<p>I've seen people ask how X is at school Y and people will either say it is good or bad. I don't really understand what they mean. I want to be a Math major and if someone says it is good or bad what would that mean? Won't Math be pretty similar no matter what?</p>
<p>Indicators of a “bad” department: Professors don’t speak English well or lack interpersonal skills; An army of adjuncts and TAs; “Professors” don’t hold the terminal degree in their field (e.g., PhD, MFA), or hold PhDs from the University of Nowhere at Middle/For-profit schools; Professor pick poorly-written, self-published, or inappropriate textbooks; department offers poor advising; department fails to appropriately structure their major(s)/class offerings; department fails to prepare interested students for graduate study in that field.</p>
<p>If at a research school, a “good” department also implies a certain level of quality research.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks. Since you go to Emory, which is one of the schools that I like, can you tell me how the Math department there is? I read in a post that is a few years old that it was “bad”, but that was by a one time poster so I don’t really want to put too much emphasis on that.</p>