<p>Do math majors hang out together?</p>
<p>Just speaking from personal experience here, but I wouldn’t say I regularly hang out with math majors simply because they’re math majors. Of my 3.5 closest friends who are math majors (one’s still deciding), I would probably hang around them just as much (minus problem set sessions) if they were physics or econ or philosophy majors. I’ll head over to Fine once or twice a week during tea-time to chill for an hour or so, but other than when we’re working on problem sets, I wouldn’t say there’s a whole lot of intramajor hanging out just for its own sake. I will say that most of my closest friends are quantitative (COS, ECO, ORF, PHY, AST are the majors that dominate), perhaps because our interests are along the same lines and we think similarly, but math majors are a pretty rare breed on campus. </p>
<p>As far as intramajor competition goes, I personally have never seen it. I can’t speak to the camaraderie in giant departments like history, but I do know that certain majors that have post-thesis departmental celebrations. All the Woody Woo seniors, for example, jump into the fountain outside Robertson Hall right after their thesis deadline. As far as grade deflation goes, I really don’t think it has any noticeable impact in this way, as at any other college in the country, majors are still competing “against” each other to a degree. Our curves are just slightly lower. I think one of the great things about Princeton is that official major declaration doesn’t happen for most until sophomore year, so friend groups are often very intellectually diverse before any separation by major might occur.</p>