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Just teach the subject! Don’t try to weed out the near geniuses from the geniuses. Chances are what the near geniuses can learn will handle about 99% of the work out there. They might be used to working harder already, and it gives them a better work ethic than the geniuses who didn’t have to study as much or at all. I saw too many of the near geniuses that ended up majoring in Psychology because they were weeded out by courses like these. That’s a waste of talent. I recommend that they don’t go to Harvard, and that they go to a small underrated school that will teach them instead of weeding them out.

Right on! Weedout courses should not exist, Certainly not in the 3rd year. Instead the entire course work should be hard enough that those not capable weed themselves out. At the Engineering/Science school I attended professors that thought there job was to flunk people got canned very very fast. That school hires people that TEACH.

re: Just teach the subject! Don’t try to weed out the near geniuses from the geniuses. )))

Dittoes. Math isn't just hard for many people to learn, it's hard for many mathematicians to teach--

I think it's discouraging to hear of some math classes taking pride in the number of dropouts. I'd rather hear of a math department at some university taking pride in the ability to teach the subject in such a coherent and diligent fashion that even people not extraordinarily talented could learn.

Talent in teaching math is much scarcer than math talent, per se.

I've often heard college student complain that their teachers not only were incomprehensible, but couldn't speak English well enough to be understood.

Just teach the subject! Don’t try to weed out the near geniuses from the geniuses.

Highly abstract math is not for everyone, both in terms of ability to grasp it, as well the need to know it.

The vast majority of people in quantitative disciplines do not need the stuff. Engineers don't need it. Even most physicists don't need it; only the really abstract theory guys need it. Some abstract economic and financial theorists might find it useful, but most don't.

This is a course that you only really need to pass if you want to be a mathematician who spends his life proving theorems. If you're an undergraduate, it's a very good idea to figure out whether this sort of thing is for you or not very early in your college career. Most who attempt it find it's not for them, and so they drop. That's how it should by.

My undergraduate institution also had a class like this, and I dropped by the middle of the first semester. If I stuck it out, I probably could have gotten a B-, but after talking with my advisors, I realized that the class wasn't necessary unless I wanted to be a mathematician, something I definitely did not want to be. I went and took the standard advanced calculus sequence that science and engineering majors take, and that proved to be an excellent move. It in no way hindered my ability to go get into a top Ph.D. program in Finance.