The mathematics department supports an intimate and vibrant graduate program. All of our professors are active in research, which provides graduate students with many options for research areas.The mathematics department supports an intimate and vibrant graduate program. All our professors are active in research, which provides many choices of research area to doctoral students. At the same time our faculty is devoted to teaching and mentoring of students. Our graduate courses and research seminars provide a great atmosphere for collaborative learning and research. Moreover, the seven other research universities in the Boston area are all within easy reach, providing access to many more classes, seminars and colloquia in diverse areas of mathematical research.Master's students must either pass 9 courses or pass 7 courses and write a thesis. A master's thesis is the result of directed study with an adviser of your choice, it is usually a survey of a specific topic or an in-depth study of some problem. The Master's program is intended to prepare students for employment in the mathematics profession either in academia, in government, in business and industry or to pursue further graduate education. It normally takes about two years of full time study for someone entering with the equivalent of an undergraduate mathematics major, including a background in algebra and analysis, students entering with less background may take longer, and nontraditional students are warmly invited to apply.Geometric group theory and topology at Tufts encompasses a broad range of topics including knot theory, hyperbolic geometry, 3-manifolds, braid groups, nilpotent groups, mapping class groups, CAT(0) geometry, automorphism groups of free groups, and general graph products. Finitely generated groups are studied at large scale, or asymptotically, making them geometrically identified with the model spaces that they act on. From this point of view, surfaces and manifolds can be studied through the geometry of their fundamental groups and other associated algebraic objects.We have a very strong weekly GGTT seminar with attendees from our group as well as from surrounding universities such as MIT, Harvard, and Brandeis.