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<p>Well, chess is a game, a competition between people. Perhaps people would watch math competitions in some regions of the world (which is probably what your point is), but mathematicians don’t get publicized the same way someone working a standard engineering job that may pay well doesn’t. When it’s a career that isn’t about entertaining people and produces stuff that isn’t in immediate demand for someone, chances are it’s going to be less immediately rewarded.</p>
<p>I submit though, that when it comes to famous figures, probably more people know who Bill Gates is than know who Terence Tao is. Then again, tons of people use products that can be traced in some way to Bill Gates, but not even all top mathematicians understand Terence Tao’s work.</p>
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<p>I’m one of the people who strictly doesn’t believe much in this - engineering at Stanford is very hard, from what I hear. And I also know the whole thing about ‘competition’ at Berkeley is more for some majors than others. In the math department, the professors are free to grade around as harshly or easily as they want in the upper levels, to my knowledge. </p>
<p>Perhaps in more commonly pursued tracks like premed, economics, etc, there is some observable difference.</p>
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<p>At least, those who take the hard classes are probably just like that. And the ones who want to take things easier may do so as well - but at Cal it’s no different. </p>
<p>To be fair though, sakky is referring to the potential to fail out of school, to my understanding (i.e. referring to the weakest students and what happens to them). I think it’s pretty clear that getting an A in engineering at Stanford is easily as hard as it is here. Or at least very comparable. You might be presenting the viewpoint of a successful student.</p>