<p>Sorry for giving an incomplete story of my situation! This is going to be way OT, but I figure I owe people a full explanation…</p>
<p>I skipped ahead 4 grades in math when I was in elementary school… then sort of kept up the normal pace through 8th grade, when I took Calc AB. I did a fair bit of math competitions through then, and did fairly well at the state level (5th in state for mathcounts, in ohio).</p>
<p>In HS I took online classes at Ohio State, which were a bit of a joke, and also started to lose interest in the math I was taking (multivar, lots of vector stuff, all taught through mathematica). I took AMC and would qualify for AIME, but was lucky to get more than a question or two right there. I saw myself as being good at learning material (especially material that wasn’t super abstract), but not good at being a brilliantly creative mathematician who could conjure up leaps of logic to prove difficult things.</p>
<p>At Harvard, I shopped 23/25, felt totally out of my league. I’m sure I could have done alright, but I would have had to work incredibly hard to be anywhere above average in the class. I took Applied 21a at some point, just to prove to myself that I could still do math, and it wasn’t bad.</p>
<p>I guess my (uneducated) thoughts are, being able to get a 5 on AB or BC means you’ll be fine in 21a. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be great in 23/25/55… and math competitions like AIME are probably the best predictor of that.</p>
<p>I am now utterly **** (I actually typed the asterix’s to save CC the trouble of censoring me) scared of taking maths at Harvard. I am very good at it, and with training could have been top 10 maybe in my country (South Africa) - this is not arrogance, merely conjecture. In my town there was no-one who could have tutored me. But, sounds like Harvard is a place for only those who are top 100 in the world go? I do not mind being average (would LOVE it actually) but do not want to be the class ■■■■■■ (OMG you can’t intergrate transdentals in your head, whilst solving the Reimann? What an idiot…)</p>
<p>From what I heard, Harvard’s unspoken attitude towards pure math and physics is that being a pure mathematician or an academic physicist is very much like being a professional pianist: it is not a lot fun to be one unless one is extremely good (“freaking smart” in just<em>forget</em>me’s post) at it – say good enough to get tenure at a top university. That is actually not an unreasonable position to take, considering career reality. As a result, they throw hard stuff at prospects very early on, in Math 25/55 (crushingly hard in the case of Math 55) or Physics 16. That may be the reason behind the physics professor’s comments reported by bigmouth. That may also be why not many Harvard undergrads go on to get PhDs (re: that frequently reported, tiresome statistic that Swarthmore or Reed produces more PhD’s per capita than Harvard), at least in Math of Physics. Many students are, by design, dissuaded early on, and even among those who complete the major, many choose not to pursue PhDs because they’ve done a lot of PhD level work as undergrads and decided that’s not for them (I know that’s true outside of just Math and Physics). Those who make it through the major and decide to go on, however, have much better odds at getting into top PhD programs and achieving brilliant careers afterwards.</p>
<p>Applied Math, as pointed out by JHS and just<em>forget</em>me, is much more forgiving, because Harvard recognizes that it offers many career choices outside of academia where this sort of particular briliance is not necessary.</p>
<p>Do any current students or alumni have any approximate concept of how many students who intend to major in physics or math end up switching? If so, how many of these switches are due to the programs’ being too difficult?</p>
<p>Based on Harvard’s FAQ webpage, approximately one-third of all undergraduates switch majors. I would assume that it is a bit higher among those intending to concentrate in the sciences even though it would be fairly reasonable to posit that the switch would most often be from one math/science major to another.</p>
<p>@Idiosyncra3y - There are lots and lots of concentrations at Harvard that do not require you to be a “freakin genius” to do well… I mean, you can even do math and do well without that kind of a brain… you’re just not making the most of your concentration.</p>
<p>There are easy majors at Harvard. There are majors for the children of politicians and major donors and for the big-time athletes. Neither Math nor Physics is one of these majors. I recently took a Freshman Seminar with the professor who will soon be the head of the Harvard Math Department, in which I met people taking all sorts of math courses. To be a Math concentrator, one must be brilliant. Want to be terrified? Look at this:</p>
<p>Yes, the Math 55 section says that PSets will usually take from 24 to 60 hours per week. For some of the most brilliant students at the university. And I would say a math concentrator would generally go no lower than Math 25 freshman year. The Math concentration is for people who were engaged in math theory and proofs throughout high school. It is also an excellent program.</p>
<p>This term, I’m taking the introductory Physics course for Physics concentrators (15a). It is a most excellent course. There are some very well-regarded professors in the department, and my sister at MIT has conceded that, in pure sciences, Harvard may surpass her institution. The Physics department here has bright students (not math concentrators, but some of the smarter people on campus), good facilities, and professors who are excellent teachers. Keep in mind that I am not a Physics concentrator, but I would say that Harvard has an excellent Physics program. Also, people in both Math and Physics have time for extracurriculars, although often more because they’re exceptionally brilliant than because they don’t have large amounts of work.</p>
<p>@!Biscuit - I think your take is mostly right on (although I think the two math concentrators I knew took 23, not 25… and I even knew one who took 21, but that was silly).</p>
<p>I came to Harvard with thoughts of being premed, and a big interest in kind of Steven Pinker-style thinking about the brain + evolution. I took a couple great classes in the evolutionary psychology field (particularly Hauser + Wrangham’s Sci-B29), and ended up as a Human Evolutionary Biology concentrator (most places call this Biological Anthropology).</p>
<p>I got a bit bored with the concentration towards the end - it’s an awesome field, but a relatively small department @ Harvard, and I didn’t have the inclination to dig in and do research.</p>
<p>I started taking some computer science classes towards the end of my time @ Harvard, and, in retrospect, would have liked to do more of that (maybe a CS concentration with an HEB secondary, instead of the other way around). That said, I wasn’t very interested in the theoretical CS classes required of CS concentrators (which end up being very similar to pure math).</p>