Math program at Yale

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
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<p>I would like to chime in a bit as I know a few professors at Yale (I spoke to them at conferences or when they gave talks at my school, and some were former professors at my school) and I know a good portion of the faculty at Yale and what it's specialties are.</p>

<p>I think Yale UG is definitely not as good as Yale grad. Yale has some really heavy applied math/comp sci people on their department, maybe 4 or 5. Yale in total I believe has less than 40 tenured professors. Some are world famous and are definitely pioneers in their field. They are particularly strong in algebra, algebraic geometry, Riemannian geometry and representation theory (actually fantastic in Representation Theory).</p>

<p>I have heard from some people who go to Yale for UG (not for math however) that indeed Yale does not seem to stack up to other comparable name schools like Harvard, Stanford, etc. I mean at Stanford, Richard Schoen did an undergrad thesis with an undergraduate math major on general relativity (Richard Schoen is a pioneer in mathematical relativity as he proved the Positive Mass Theorem with S.T. Yau his former thesis advisor). Harvard math kids routinely get publications. </p>

<p>However, like others have said, let's not get silly. Yale isn't quite the best UG math program, but it's certainly in the upper echelon and is an overall excellent math program</p>

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<p>One thing to bear in mind is that the normal course load at Yale, for the academically inclined, is 5 courses per term, while the normal course load at Harvard and Princeton (AB) is 4 courses. That means Yale math courses would be "skimpier" than similarly named courses at Harvard and Princeton, but you can take more of them.</p>

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<p>^^ You actually only take 4 or 5 courses per term (9 per year), and many kids take 4.5 per term (the .5 being a lab or a 1.5 credit language course). Anyways, the Yale administration brags about making its students do more work than other students in the Ivy League (e.g. Harvard), so I wouldn't say the courses are necessarily skimpier.</p>

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<p>That's why I said "for the academically inclined".</p>

<p>And yes, if you take the introductory math courses for math majors and compare the syllabi, Yale's are indeed skimpier than Harvard's, as people have already noted on this thread. But my whole point is, if you just take your 5 courses straight every term (taking 6 is not unheard of), you will end up with quite a lot of math courses, so there is no need to be defensive about Yale's math courses on that basis.</p>