Lots of good points here. I can't speak to the graduate level, but for the undergrad level I think the trick is to find textbooks that don't suck (most good tex

Lots of good points here. I can't speak to the graduate level, but for the undergrad level I think the trick is to find textbooks that don't suck (most good textbooks are free, or are old enough no one cares about copyright, and a million pdfs are online, or you could get it used for $15. Most bad textbooks are price gouging undergrads). Then just put the time in with deliberate practice. I tried self-studying math for a year, and often skipped the harder practice problems, thinking just reading the textbook and examples is sufficient. That's actually entirely useless. You are't learning math (or anything worth learning) unless you spend 6 hours on a Saturday working through some hard problem that makes you so frustrated that you ask God why he made you such an idiot. If you spend enough time doing that you can actually learn something.