<p>I was admitted to Berkeley today and I am wondering about what it is like to study math there.</p>
<p>Firstly, is there a community of math majors that study and hang out together? I am currently taking an honors sequence at U of Washington and I have found one of my favorite parts about the class (aside from the mathematics, of course) is the group of people who are surviving the class together. In addition to working the harder problems together we often have group lunches and stuff. Has anyone been able to form a similar group of math lovers at Berkeley?</p>
<p>Secondly, how hard is Honors 104? I already have baby Rudin and have read bits and pieces of it to supplement my current class, and I am working through Spivak to prepare myself to study from it this summer. Considering that I will have already completed all of my lower-division classes and I have been doing somewhat serious proof based math (e.g. delta-epsilon arguments, Picard's existence theorem, etc.) for about a year could I be successful in H104 in the fall?</p>
<p>What is Math 135 like? I looked at one of their tests and the questions were unintelligible.</p>
<p>How difficult is it to build personal relationships with the professors?</p>
<p>Seeing as how I am already halfway through the major, I will likely be taking lots of graduate classes - how is this for undergrads? Is it feasible to build personal relationships with graduate class-instructors as an undergrad?</p>
<p>In general, how is studying undergrad math at Berkeley? Considering I will probably spend a bunch of time in graduate courses, how is graduate math at Berkeley?</p>
<p>Lastly, I will almost certainly be attending Berkeley. But if, I do not then I will be attending University of Washington. My family can afford the OOS tuition to Berkeley, but of course if it does not seem worth attending Berkeley then I would rather have us save the money. So is there any strong reason to attend UW over UCB?</p>
<p>Hello! I’m a math major (well, math is one of my majors) here. Hopefully my answers are satisfactory.</p>
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Yeah, we have MUSA (Mathematics Undergraduate Student Association) – we meet once or twice a week for events like talks from professors or panels on research, grad school, etc. I don’t know if we bond as closely as the group in your honors classes, but we’re definitely friendly and open to newcomers.</p>
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Honors classes vary significantly depending on the professor. Gill is teaching it next semester, and though he hasn’t taught it before (to my knowledge), it’ll probably be reasonable in terms of workload, though of course you can expect it to be difficult. It’s kind of hard to tell how well you’ll do before taking the class, but it’s likely that you’ll be about as well prepared as some of your classmates, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you did decently well in the class.</p>
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I haven’t taken it, but once you get to upper division math, you shouldn’t necessarily expect to be able to make sense out of one of the tests without taking the class or learning the material on your own… I’ve heard that the professor for next semester is pretty good, so if you’re interested in the class, it might be a good idea to take it next semester.</p>
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There is a nontrivial subset of undergrads taking grad math classes here, so it’s not entirely uncommon – I know freshmen and sophomores taking grad classes. As for building relationships with the instructors, this depends more on whether or not you’re willing to take the initiative to interact with them (e.g. in class or in office hours). Unlike smaller schools, many of the upper division and graduate classes are still something like 25-30 students large (and more for some classes), so unless you actively engage, it’s not certain that they’ll know exactly who you are beyond your name and what you turn in.</p>
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Math is hard, but there are definitely people that you can find to share the pain (and joy) with you here, and we have some of the top researchers and students in mathematics, so if you want to get a superb education in mathematics, you can find it here. I don’t really have anything more specific to say, unfortunately.</p>
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I’m not well equipped to answer this question, since I know next to nothing about UW’s math department. I don’t know if the value added from going to Berkeley is really enough to justify going OOS, though. (I was in a similar situation with Berkeley vs CMU, since I live in California, but since my main focus is CS, it was an easier choice.)</p>