Better than Oxbridge?

Oh? So what exactly do you think the purpose is of a thread that begins:

"Are there any universities in the world (US, in particular) that are better than Oxbridge? Which ones?"

I believe that makes the context perfectly clear and, with all due respect, I think you have seriously misjudged it.

Possibly to you, on the other hand I read it completely differently.

Put it like this: Take a candidate with BBC who has a place at some ex-Poly to study maths, and put them in Cambridge instead. What do you think is going to happen to them? So is Cambridge really the "best" university for them to study maths?

The extreme case is the "Math 55" course at Harvard, which, to my eyes, is significantly harder than the Cambridge course. The only problem is that very few people even try to take it, and of those, about half end up dropping out. So by your definition, it is clearly "better", even though the vast majority of people would be better doing something else.

When your definition of "good mathematician" depends on ones of historical note, you are probably talking about something like the top 0.01% of graduates. I'm not sure that is terribly useful.

In my experience, being able to pick up (several) graduate concepts at all puts you well into the 'good' band. There are lots and lots of undergrads who don't understand their courses. I was specifically told for one Part II course "oh, we have to make the questions easy - we know hardly anyone will really understand the course".

I studied analysis at Kings London before going to Cambridge. Sure, the course wasn't as demanding, but most people did understand it. If you were to have Cambridge calibre students take that course, and then sit the Tripos exams, I'm genuinely unsure whether you'd end up with more of them getting firsts than under the Tripos as I sat it (ironically it's probably less true now, because the Tripos now "spoon feeds" a little more than it used to).

At the end of the day, what makes Cambridge exceptional is the overall calibre of the students and teachers. In my experience, the actual lecturing isn't anything to write home about.

Are we switching the topic now?

Irrespective of its place in the leage table, you shouldn't go do maths at Oxford. The university is a festering cesspit, and you will exhaust all your mental resources in restraining the urge to headbutt your "fellow students".
Which can kinda put a damper on your study success.

Very interesting insight, you are brave to reveal such truth. So are you at Oxford at present? And if so as a student or resident? By the way I love the sig and the Imperial cruiser (I think, it's been a while since 40K soaked up all my financial and artistic resources).

I'm a student.

The thread is going off topic but I can't help but ask; which subject?

Y thankyou. And it is indeed. I've never played Warhamster, but I can appreciate flashy dystopian spaceships when I see 'em.

I'm a student. And don't think that I vitriolicly dislike Oxford and everything about it... it has its moments, rare though they might be. I think the best way to describe me is "disenchanted". To quote myself on an earlier thread:

I was sold on the City of Dreaming Spires being some sort of intellectual wonderland where geniuses from around the world discussed Nietzche in oak-panneled sitting rooms, and you got intense, creative, one-on-one tutorial sessions from world-famed professors about the mysteries of the universe.

And then 3 years later I find myself sat in a cramped classroom (complete with rising damp and broken heating) with 20 other (bored) tweenagers, while a doctoral student only 3 years older than me transcribes answers unthinkingly off a crib sheet onto a whiteboard. The guy on my left is nursing a hangover, the guy on my right can't speak an intelligeble sentence of English, and if heaven forfend I deign to ask a question I will (a) recieve baleful stares from everyone else in the class for delaying their return to the JCR and thereby causing them to miss the first minute of Hollyoaks, and (b) recieve no real answer as said doctoral student dosn't know either.

I wouldn't mind nearly so much if everyone didn't keep plugging the Dreaming-Spires-intellectual-wonderland myth.
But they do.
And it's a complete crock.

Enough to make a man extremely bitter and disillusioned, I tells ya.

I have remembered an article by Terence Tao, and he basically makes similar points to the ones I have put forward: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/which-universities-should-one-apply-to/

I'm not sure what you have been talking about, but it sounds like you have some issues about universities that aren't related to what I have been talking about (and hence not relevant to this thread).

I have remembered an article by Terence Tao, and he basically makes similar points to the ones I have put forward: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/which-universities-should-one-apply-to/

Yes that particular may have a burning interest in mathematics I am not disputing that or that students with lesser grades (which today seems to be <AAA) should not go to university. But clearly comparing graduates from a BBC university and Princeton will yield a significant difference.

Which is somewhat irrelevant, given that Kolya said: "which university is the "best" for you depends on who are you!". If you're a BBC student, going to Princeton would be disasterous for you. Are you seriously arguing otherwise?

No, you are refusing to take on board what Kolya said. Now I can accept you ignoring his point, but when you lay into him for saying something, and your whole argument is based on ignoring what he actually said, that is a horse of a different colour.

I think you misunderstand. This was a course at Cambridge, the standard hadn't changed noticably over a decade, and in general only the top people would take it (at my college everyone taking that course was in the top 20% of the firsts). But it was still regarded as far too difficult for an undergraduate to reasonably understand.

Completely erroneous. Given what I posted, I'm not entirely sure how you came to that conclusion, to be honest. The only thing I can think of is that you think a course that covers more material is necesarily "better". But in reality there is a difference between what the course covers and what people actually learn from it.

Anyhow, I think you're arguing against a statement Kolya never actually made, so perhaps we should just let this drop now.

And at Cambridge itself, there were usually an awful lot of fairly depressed and disillusioned mathmos after the first couple of terms. "I used to enjoy maths before I came here" being a particularly poignant comment I heard more than once.

And at Cambridge itself, there were usually an awful lot of fairly depressed and disillusioned mathmos after the first couple of terms. "I used to enjoy maths before I came here" being a particularly poignant comment I heard more than once.