Math Camp Advice: Don't Sweat It!
One quick follow-up about math camp: Don't work very hard! It's a great time to settle in to your new cities and get to know the people in your program. You will be working plenty hard in a few weeks, don't worry about that.
The exception to this rule is if you've never had any analysis before. All of my first-year classes used basic analysis concepts and the teachers will expect you to have familiarity with them. If you haven't had analysis, spend the math camp time learning as much of the basics as you can (basic continuity and compactness definitions are crucial). You should also have a working understanding of convex sets, and (quasi-) concave/convex functions. A good place to start with this is the mathematical appendix to Mas-Collel et al, which will also cover fixed-point theorems, the envelope theorem, and the separating hyper-plane theorem, all of which are really important and you'll use them all the time.
Also, David, what is this Erlanger Programme stuff? I've never heard of it.
posted by Andy @ 10:45 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Do you think next year will be the same deal for you as this year was, Andy?
Personally, I'm taking your math camp advice to heart. My solitary accomplishment for today was changing a tire on my new bike. By myself. It was a rather exciting 30 minutes in my backyard.
Next year should be a lot more relaxed in a lot of ways. The word on the street is that classes are a lot easier, both in terms of work load and grading. Plus, a lot of the pressure to perform will be gone. I'll probably still work a lot, but it shouldn't be quite as strenous.
One big change for next year is that we finally get some flexibility in choosing which classes to take. This is good in that I can take classes I'm interested in, but bad because there's a lot of distribution requirements I'm not looking forward to fulfilling, and because my study group will be effectively broken up by taking different classes. This last part is a bigger deal than it may seem, I actually don't know how well I'll be able to study without them. We'll see what happens when classes start up in a couple of months.
Of course, if I don't pass the cores, next year will be the exact same deal as the last.
Hey Andy. Do you know what electives you will take? Are the distribution requirements involved?
Mike, the second year at Chicago requires two field sequences and 3 distribution classes.
Fields are general topics (labor, capital theory, etc) with between 2-4 classes apiece. There are field tests in the summer, similar to the core tests I just took. However, you can pass out of one of the tests with a GPA above 3.0 in that field, which is relatively easy in second-year courses. It also isn't quite as bad if you fail the one test you do take. For my own fields, I am doing labor with certainty have no clue what my second one will be. They changed the structure from last year and it kind of screws me over, because there used to be three applied micro fields (labor, development/metrics, and IO), but they reconfigured and now only have labor and IO. I don't want to take IO, so I'll probably end up taking some macro field with a lot of econometrics or the econometrics field.
On top of the field sequences, I also have to take three other classes, each from a different field. I believe this is a pretty easy requirement to fulfill. However, what I end up actually taking will probably depend on which field I choose. We'll see.
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