is being stunted because of that.</p>
<p>Try to figure out why you want to take it, and what you hope to get out of it. Then try to figure out if that’s realistic. Talk to faculty and alumni of the course about this part.</p>
<p>@J’adoube</p>
<p>Well…so far I’ve been in touch with people in previous years of Honors Analysis and my current professor and I’m learning a lot about it from them. Still I suppose the only best self-evaluation will come when I actually go into that class and get a taste of it.</p>
<p>@JHS</p>
<p>The reason why I want to take Honors Analysis is really because it effectively cancels 3 courses from the Math Honors requirement. That means a year of taking an extra sequence that I will enjoy.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if this is a strong argument for, but this really aids me in getting double major Honors BS Math + Honors BS Comp. Sci / Honors BS Math + Honors BS Physics; without taking Honors Analysis I will have no room to take any electives, which is unfortunate.</p>
<p>One guy actually told me he got an A- throughout the sequence with 15 hours/week. I suppose he’s a genius. But oh well.</p>
<p>I’m definitely doing well in 161 right now though (top in class, far beyond A); I wouldn’t be asking this question if I’m not.</p>
<p>I figured you were doing well in 161 to ask the question, but it’s been, what?, five weeks? Don’t spend too much time counting your chickens before they hatch.</p>
<p>I (a parent) have only ever talked about Math 207-209 with one person who took it as a second-year after acing 161-163. He described a difficult emotional experience: After being the best or one of the best in every math class he had ever taken in his life, he was suddenly mediocre at best, because a number of the first-years who placed into Math 207 really were brilliant, and some of them (and some of the non-brilliant ones) had one way or another taken a lot more math than he had. He had to work his tail off just to stay in the class. It was the first time he had ever thought he might fail at math. He was glad he took the course, by the way, and he’s now a math PhD student, but it really knocked him around some, and introduced him to humility.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you get the idea that Honors Analysis will reduce the number of courses you have to take, and make room for more electives. I don’t think that’s true. You should check the requirements for the degree you want carefully.</p>
<p>Speaking of which: Why in the world do you want to do a double-honors-BS in closely related fields? If you read the many threads on CC in which BA vs. BS is discussed, you will see that no one who does hiring really cares about that difference. If you want to take the extra courses, getting one BS is a fine idea, but two is almost guaranteed to be overkill. Same with honors; you don’t need honors in both majors. A double BS/BA with honors in one of them will be plenty impressive, to others and to yourself. And if you resist overkill in your majors, you will have a chance to take a couple non-Core courses in other fields (although Math and Computer Science are pretty good about requiring that anyway, so you will have more than a couple).</p>
<p>@JHS, I thought you were right, but upon a closer review of the course catalog, it does appear that having taking 207-208-209 as your “honors sequence” allows you to count Honors Algebra towards the Honors requirements of five courses distributed in analysis, topology and algebra. </p>
<p>Skyrior, I think JHS has covered most of the generic bases. If you are still interested in 207-208-209 (which, if you’re doing very well in 160’s isn’t unreasonable), send me a PM. I took the course recently, and can give you some more specific information on what to expect</p>