OSSU Math curriculum: four admission rules, eight required topics, no credential of its own

Four admission rules decide what lands on the list

ossu/math holds no lessons of its own. It is a Markdown file of links, and every link had to clear four conditions first: match the curricular guidelines in CURRICULAR_GUIDELINES.md (the 2015 CUPM Guide), be open for enrollment, run regularly (self-paced preferred, otherwise several times a year), and hold up on teaching materials and pedagogical practice. The gate is a degree audit rather than a taste test. The scope came from undergraduate math major requirements with general education requirements removed, on the assumption that anyone following the list is already educated outside the field. Courses come from places like Harvard, MIT and Stanford, but the institution is not the selling point, the four conditions are. When no course clears them for a topic, the topic still appears and a book fills the gap, which is why the list mixes graded university courses with standalone reading. Support runs through a Discord server that the project calls your first stop, and a course that stops running is raised as a GitHub issue rather than patched silently.

Eight required core topics, six elective areas

The curriculum splits in two. Core Mathematics is the required half: Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, Calculus, Introduction to Differential Equations, Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra, Probability & Statistics, Introduction to Analysis, and Introduction to Abstract Algebra. Each one is meant to be taken, and each is the base for what follows. Advanced Topics is the elective half: Differential Equations, Mathematical Logic, Geometry and Topology, Probability and Statistics, Mathematical Analysis, and Abstract Algebra. The rule there is not take everything. Take one course in each area, then pick one area and take everything under it, so you finish as somebody who knows a field instead of somebody who sampled six. You may also invent a custom subject, which the project suggests you have validated by the community first. The catch sits one paragraph earlier: working in order or out of order is permitted, yet the recommended path is strictly top to bottom because the list is already sorted by prerequisites. Out of order is a permission that costs you the sorting somebody else already did.

The calculus chain starts at high school math and cannot be reordered

The first two topic tables show the shape of the whole list. Introduction to Mathematical Thinking on Coursera runs 10 weeks at 4 hours a week with no prerequisite, and beside it sits a LaTeX tutorial at 30 minutes a week for 1 week, also with no prerequisite. Then the chain tightens. Calculus 1A: Differentiation is 13 weeks at 6 to 10 hours a week and its prerequisite is high school math, for which the curriculum links to a precollege math page. Calculus 1B: Integration is 13 weeks at 5 to 10 hours a week and needs 1A. Calculus 1C: Coordinate Systems & Infinite Series is 6 weeks at 5 to 10 hours a week and needs 1B. Multivariable Calculus, taken from MIT OpenCourseWare, is 12 weeks at 6 hours a week and needs 1C. Every link closes the previous one, so jumping ahead means walking back. The hours are planning figures typed into a table.

Two years and 18 to 22 hours a week is a target, not a calendar

The plan offered is about 2 years at roughly 18 to 22 hours a week, and the qualifiers matter: it is possible to finish within about 2 years if you plan carefully. No weekly schedule, no term boundaries and no exam dates are published, so the arithmetic belongs to you. Read plainly, a learner with a job and a family is looking at a multi year project, and the person who has eighteen free hours every week for twenty four months is the case that estimate was written for. The project is explicit that you can work alone or in groups and in order or out of order, which reads as permissive until you meet the prerequisite chain in the calculus table. Groups help with the material. They do not compress the hours. If your week offers ten free hours instead of twenty, plan the calendar accordingly and accept that nobody has checked whether the two year figure survives contact with a full time job.

Free to read is not the same as free to finish

The cost paragraph is the shortest and most consequential one in the file. The project strives to identify free resources, then concedes that some courses may charge money for assignments, tests or projects to be graded. The price of the reading is zero and the price of the feedback is not always zero. That distinction bites in one specific place: for a course whose assessment is paid, the payment stands between you and a graded result, and the README describes no grading process of its own to replace it. The guidance on spending is to decide based on your own time and budget, closing with the line that you can't purchase success, which reads as a joke and works as a warning about paying your way around the parts that are hard. For a reader on a scholarship or a tight budget the consequence is concrete: before enrolling anywhere, find out whether that specific course charges for grading, because a paid assessment sitting in the middle of a two year plan changes the plan and not just the invoice.

Duration and effort figures stop after the calculus sequence

The course tables carry duration, effort and prerequisite columns, and the Introduction to Differential Equations table uses the same columns, so read each later area's table rather than extrapolating from calculus. There are no GitHub releases either, so there is no changelog to read when a course is swapped or a link is retired; the repository's last push was on 2026-08-08, and that date is the only fresh signal a reader gets about change. The running regularly condition is a promise made about the host platform, not about the link in the table. The practical consequence: build your two year budget from the tables, then adjust it once you have measured how fast you actually move through calculus.

Nine entries in the repository, none of which issue a credential

Take stock of what is actually stored. The repository holds .github/, CNAME, CONTRIBUTING.md, CURRICULAR_GUIDELINES.md, FAQ.md, HELP.md, LICENSE, README.md and a documents/ directory, under the MIT license on the master branch, with math.ossu.dev as the homepage. That is the whole mechanism. There is no certificate, no transcript, no grading service and no exam here, and no credential that finishing the list would produce; the assessment happens on whichever platform each course runs on. The helper documents are about process rather than proof. HELP.md carries the FAQ and the chatroom, CONTRIBUTING.md covers how to propose a curriculum change, CURRICULAR_GUIDELINES.md holds the criteria themselves, and FAQ.md sits next to them. What you own at the end is the mathematics you can do afterwards, not a document anybody is obliged to accept. If your reason for following the list is a job application, transfer credit or a visa, verify whether the host courses issue anything you can present, because this repository cannot supply it.

The content policy decides which of your own files may go public

One line in the file has real consequences and is easy to skim past. If you plan on showing off your coursework publicly, you must share only files that you are allowed to, and the code of conduct you sign at the beginning of each course is part of the deal rather than decoration. That code of conduct belongs to the host course, and it binds you there, not inside this repository. The practical effect falls on exactly the artifacts a self taught learner wants to publish: problem sets, solutions and exam work drawn from graded university courses are the files most likely to carry restrictions. A portfolio built from the list therefore needs checking file by file against each course's own terms before anything goes up. Assuming that a free, open source project means unrestricted sharing can end with you breaking the conditions of a course you paid for.

Editorial conclusion

OSSU Math fits a learner who already has high school math, roughly twenty free hours a week, and the patience to sit inside other people's courses for two years. It does not fit someone who needs a credential or a fixed calendar. Before you start, open the calculus table and confirm Calculus 1A is still open to you, then price the graded work in the courses you plan to take, because the reading is free and the grading is the part that can cost money.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. ossu/math on GitHub
4. Project website
5. README