<p>Hey guys. I'm a freshman in college, hoping to go to math graduate school eventually.</p>
<p>So, I have some questions.</p>
<p>Most generally, what does it take to get into graduate school for math?</p>
<p>Also, I started out here as pre-med but I'm changing my mind. I have a 3.6 GPA right now. I've looked at the CVs of some of my math professors that list their GPAs on them, and most of them are slightly higher than mine, but this may be because they started out knowing they wanted to do math.</p>
<p>So, in the event that I end up with a less than amazing GPA, how much could some good publications make up for that? In high school I was already developing several of my own theories, so I think if I write them out more formally, and further explore them as I take more advanced math courses, I can possibly publish something impressive by the time I graduate.</p>
<p>Lastly, any advice you guys have would be great. Thanks.</p>
<p>Wow, that certainly looks like a tough road. I can read math in Spanish, but none of the three languages they listed.</p>
<p>I have not taken the Putnam yet. I suppose I should do that at some point. What level of math is required to succeed on it?</p>
<p>Another dilemma of mine is like I said, I didn't start out as a math major. I actually decided to do the lazy thing and retake Calculus II, and now move on to Calculus III rather than going past that already. I would have done it the other way had I known I might prefer to do math instead.</p>
<p>How important is the undergraduate institution? My school is known more for the biological sciences than for math or physics or anything of that nature. I originally came here for the BS/MD program.</p>
<p>The downside to Math PhD programs is that they are extremely competitive (harder to get into than Econ, as hard as Physics and Computer Sci). (That shouldn't discourage you, just understand it's a very competitive process). The upside (as you already know) is that you'll be in demand in a number of fields. Employment will not be a major problem (getting into specific places may be, but you're not going to face the same problems many other PhDs face). This is an educated guess, but I imagine that some of the most important deciding factors in your admission (other than letters of recommendation) will be how well you do in your proof-based mathematics courses (as that is the way anything is "known" in mathematics). Your math professors will be glad to give you more than this generalized information, so ask them.
Here's some Putnam information
<a href="http://math.scu.edu/putnam/describtcJan.html%5B/url%5D">http://math.scu.edu/putnam/describtcJan.html</a></p>
<p>Mathlete: Putnam doesn't cover much beyond say calculus and some number theory, but it's extremely difficult. The median score is 2 or 3 out of 120 points. Not many universities that are not hardcore into math participate in it either. If you do go to one that participates in it, they generally have problem solving courses for it so it would be best to look into that.</p>
<p>"Employment will not be a major problem (getting into specific places may be, but you're not going to face the same problems many other PhDs face)."</p>
<p>Actually the academic job market in math has consistently sucked for the last 20 years and there is no indication of it getting any better...look at the math department faculty of ANY research university in the US for example, almost none of them have Ph.D's from places outside the top 15.</p>
<p>Getting a job is not hard for a math Ph.D: in finance, option trading, consulting, or teaching at a liberal arts college.
The prospects of getting a job that pays you to do math research are on the other hand quite dim.</p>
<p>I dont think it's time for me to worry about whether or not I'll get a job in the end. I actually have connections at a few top universities since multiple members of my extended family work in academia, so maybe that will work for me. But, let's stay on topic, you guys are definitely helping me a lot.</p>
<p>Now I'm going to bring up one other thing though. I'm deciding right now between pre-med and math.</p>
<p>Also, no one answered that question of mine... will some good publications make an institution forgive an imperfect GPA? Some of my classes not relating to math have held me down a bit. Especially trying to take the pre-med and math classes at the same time, that's tough.</p>
<p>No one will care about your grades in any classes that aren't math.
Yes, publications will help, but not as much as recommendation letters from professors who supervised your research.
Other than that, take a lot of graduate math classes and get A's in them...
Also- preparing for the Putnam is probably a waste of your time- people who do well on it (at least well enough to make listing your score worthwhile) did so because of previous preparation for math olympiads while in high school, and plenty of people get into top grad schools without taking the Putnam.</p>
<p>I wasn't saying that getting into research was easy. I was only saying that being employed (in a somewhat general sense) in something related to your field would not be terribly hard. Getting into "specific places" is still of course hard, as I noted. Just to clarify.</p>
<p>Hey guys, I see my thread has faded away, so I'm going to bring it back with a question I thought up.</p>
<p>Originally I was going to do pre-med, so rather than moving onto Calculus 3 when I got to college, I took Calculus 2 for review since I had it during sophomore, not senior year of high school. Is this going to hurt me? I am of course receiving an A, and have gained the attention of my professor for my near perfect test scores and the ability to do some of the more basic integrals mentally in a matter of seconds. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging at the end here, but given my unfortunate situation caused by changing my mind, I want to emphasize that I've made the most of what I am doing.</p>
<p>I will of course explain the change of plans and how it affected things. Also, I intend to double up on math courses so I can get just as much, and more coursework done than the typical math BS candidate. So, what do you guys think?</p>
<p>Taking Calculus 2 (and your performance in it) will neither help nor hurt you in applying to grad school-it (and Calc 3 for that matter) has very little to do with what mathematicians actually do. Complaining on your grad school application about the fact that you switched from pre-med in your freshman year will also not help you.
As far as taking classes- grad schools will most want to see that you did well in classes like abstract algebra, real/complex analysis, and topology/differential geometry. If your school has a Ph.D program take the graduate versions of these classes if you can, and do very well- then the admissions people will at least be confident that you'll be able to pass quals.
Get recommendations either from people who supervised your research or from people who taught you in advanced math classes- how well you did in/whether you took Calc 2 won't be very relevant.
Also, do well on the GRE, participate in an REU (or 2), and you should be OK...
at least no worse of than you would have been had you not retaken Calc 2.</p>
<p>I know this is a late reply but hopefully it helps. I was recently accepted into a math PhD program. I’ll just tell you what I did and that will probably be the most help. My GPA was slightly higher than yours around a 3.8, but I had a 4.0 in math classes. Make sure you take the graduate level math classes and do well like happyentropy said. I did an REU, as well, for a summer and I think that really helped. I had an awesome relationship with all of my undergraduate professors so I know the recommendation letters were a big help. I also did a lot of research throughout my undergraduate career with different professors, with one paper getting published. A major part of applying to grad schools though is the letter of intent that you must write. Make sure you know what you want to research and mention what your most interested in. Research what the professors at the graduate school are interested in and find a match because if they don’t have a professor that is willing to work with you then your screwed. But make sure this letter is flawless. It also depends on what type of math you want to go into - theoretical or numerical. In my case, its numerical but theoretical is tougher. So capitalize on the grad courses for theoretical…if you want numerical, then make sure you can program, and get use to the mathematical software packages like Matlab, Maple, Mathematica, Lingo, …whatever. Also, I went to a undergraduate school that was known for teaching…I switched my major from math education to applied math my sophomore year and took all the math courses I could. So I think you have a decent shot. My school wasn’t known for math at all, too. Almost forget, a pal of mine from the same school got into South Carolina and he had a 3.5; however, he published a sweet paper…I have no doubt that that is the reason he got in. I got into UDel, not Princeton or Berkeley. So there you have it. Hope this helped.</p>
<p>Is it easy for a Math major to get into a paid summer Internship program ? Can you suggest me the names of few good REU programs that is easy to get into . I also plan to go to a phd Program right after my Undergradute but I am confused where to start from. I am might be starting research from this semester related to Linear Algebra.</p>