<p>If I go to Ohio State University and make it into the honors program and graduate with both research experience and a 4.0 GPA with a math major, could I make it to a top tier PhD Program like MIT, Cal tech, etc.? I have a 95% cumulative average now in HS, so should I aim for a better school like Vanderbilt? I'm really nervous about this because if I don't get into a top tier PhD program, then how will I go about getting a job as a professor at a good university?</p>
<p>You’re acting like tOSU is chopped liver. It’s a fine university and if you have that kind of performance, you can write your ticket anywhere.</p>
<p>What polarscribe said. OSU is and has been seen as a great undergrad institution for quite some time.</p>
<p>And in addition, even if you <em>did</em> go to an undergrad institution often regarded as not producing good students (unlike OSU), they might scrutinize your application more closely, but it would absolutely not disqualify you from the running.</p>
<p>Ohio State is a highly respected school. I think you have a good chance</p>
<p>The bad news is that math seems to be rather prestige-oriented. For example, 18 of the 21 American admits to the pure and applied math PhD programs at MIT this year got their undergraduate degree from a top 10 math department. (Note that I am referring to graduate math rankings, not general undergraduate rankings.) The three outliers were from Duke, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a liberal arts college that shall remain unnamed. </p>
<p>The good news is that it’s not impossible. I graduated from a small liberal arts college and - surprisingly enough - got into every single math PhD program I applied to. What tipped the scale in my favor (according to a faculty member at one of the graduate programs I applied to) were two year’s worth of graduate courses that I had taken off campus, and a letter of recommendation from an Ivy League professor who compared me very favorably to the undergraduate and graduate students at his own university. </p>
<p>Whereever you go, if your goal is to get a PhD in math, make sure to take a number of graduate courses as an undergraduate. They are basically an admissions requirement to the top 10 math programs. </p>
<p>As far as Vanderbilt vs Ohio State is concerned, Ohio State has the stronger math department, so you might be better off there.</p>
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<p>Ooh, this is true. And try to get into research as well. Grad courses are perhaps more important in math, but research will certainly help. Your goal should be to narrow as much as possible the advantage that someone who went to a school with a better math department has, so seize every opportunity to make yourself look intelligent and mature enough to pursue graduate studies in math.</p>
<p>If you want to have any chance, it’s essential that you do at least one REU and/or get substantial research experience at OSU. Graduate courses (and good grades in them) will be helpful but honestly, all of the competitive candidates will have them as well. Make sure you get letters from people who have degrees from top 10 schools because they will be looked on more favorably by adcoms.</p>
<p>But getting into a top 10 program is not out of the realm of possibility.</p>
<p>I don’t know if REUs or undergraduate research actually matter. In A Mathematician’s Survival Guide, Professor Steven Krantz claims that undergraduate research is useless admission-wise and might even contribute to unrealistic expectations of beginning graduate students. He thinks that undergraduates should primarily focus on learning as much math as possible. </p>
<p>I don’t know what goes on in the heads of an admissions committee, but it is certainly true that most undergraduate research is fundamentally different from graduate research. (Most undergraduates simply don’t know enough math to do real research. Many graduate students need several years in graduate school before they can even read current publications in their area, let alone make a contribution of their own.) I personally did an REU after my sophomore year, decided that it was a huge waste of time, and opted for a supervised independent study arrangement for the summer after my junior year. I got a lot more out of the independent study than I did from the REU, and I fared well graduate-admission-wise too.</p>
<p>Not that it matters at this point. You can discuss your summer options and graduate application strategy with your advisers in college.</p>
<p>I would say definitely (although I’m in science, not math. Math may be different).</p>
<p>Underscoring b@r!um about math undergraduates not being able to read current math articles.</p>