Hello! I'm a rising computer science freshman in college. I got enough high school credit to fulfill over half of my general education requirements, which got me thinking...
Let's imagine that my only goal in college is to become the best rationalist ever. What classes should I take? Please don't just say "math," be as specific as possible: differential equations or Diophantine? Every credit counts here, and college students don't have much time.
If you need a reminder, here's a decent example PDF for what college courses typically teach which things. Hopefully the relative homogeneity of college courses (especially in STEM) will make your answer applicable to any university.
Thank you.
Aside from basic math (calculus, linear algebra, probability, ODE, all with proofs), take courses in topics that feel interesting to you just by themselves. Don't count on things you learn being actually useful in real life, and accordingly don't try to prioritize courses by that metric. You'll learn what you need for your job by yourself or be taught at the job anyway, so instead spend this time building up an inventory of things to draw upon for useful metaphors. It's easier to learn what's intrinsically interesting so you'll end up learning more. For real world skills, do some academic research projects and industry internships.