🧵 How good are elite colleges actually?

Anonymous at Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:04:25 UTC No. 16473788

Okay /sci/ so there are a bunch of things online showing Cambridge college's reading lists and other shit for their mathematics tripos, said to be the hardest math course devised by humans. But how good is this really? We all know elite colleges make things harder and are selective purely as a means of maintaining their prestige and reputation. I knew a guy who attended an elite college and he told me the teaching actually sucked and they spent more time online or using MIT open courseware instead of relying on their actual professors who seemed more interested in research and PhD slaves instead of teaching freshman undergrads. Overloading students with work was a tactic used to make things artificially difficult and elite and keep them busy.

So basically, if somebody went through this material would it actually give them a good education in mathematics? If yes, is that education actually better than what you'd get at a less elite/pretigious institution that has a solid reputation in math? I'm guessing the basic stuff is good but it isn't as great as it makes it out to be and probably not better than a public ivy in the graduates it produces and a lot of it is just hype and maintaining an image. But i am a pol "science" retard who has zero understanding of math and science so I don't know.

Math tripos guide
https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/files/triposguide.pdf

Reading list and book reccs
https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/admissions/files/admissions/reading-list.pdf

Lecture notes from parts 1 and 2
https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/studentreps/tripos-specific-resources