is it hard to graduate from berkeley?
The grad courses are certainly a great option, I completely agree, and I think plenty of the students serious about grad school do take them. Nevertheless, I don’t think most students are in the position to just forget about undergraduate courses and take graduate courses very early on. The so-called top graduating math senior last year [accepted to the likes of Princeton and MIT for grad school] was in fact a CS major for 2 years, and started off at Math 53. Lots of people start ahead of him…and don’t necessarily make it where he did. I believe grad schools like to see some years of consistent effort, at least starting sophomore year, and leaving undergrads to just take grad courses instead seems to limit things quite a bit to me. You cannot get to a lot of the grad topics very late — i.e., get a broad foundation in mathematics courses. for instance, the 202 and 250 sequences are exclusively algebra and analysis. Anyone who took Eisenbud’s 250A knows it’s probably harder to get an
