I realize from a certain perspective this is a silly question, but I want to dig into it. A student named Jane Q. Hypothetical gets into both USC and UC Berkeley. Well done her. Costs and living arrangements are not a constraint. Jane wants to major in math, and she wants to go to grad school. She knows Berkeley is ranked higher and specifically Berkeley’s math department is “ranked” much higher but only on the basis of the faculty’s research. She wonders what that means for her as an undergraduate, and if it could possibly reallymatter that much. USC is a large private school but UC Berkeley is a massive public school. The class sizes at USC are much smaller, even comparing upper-division courses. She prefers LA to the Bay Area. She prefers USC’s school spirit and the strength of their alumni network. She prefers USC’s campus. She worries about Berkeley’s grade deflation (or lack of grade inflation) with respect to graduate admissions. She doesn’t want to kill herself studying 28 hours a day and she knows Berkeley’s undergraduate math curriculum is insanely rigorous and demanding. Which is good, but also bad.
Would it be totally insane for her to choose USC over Berkeley for an undergraduate math degree with hopes of going on to grad school? Which is to say, how much of a difference could Berkeley’s sort of ethereal departmental ranking and research prowess have over the benefits of attending USC as an undergrad? Would her REU be that much different?
I think that a student can get a very good undergraduate education in mathematics in at any of a long list of different universities and LACs in the US. USC and UC Berkeley are both included in this list. There are not a lot of mathematical secrets that MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, or Berkeley are going to teach undergraduate students that you could not have picked up somewhere else.
As a graduate student at Stanford studying a subfield of applied mathematics it was difficult (with one exception) to find two other students who had studied at the same undergraduate university. They came from all over the place. The one exception I think was just a coincidence, and was not ranked in the top 50 in the US (but the three students from that one school were all very good).
USC and UC Berkeley are both very good universities. It would not be “totally insane” at all to attend the one that you feel is a good fit for you.
And “smaller classes” do matter.
This is assuming that the hypothetical student would not need to take on significantly more debt to attend USC compared to other universities that are available. This is also assuming that USC is Southern California, and not South Carolina. However, if you did mean South Carolina, then while I would need to dig a little the answer might be the same.
Appreciate your response. I think you tuned into a hidden concern - the idea that there could be some arcane knowledge kept by the more subject-matter-prestigious universities. That might be true at the absolute highest levels but almost certainly not in a way that would affect the undergraduate curriculum.
It is hard to pull apart because so many people reflexively think that “Berkeley’s math program is better” without digging into what exactly that means.
On balance the choice seems obvious to me in the other direction.
(And yes, sorry, did mean University of Southern California).
So - I tried to find - where did faculty go for math - but so many top colleges don’t list their faculties colleges. Brown, Maryland, UCB - other top math don’t.
But Notre Dame shows up on a list of top match schools on college factual - UCB doesn’t hit their top 15.
So here are where some of their profs did undergrad:
U of Alabama with PhD at Chicago
Union College with PhD at Wisconsin
U of Dayton with PhD at Michigan
UCB with PhD at Minnesota
Haverford with PhD at Stanford
Harvard with PhD at Princeton
West Chester of PA with PhD at Notre Dame
Cal Poly SLO with PhD at Notre Dame
Lake Forest College with PhD at Iowa
Rice with PhD at Chicago
Reed with PhD at Chicago
If I find another school - U of Texas - very solid.
Mizzou to PhD at Princeton
Texas to PhD at Texas
Smith to PhD at Princeton
UCSB to PhD at Stanford
USC Profs are:
Washington to MIT
Penn State to Princeton
UC Santa Cruz to UC Santa Cruz
No one knows the future - but if USC is your jam, you’ll be fine.
You might ask them for grad schools their math majors attend - to bolster your confidence.
There’s s a lot more homogeneity in grad schools than undergrad for sure. Thanks for compiling that, it’s very heartening to see. I can defer my stress to grad admissions
Math academia is more prestige sensitive than some other subjects, particularly with regard to where you did your PhD and who you did it with. If you want to work with a famous professor for your PhD, you are more likely to get that opportunity if you have a recommendation from someone they know and respect. That’s how I got my PhD place.
From that point of view, everything else being equal, there are reasons to pick an undergrad college with a better reputation and more well known professors, if there’s a chance to get access to a professor in the area you are interested in (ie they teach undergrad courses). However it’s pretty unlikely that at a high school level you would know what you’d want to do for a PhD. And more importantly, it doesn’t sound like everything else is equal in this case.
But I wouldn’t use grade deflation and intense math courses as a reason to avoid a school. Getting a position in academia is extremely difficult, so being a standout student is necessary, and being a standout student at a college with tough grading and competitive students is better for you in the long term. A 3.9+ GPA means a lot more at Berkeley than at most T20 private schools. And if you are in/from the UK (as your username might suggest), then I wouldn’t forgo Oxbridge math for a US school.
