<p>Which has the better mathematics undergraduate program, and why? I intend to major in pure mathematics. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Berkeley for sure. They are KNOWN for their mathematics and engineering depts. Do some research for Berkeley and their math dept. IT’S AWESOME!</p>
<p>U. Penn is more for sciences and lib. arts…trust me, I know…</p>
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<p>My ■■■■■ senses are tingling.</p>
<p>Anyways, this poster has no idea what he/she’s talking about. First, math and science are liberal arts. Penn is known for just about everything, including liberal arts, business, engineering, nursing, and more. </p>
<p>OP, the quality of the math undergrad programs probably have a negligible difference, it’s not like we’re comparing MIT with your local community college. Choose between Cal and Penn based on fit.</p>
<p>Penn’s undergraduate math by itself curriculum is kind of meh. There’s the standard undergrad real analysis and abstract algebra, along with an honors version, and then a general topology class, complex analysis, and that’s pretty much it. There isn’t really a good undergraduate algebraic topology or geometry class or anything like that, which a lot of universities with good undergraduate programs might have.</p>
<p>That being said, the graduate program here is decent, and you can start taking graduate courses as early as sophomore year if you’re ready. So no, you won’t miss out on anything overall. But there aren’t really any nice “fun” undergraduate courses like the ones I mentioned above; you have to take the graduate version if you want to do them at all, and there is quite a significant jump from the honors undergraduate classes to the first year graduate classes. Most of the math majors here don’t do that, and so end up graduating without really knowing that much math beyond the bare minimum.</p>
<p>There is a mentoring program here which pairs you with grad students to do independent study, which you can enter freshman year, which may be useful if you want to study some of the above subjects at an undergraduate level, but I haven’t really used this so I don’t know too much about it.</p>