Student Comments
PROMYS Europe lived up to expectations and more; on top of lots and lots of number theory and other bits of interesting mathematics, I also really enjoyed making friends and becoming part of a supportive group of students and counsellors. I think everything important to know about PROMYS Europe is made very clear in advance.
PROMYS Europe went above and beyond my expectations. In some ways, I had no idea that the course would be based so much around simulating research for students and all the challenges that that brings but, now that I’ve done that once, I could never imagine a maths camp being any other way…
PROMYS [Europe] was an amazing experience and it completely lived up to expectations (actually exceeded them).
It was great being able to work with students from all over Europe who all shared the same passion as me.
It was a lot of fun to work on a research project, and I think it was pretty cool that even though we are high-school students, we were able to actually contribute a non-negligible piece of work to the study of Artin-Schreier curves, which turned out to be a lot more fun than I at first thought 🙂
The research project in PROMYS Europe was possibly my favourite part of the programme. Discussing our ideas in a small group with only minimal suggestions from our counsellor made the project an exciting challenge, and I was very pleased with how the write up brought everything we had conjectured and proven together. The presentation also gave us an opportunity to express our thoughts and ideas to the rest of the students, which is a nice thing to do after having spent so many weeks working on it.
The [advanced] course was a series of fantastic lectures which gave me a wider perspective on combinatorics (in particular extremal graph theory which is uncommon at high school and olympiads).
The guest lectures were an amazing opportunity to learn more about what mathematicians do and it was great to be able to discuss with the lecturers afterwards. The lectures were easy to follow and I found out more about areas of Mathematics I didn’t really experience before.
I really enjoyed discussing mathematics with the counsellors. They were always helpful, guiding me to the right solution in such a way that I was able to eventually find the solution by myself.
I always felt comfortable talking to the counsellors and they very often … were able to provide advice or help with any problems I had (not purely maths related).
I wish [the programme] was a lot longer! It has passed so fast.
It should be longer. I accept that this is basically impossible, but the programme seems to finish just as the content of the number theory course starts becoming really cool, and I would really like to spend more time getting familiar in a PROMYS way with material after the course. Of course I guess this is the point of university and books and whatever, but the PROMYS way of learning maths is super good. Anyway, it should definitely not be shorter. It has to be this long to work.
The time goes too fast and one will wish that there were at least 8 weeks as actually 6 weeks look like 3 weeks.
I hoped to improve my ability as a mathematician and to have fun exploring some new and interesting areas of mathematics, whilst at the same time having a memorable summer spent with like-minded students. It is safe to say I’ve reached these aims, and I’ve also made friends that I know I will stay in touch with after the programme.