Should we have a canonical question about Part III of Cambridge's Mathematical Tripos?

Question

Over time, we've accumulated a certain number of what seem to me to be very similar questions (with very similar answers) regarding Part III of Cambridge's Mathematical Tripos, which is a 1 year masters degree. While not all of the questions about this degree are duplicative, a certain number are. They boil down to "Does success on Part III increase competitiveness for subsequent PhD applications?"

The first in this list is from today. The oldest is from nearly 10.5 years ago:

• How useful is Cambridge Part III for PhD applications in Europe?
• Benefits of doing Part III at Cambridge (Pure Math) for US PhD applications
• How appreciated is "Part III" in the US?
• How much weight does the tripos III carry for further PhD admissions?
• Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge (Pure Maths) with scholarship, and US PhD applications

As a logistical matter, we're not being overwhelmed with this question. The question is in some sense perfect for this site: Students may not have heard of it, but the degree is reasonably famous amongst practitioners. Even better, some logistical aspects of the degree are peculiar because of its short length. This is again easy for practitioners to spot and relay but harder for students.

We've answered minor variants repeatedly over time with little new information, however, and I'm increasingly thinking that this dispersal is undesirable for Q&A findability. If you look at the most recent question of this type (the first link), its only difference from previous questions that I can dig up is a concentration on searching for a PhD in Europe as opposed to the US. It's hard to close this as a dupe because the other questions have focused on the US in the past.

Normally, I would say fixating on a specific named degree isn't typically what we want to do on this site. It keeps coming up, however.

Bottom line: I'm of the mind that a canonical question answering (in long form): "Will successful completion of the Cambridge Masters degree, Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, generally increase a student's competitiveness for subsequent PhD positions in related subjects? Does the degree's short time-table introduce any generally applicable logistical considerations?" would be short and centralize this information once and for all. But I'd rather see if there's some consensus one way or another before proceeding with that.

Answer 1

Thanks for finding this.

Normally, I would say fixating on a specific named degree isn't typically what we want to do on this site

I agree. Canonical questions are quite rare: we only have ~12 "tagged" canonical question and maybe another 12 that are common dupe targets. Making one for this would seem very strange.

It's hard to close this as a dupe because the other questions have focused on the US in the past.

Of the ones you list:

• Questions 2 and 3 could be merged -- the same question, focused on the US, each with many good answers.
• Questions 5 is also about the US and has no answers. Seems like a dupe of the above.
• Question 4 doesn't have the US in the title, but it is about the US and it has only one answer with 7 upvotes. Another dupe of the above.
• Question 1, the new one, is the European flavor of the same question. So, this one should probably be left open, perhaps after editing to mention that it's already been asked-and-answered for the US but not for Europe.

Update: I have merged questions 2 & 3 and closed 4 & 5 as duplicates of this. For question 1 (the European version), I am open to additional opinions. Personally, I am reluctant to close question 1 before it gets a good answer. After it gets a good answer, it might make more sense to combine the two remaining questions into one giant region-agnostic version. But as it is, all the answers are US-centric, and the odds that someone adds a high-quality, Europe-centric answer as the 10th answer on the merged question seems pretty low.