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Most Difficult Course To Study In The World - Education - Nairaland

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Most Difficult Course To Study In The World by Icosahedron(m): 10:11am On Jun 15, 2017
Harvard Maths 55 course, this course is very rigorous and infamous for its difficulty, in Harvard Mathematics Department, only the top scoring students are allowed to take the course but still the drop out rate is almost 90%. Most of the students enrolled in to the course are former Olympiad competitors.

The Harvard University Department of
Mathematics claims that "This [Math 55] is
probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country".



The historical retention rate is very low, In 1970, this demanding course covered almost four years worth of mathematics classes in two semesters, and therefore drew only the most dedicated students.

In the class of 1970, only 20 of the 75 students who began the class finished it due to its difficulty Similar drop-out rates were true for the class of 1976:
"Seventy started it, 20 finished it, and only 10
understood it." and for the class of 2009: " we had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester after the fifth Monday," said Scott Duke Kominers.

Bill Gates once enrolled into the course but switched to Applied Maths Department(Computer Science) for the following reason

β€œI met several people
in the math department who were quite a bit
better than I was in math,” he said. β€œIt
changed my mind about going into math.”


Harvard Maths 55 is infamous for its difficulty and even have a Wikipedia page of its own.
Problem sets are expected to take from 24 to 60 hours per week to complete, Of those students who could handle the workload, some became math or physics professors, including members of the Harvard Math Department such as Benedict Gross and Joe Harris; also, Harvard physics professor Lisa Randall and Harvard economics professor Andrei Shleifer.

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Re: Most Difficult Course To Study In The World by 4kings: 6:30pm On Jan 01, 2018
Interesting!!!

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