Questions about the USA.

[Jon Miller]

I pay a lot more than 5% of my gross income on student loans, and while I have more than the average 4-year degree (which is how much I had when I got my 4-year degree), I don't have that much.

JM
(My standard of living in graduate school, especially 2005, was a bit more than my graduate student salary.)

[The Mad Monk]

HC, should Jon have skipped right past 4 year college and into his postgrad form high school?

[Hauldren Collider]

HC, should Jon have skipped right past 4 year college and into his postgrad form high school?

Physics is different. You can major in English and then go to med school. You can't do that and then go to graduate level Physics.

[Jon Miller]

Most people who go to med school in the US have 4 years and an additional 1-2 years of internship.

I would agree that our medical system produces doctors who are too expensive, but they are very capable.

I think you would find it difficult to have everything you need with an English degree. I only knew one physics student who had it all.

JM

[Jon Miller]

I have a friend who is 28, and already a professor. He started doing GR his first year of college (and published a paper).

I couldn't do that, Russians have a better foundation in math than most (not HC/Kuci) in the US have available to them. But if I had been more focused/efficient/ambitious I could have done more in three years than I did in four (maybe most importantly, less naive).

On the other hand, after 5 years of physics I started to face burnout... maybe if I had gotten to the more interesting stuff earlier I wouldn't have, or maybe if I was more focused/etc I would have faced burnout earlier. Who knows.

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

I'm only about a year (maybe 2) ahead of what virtually everyone in the United States can get access to in terms of high school math (AP calculus). Besides, if you don't have that, calculus is definitely something you can teach yourself. That's how my dad learned calculus, for instance. Actually, as I recall, my dad had taken his first actuarial exam before he even got to college.

[The Mad Monk]

Students who finish with an English degree (or in one case I knew personally, an Art History degree) have to fulfill certain science requirements before they can be considered. At Rutgers this included 8 credits of physics, 16 credits of Chemistry including Organic Chemistry (aka The Reaper), and a godawful number of credits in Biology including physiology and microbiology. Candidates were effectively lumping two-and-a-half hard science minors onto whatever major they held previously, and had to maintain a stupidly high GPA while doing it.

[Jon Miller]

You had a lot of math available to you though.

I had a couple of friends at college who also had Linear Algebra/Differential Equations/Multivariate Calculus, so your school isn't the only one where it is available.

I think my russian friend did calculus in 8th grade?

JM
(He is quite impressive though.)

[Hauldren Collider]

I did Linear Algebra and Multivariable Calculus in HS, if I'd been one year further ahead (a possibility for me, but one I decided not to take) I could have done diffeq, but I really liked the precalculus teacher (you had to skip precalc to get another year ahead). He actually taught me more calculus than my calculus teacher.

Turns out it didn't matter--Carnegie Mellon made me take them both again anyway.

[onodera]

You had a lot of math available to you though.

I had a couple of friends at college who also had Linear Algebra/Differential Equations/Multivariate Calculus, so your school isn't the only one where it is available.

I think my russian friend did calculus in 8th grade?

JM
(He is quite impressive though.)

8th grade? He must be from some special school, like Kuci and HC. Moscow school #57 (aka fiftysemitic) fits the bill. I finished a typical 10-year school, and we had the basics of calculus in 10th grade.

[Al B. Sure!]

If I recall correctly, we did algebra I in 8th grade, algebra II in 9th grade (I don't recall what was different between the courses; I guess just two years of algebra broken up), geometry in 10th, trig in 11th, and calculus in 12th.

The better students would take AP Calc and I think some kids had two years of Calc.

My school was unique though. The average Philly school curriculum is a year behind that one so no calculus at all for the typical high schooler.