The best course/University for a Maths degree.

[Mel2Mel]

My DS will be starting his As levels next year. He is a capable mathematician and highly motivated.
I would really appreciate your advice on the best University for him to study Maths and what are the differences between the courses from one University to another.
Thank you very much in advance

How about IGNORE ME summerends and give a chance to the ones who are interested in helping and sharing. Much appreciated

hopefully some more who will try.

That's ok....don't worry

Mel2Mel Don't you think you are jumping the gun a bit? Your DS hasn't even sat his GCSE's yet!
And why are you taking him to Cambridge maths open days? The website says 'The events are exclusively for Year 12 (or equivalent) students who are considering making an application in October 2015 for entry in October 2016 (or deferred entry to October 2017). We are unable to accommodate younger students oo Cambridge maths open days?'

Also there are 5 applicants for every place at Cambridge.About 20% of them will not be realistic.The remaining 80% will be (in most colleges)tested and interviewed and then half of these will be given offers.
The way people are going on you would think it is one in 500!

5 applicants for every place at Cambridge Your point is??? 1/5 gets a place so that one could be someone's child on this site. Why the negativity?

why are you taking him to Cambridge maths open days? I haven't taken any one but I am sure you will find that many younger than that attend .

I am travelling tomorrow and I will not be posting again

My neighbour was asking me some question about the HE. She was very confused because of the conflicting information she was reading from different sources including MN. My first reaction, naively, was to encourage her to ask for clarification! She opened my computer and showed me some of the threads...oh boy!
I've suggested to start a thread and try but she's refused, hesitated and finally insisted on not revealing much about her or her daughter. We have set the scene before hand (few weeks), have replaced few facts by others and have started the thread.

It was all going well until some of the comments started appearing and somewhat similar to a parallel thread (of MrsBright and how she was chased out of her thread because she dared to offer help ).
I felt so sorry for my neighbour and other parents like her. As you can gather by now I don't have any children and I don't need any help but she would like to be able to ask a question without being abused. I don't know what you all gain from these type of responses to someone trying to help or asking for help! This negativity is beyond me, it is exhausting to be nasty and mean. I've learnt something about it this week

I would have liked someone to ask about the ability of the pupil before stating why he/she wouldn't make it. It would be nice if someone shares the knowledge clearly instead of ''to be or not be'' statements or just don't share anything. EITHER BE HELPFUL OR IGNORE
One thing is very clear, a group on this site behave like a bullying heard. You can ditch it but you certainly can't take it.
Suppose a person makes a mistake, if you were really a helpful bunch, it would be nice to ask for clarification first in stead you were coming with machine guns and expecting a white flag!!
I can go on and on but I would like to ask you to try and be considerate to others, be encouraging, be kind....destruction is very easy, try building up (be honest there is plenty of it and not only on this thread).

PS :
-My father is one of the professors who does answer emails and correct work...so it is true, they care more than some think.
-My friend, who is an expert in human behaviour, has predicted most of the responses and we've had a bet about whether I would be able to have the last word I have tried, really tried....
-Some of the information shared by some of the ''experts'' is wrong.
-Both my niece and my nephew were helping on the open days and that's how I know about them and what has happened... my neighbour has never been. However many year 11 and younger were attending.
-The Private tuition at 20/21 is all my idea and I stand by it. The rest is a group effort

I wish you all the best

www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/qs-world-university-rankings-2015-mathematics

Ok so OP made the entire thread up.

Doesn't even have a son...obviously needs professional help.

I would agree, Word. I've reported that latest post. I wasn't on this thread till very late on and only looked at it out of nosiness. I am gobsmacked by the turn it took. The OP seems to have gone out of her way to try to put people's backs up. All very odd.

It is rather sad and tedious when a thread is started with the sole purpose of making trouble. The OP did n't get the trouble she wanted hence the more blatant picking a fight with several posters. Several noted the inconsistencies between the OP request for information and the information she divulged as already knowing. However the courtesy of giving the OP benefit of the doubt prevailed.

OP can you really not see that the problem is you? Woody only joined in the debate last night so cannot be accused of being one of the bullying herd. You first comment to him/her was an extremely snippy "Your point is???" Woody didn't start an argument - you did. Like you have done with everyone else on this thread.

As you can gather by now I don't have any children and I don't need any help
MN's bullshit detector is quite good. That's why you got such a grilling.

Thanks for wasting our time.

Just so you know chances are your ds willbe supervised (tutored!!!) by first year postgrads in a lot of colleges (can't comment on trinity)...I taught at least 5 groups a week when I was a postgrad, plus at least a full day of practicals. I wish tutoring as a career had been around then - it would have suited me perfectly!!!

Seriously it is worth finding out when choosing a college a) whether you will have supervisions from lecturers or PhD students, and b) (smaller colleges) whether they will be in college or from the maths departments. Don't presume that lecturers will be better supervisors...sometimes they are too brilliant to understand why a student can't understand something , where a postgrad who has struggled with the same thing might be better at explaining it. Certainly my (trinity mathmo) dh says that some of his supervisors (and lecturers) were terrible teachers!!

The OP obviously does not see any irony in accusing posters of being a bullying herd, whilst (s)he, by her own admission, as a group effort with others plans a made-up thread to provoke and stir.

As a final note, I don't believe the OP's father is a University prof, at least not at a British University, either that, or the OP is not actually an adult, possibly both (spelling? grammar?). Otoh, there are quite a number of people on this site who do know me IRL - both under my current name and previous names used on the Ivory Towers threads a few years ago (though I don't believe any of the academics on here were on those threads).

Nice to see though that some people will come on here with the sole purpose of being nasty, putting others down, belittling choices, SHOUTING demands/instructions in capital letters, making sweeping generalizations and then expects not to get people's backs up?

It's been interesting, OP, but if you want evidence of group bullying (The rest is a group effort), I think you need to look a little closer to home xx

To be honest I did have a gut feeling the OP wasn't for real, she seemed rather immature in articulating her ideas and forming her arguments. I suspect due to her being quite young, no real life experience of living in a adult world. When probed to justify her statements or opinions, she does what alot of my typical students do!! They answer the question with one they would have liked to have be asked! Then wonders why we keep asking the same question!. I gave up trying. Maybe she is the wannabee oxbridge maths student?? Who knows??. Her last post seems to be a load of bullsh* too. My first few post on MN was to defend my job only to realise OP is nut job*

These threads always make me hum Dizee Rascal ....

Can I just say, although this was a ridiculous and juvenile attempt to prove the OPs premise that everyone on MN is unhelpful, as the parent of younger children I found it very interesting and helpful, at least in the beginning. The whole UCAS/HE proess has changed so much since I was at university that I really feel the benefit of hearing the real world responses and advise from the people that took time to respond to the OP. Even though it was BS, I do feel it is incredibly useful to have MN as a resource especially when there are actual university academics and admissions people taking the time to advise people. I for one really appreciate this and thank them for their time.

I would also much rather hear their current and real-world opinions, experience and advice. Thanks guys!

Another lurker on this post (not having a DC that studied Maths). Hopefully the helpful regulars who post on HE threads haven't been put off by this bun fight.
Couldn't make out whether it was a troll/student or obsessed helicopter parent.
PS my DC are economists (not failed)!

Hi everyone - we've had quite a few reports about this thread and we can see the OP has recently admitted to fabricating certain elements of the story. We will be getting in touch with them about this.

We would prefer not to delete the thread because we can see that a lot of posters have taken the time to share their knowledge and some posters have found the information shared quite useful. We feel it would be a shame to lose that, and so we'll keep the thread up.

Can we just remind you all to post within Talk Guidelines and continue to report anything to us that concerns you.

Have just read some of this thread! Also want to say thanks for the Maths advice from the university people & please ignore the Jeremy Kyle show behaviour.

Meh, I think it's double bluff trolling starts out as a genuine question, doesn't get the type of replies wanted, fabricates a bit of info, get worse replies, think they can win so declares it a troll thread happy in the knowledge it will really piss everyone off.

my NN says it all

...thinks they cant win..

Spinoa, no, but he was part of a team where maths was one element,

And now in the interests of accuracy, and having failed to find my records, I cannot swear with certainty whether he was the mathematician in a Nobel area, or whether to my shame they were a team in an equivalent international prize area. That will teach me to make such statements. Will go back to check. Still rather impressive.

The only reason I picked up on this point is because of diversity issues. Mathematics at Cambridge has an enormous problem with diversity: only around a quarter of maths undergraduates are female, and the representation from deprived communities and certain ethnic minorities is very poor.

Many very strong candidates are put off applying by myths. One pervading myth is that everyone who gets an offer for maths will be a top Olympiad scholar, have come through UKMT challenges etc. Many of the target groups (women, minorities, deprived communities) do not participate in Olympiads or UKMT but anyone who is getting high 90s on FM papers is in with a reasonable chance of a Cambridge maths place and more from these target groups should be applying.

And while it is true that Trinity has fellows who are at international prize level not all of them are. (Trinity maths fellows aren't necessarily better than those at other colleges - many mathematicians avoid being at Trinity because they don't want to invest time in college teaching.) Again giving the impression that there are lots of absolutely stellar people puts some people off applying for both undergraduate and graduate level study, particularly those who don't come from backgrounds which are familiar with Oxbridge.

There are certainly many examples of people who come from modest backgrounds, attended state schools with no involvement in Olympiads and no tradition of sending to Oxbridge, who get offered places and outperform kids entering from the St Pauls etc-UKMT-Olympiad routes.