4thfloor

You might also want to look at the Applied Math and Applied Physics majors at Yale. The BA programs are pretty flexible, and may be good preparation for certain engineering graduate programs.

classof09

How good is the applied math program? Is Yale math slanted towards pure or applied at all?

Weasel8488

What tokenadult said about looking at course syllabuses is good advice. Yale's undergrad math courses are pretty good, and you can learn all of the topics necessary to succeed in a top PhD program (algebra, topology, and all the different subfields of analysis). That said, Yale's first year sequence isn't as good as Harvard's or Princeton's, and the undergraduate topology courses seem a little lacking (you'd probably want to take a graduate level course). Another downside to majoring in math at Yale is that there are many more very serious math students elsewhere. For the record, I'm a math major at Princeton.

cookiemom

My S has a friend who's a math major at Yale who showed him around and took him to a math class when he was looking at colleges. I have to agree with others who say that Yale's math department is not as strong as HPSM. My S found the course offerings narrow compared to those other schools and his friend described the faculty as being distant and uncommunicative. My S was uninspired by the professor who was teaching the class he sat in on.

Yale does have a very good graduate program, but unlike it's peers their undergrad program does not seem to stack up. However, even though Yale admissions is extremely competitive, it is a little easier for strong potential math majors to get in because most of the strongest math students go elsewhere.

4thfloor

It is generally believed that the top (graduate) applied math programs in the country are MIT's and NYU's, though applied math programs tend to be more idiosyncratic than pure math programs, so depending on specialization, other schools also excel.

Again, for most undergrads, depending upon their objectives -- not everyone aspires to be a top-of-the-field applied mathematician -- Yale's program may be quite good enough, in which case, you should consider the other benefits Yale offers.

SBUMathgrad

I would like to chime in a bit as I know a few professors at Yale (I spoke to them at conferences or when they gave talks at my school, and some were former professors at my school) and I know a good portion of the faculty at Yale and what it's specialties are.

I think Yale UG is definitely not as good as Yale grad. Yale has some really heavy applied math/comp sci people on their department, maybe 4 or 5. Yale in total I believe has less than 40 tenured professors. Some are world famous and are definitely pioneers in their field. They are particularly strong in algebra, algebraic geometry, Riemannian geometry and representation theory (actually fantastic in Representation Theory).

I have heard from some people who go to Yale for UG (not for math however) that indeed Yale does not seem to stack up to other comparable name schools like Harvard, Stanford, etc. I mean at Stanford, Richard Schoen did an undergrad thesis with an undergraduate math major on general relativity (Richard Schoen is a pioneer in mathematical relativity as he proved the Positive Mass Theorem with S.T. Yau his former thesis advisor). Harvard math kids routinely get publications.

However, like others have said, let's not get silly. Yale isn't quite the best UG math program, but it's certainly in the upper echelon and is an overall excellent math program

4thfloor

One thing to bear in mind is that the normal course load at Yale, for the academically inclined, is 5 courses per term, while the normal course load at Harvard and Princeton (AB) is 4 courses. That means Yale math courses would be "skimpier" than similarly named courses at Harvard and Princeton, but you can take more of them.

rd31

^^ You actually only take 4 or 5 courses per term (9 per year), and many kids take 4.5 per term (the .5 being a lab or a 1.5 credit language course). Anyways, the Yale administration brags about making its students do more work than other students in the Ivy League (e.g. Harvard), so I wouldn't say the courses are necessarily skimpier.

4thfloor

That's why I said "for the academically inclined".

And yes, if you take the introductory math courses for math majors and compare the syllabi, Yale's are indeed skimpier than Harvard's, as people have already noted on this thread. But my whole point is, if you just take your 5 courses straight every term (taking 6 is not unheard of), you will end up with quite a lot of math courses, so there is no need to be defensive about Yale's math courses on that basis.