What is the best advice someone can give about math grad school?

I take issue with several things that have been said. First, almost any PhD program will waive your fees and either pay you to TA on top of it our pay you with a research assistanceship. Most people think it is better to get some big grant and get out of TAing for at least several years, but in reality, if you can manage to do good research while building a teaching portfolio the whole time that you are in grad school, you will look much better than some other candidates because you have added teaching experience. I also reccomend trying to get a job as a lecturer instead of a TA, if they have such opportunities at your school, or at a local community college while your are a grad student.





Secondly, getting published before grad school is considered quite important in many fields, but not in mathematics. The pace of publication in mathematics is much slower than in scientific fields, even than in theoretical physics. I know plenty of people who went to fancy shmancy programs without being published beforehand. In fact, it isn't even necessary to be published yet to get a good job right out of grad school. Andrew Wiles won't let his students publish their stuff in grad school because he is worried that other people will work on it too, but he still lands them good jobs. I would reccomend at least giving some talks while a grad student, certainly at your own deparment seminars, but also by giving one at one of the big math conferences. You don't need to be invited to give a talk at one of those, although giving an invited talk looks better on your CV.





Which leads me to the third issue -- your advisor choice is probably the most important issue to getting a good job out of grad school. It is more important than the particular school you go to, so ignore what the person said you said you have to go to the ';best'; school you get into. I turned down Berkeley to go to UCSD, and I am quite happy with that choice. I have a helpful well-connected advisor, so I am quite confident that I will land a professorship when I apply for jobs this year. In fact, he went to Ohio State -- again, not on the ';top ten'; list -- yet he is amazing and well respected even at the worlds best schools. He has said, and I have observed myself, that the very best people at most schools will be approximately as good as the best people at the ';top ten'; schools.





In choosing an advisor, the optimal thing to do is to have one in mind before you choose a grad school and make sure that you have a chance of being one of his/her students. But even if you don't know what field you want to specialize in, when you first get to grad school, you should make sure to find out from the other students which advisors tend not to help their students much and shy away from those. On top of that, try to find out what kind of jobs their students have landed in the past. If you are like most grad students, your advisor will help you find your thesis problem, in which case the records of their past students will let you know if they tend to have students with weak research who have trouble landing jobs, or if they are consistently able to help their students find solid problems to work on. Also try to find an advisor who is well connected, because that seems to me much more important than the name of the school on your diploma. Many professorship openings get hundreds of applications, and the way they often whittle it down is by throwing out all of the applications from people they haven't heard of -- you will want your advisor to be able to call up their buddy at the institution and put in a good word for you. Several of my good friends have gotten job offers that way. But most importantly, make sure that you love the stuff your advisor is working on, because it is too easy to burn out trying to work for years on a problem that doesn't interest you.





--Also just finishing up grad schoolWhat is the best advice someone can give about math grad school?
Would you like to go to Grad school for free.. oh.. wait.. better.. how would you like to get PAID to go to school?





Did you do well in your classes? Do you also like Biology? you might look into the IGERTS progam... I think it is at University of Utah... or Utah State.. forget which one...





it will PAY you $35,000 a year to go to school... your tuition is waived.. you have to buy your books.





this is an attempt by the US government to get people from the math field into the biology field... your degree will still be in math but with a biology concentration.What is the best advice someone can give about math grad school?
If you wanna be a professor, math is a good choice, it has more choices than other majors. You can foucus on Probability and Stats which are useful in practice as well as academic soundness.


Also, I think a Math professror is cool!
Start doing research with a professor now. You will need to be published if you want to get into a good PhD program. Learn how to write well. Professors will want you to write grants and you don't want to make them look bad. Expect them to take all the credit even if you did all the work at first. Being able to write eloquently will get you more grants. Research is the name of the game if you are planning on being a professor. Doesn't sound very math oriented but that is what you have to do.
Well I waited till the Feb of my senior year to apply to grad schools and only applied to one. So one piece of advice is to not wait too long. Try to keep on everyone's good side at your new school. (Math depts can be small and have a lot of gossip floating around. You don't need gossip floating around about you when you will need recommendation letters from these people in the future.) Try not to procrastinate, you may find that you do not have enough time to get all of your work done, so try to stay on top of everything. Do more work than what the professor tells you to do. Go to Colloquiums and all of the talks that you can, it makes you look good. Form a study group to bounce problems off of one another. Good Luck!





(more) Since you are thinking of teaching, be sure to get a teaching assistantship. Also try to teach as many different types of classes as possible. This will build up your resume.
Go to the best school you can, there is a reason that some schools are rated higher, usually because of research, which can be good or bad for undergrad, but is extremely important in Grad School.





If you want to go to grad school in math, almost all positions in Canada are funded (TA), so you get about 18,000 a year, while doing a PhD, not including scholarships.





Don't pick your supervisor until you've been in the department for a year and can see how s/he deals with students.





Pick a topic you love, but no matter what after studying it for 5 years you'll come to hate it at some point :)





In rating schools, email previous graduates if possible and as them about it.





If you're interested, go into applied mathematics such as Bio Math, or Statistics. Jobs are very easy to get with a Master's in Statistics or Applied Mathematics (Google!!)





Start working on your thesis right away, and keep up with the literature review.





Enjoy, Grad School is an awesome experience.
What type of employment are your considering? Do you like to teach? Math majors don't really burn up the corporate world unless they have a skill. And more education may not return on the investment. If I was considering this I'd hook up with an internship or co-op position with a company to study my way into a job...