<p>happyentropy, I have a math major at UChicago who talked his way directly into Analysis first year (was offered HA, decided to stay with IBL because he liked the approach better) despite placement test results. He has found the math and CS departmental advisors extraordinarily helpful with placement issues, and there are others on the Chicago CC threads who can also attest to their flexibility. There are also some current Chicago CC posters who know non-math majors taking some heavy-duty math courses.</p>
<p>Every top math department has its specialties; OTOH, there are ways to work around that should you like the school’s approach but are interested in other fields (at least for UG). S2 wanted Chicago’s grounding in tough, pure math, but his primary interest is in complexity theory and representation theory. The cross-pollination with the CS department works well, and he’ll get extra applied goodies through REUs and BSM. In some ways MIT’s math department may have been better in some ways, but Chicago offered things MIT didn’t.</p>
<p>There was a study a few years ago that ranked graduate departments in math, with the consensus being that MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard and Princeton were in the top tier with a relatively equal ranking.</p>