My real analysis professor had an interesting comment about the difference between undergrad and grad school, when she mentioned that the take home midterm was supposed to test our grasp of the material by turning our minds inside out.
Undergrad and all the standardized tests around there is like testing whether the milk is good, whether the student has the mental horsepower and ability to learn basic material.
Graduate school, by contrast, just assumes the milk is good and demands that the student churn their mind and make ice cream. You’re thinking something new from the knowledge that we already have, essentially making something out of nothing.
The thing that makes undergrad important is just a minimum. Just like when you look at a carton of milk, it doesn’t make a huge difference if it’s a day old or ten days old, it’s how the churning is done that determines if the ice cream is good or bad. Of course, if the milk is bad, don’t even bother because it’s never going to work.
So this provides something to think about for both undergrads and grads. For you undergrads out there, think about whether or not your mental milk is good. If someone picked up the carton, is the brain still fresh or has it passed the expiration date? For you grads out there, how hard are you churning? How is the ice cream developing?