My recommendation is that you start learning LaTeX, ideally with a recent book for beginners.

For example "LaTeX Beginner's Guide: Create visually appealing texts, articles, and books for business and science using LaTeX, 2nd Edition (English Edition)"

Even as a non mathematician, Latex is great to know. It is fairly easy to get a basic understanding and for the more intricate bits, there are lots of helpful resources on the Internet

You probably will be asked soon to start getting familiar with LaTeX since it is the best tool (by far) for writing mathematics, but don't worry about not being prepared for that. You can quickly learn the basics, and you even have online editors like Overleaf where you can start writing without worrying about installation issues. Being "forced" to use LaTeX during undergrad is not a bad thing, since everyone in the science community uses it (take a look at the first point of the list featured here: scottaaronson.blog/?p=304)

Let me also suggest the more-or-less official (several people involved here are in the core LaTeX team) learnlatex.org --- I think you can get a taste of the system in less than an afternoon.

I guess that they don't care about the format as long as the result is good and they are not involved in edit that format. If you require a direct help from your supervisori it could be a blessing do it LaTeX if the superwisor is a LateX expert, but a curse if the opposite case. Better ask before ...

Do the humanities departments' websites mention courses offered in Word, or requirements that Word be used for essays? I think were you'd really find it, if it were required, is on course syllabi.

One more point worth keeping in mind is that you will certainly not be tested on familiarity with LaTeX or judged on the elegance of your writing. While you can spend practically unlimited time studying various intricacies of LaTeX, the knowledge you need to write an assignment is fairly minimal: It's enough to download a template of a document (e.g. from an example in a course), know that mathematic goes between "$" or "$$" symbols, commands start with "\", and everything else you can learn as you go by googling "How to I write X in LaTeX".

@JakubKonieczny actually math should go between \( \) or \[ \] in LaTeX, the older $ and $$ are plain TeX. But, you illustrate your own point in the sense that even this incorrect knowledge is sufficient for producing acceptable documents...

@leftaroundabout: I'm sure you're technically correct (which is the best type of correct), but when I use $ and $$ it works and produces satisfactory results, so (as a working mathematician rather than LaTeX expert) I am satisfied. Of course, when possible it's best to follow the most up-to-date practices (and I do try to use [ ] when I remeber), but, like you said, even with my wrong practices the document that comes out in the end is quite acceptable.

" LaTeX ... is basically the MS Word of natural sciences" -- that's deeply insulting to LaTeX.

The difficulty with answering this question is the difference between any sensible math department (no, you don't need to learn it but it wouldn't hurt to start) and some particular unpleasant tenured professor who absolutely doesn't care about teaching. If you draw that unlucky card, it's an experience. And those people do exist.

"I emailed some professors to ask whether I need to learn this before I begin my studies a few days ago but no response yet." This aspect of your question is easy to answer. You are basically asking, is there a secret requirement that the department is keeping on the hush and that you are supposed to learn about purely through word of mouth? The answer to that question is that no, obviously there is no such secret requirement. If a professor requires you to learn Latex, it's on them to communicate to this to you ahead of time, not on you to magically intuit this based on word of mouth.

If you like math enough to pursue a degree, I expect you will like LaTeX also. You don’t need any programming experience, just a willingness to associate collections of glyphs with other collections of glyphs.

I would just like to add that you can learn the math mode of LaTeX without necessarily getting into the whole document formatting side of the equation. There are many markdown editors that support math mode using the TeX tags "$" (inline) and "$$" (display) surrounding valid math mode syntax. For example, stackedit.io takes no time to get started on in browser, while Obsidian is a markdown editor for all major PC platforms.

Well, LaTeX (or just TeX) is so large, it has its own StackExchange. Absolute game changer for formula representation, but also amazing for writing papers. If you write your papers with Word, it's time to upgrade.

If you hang around on math.stackexchange.com or physics.stackexchange.com or cs.stackexchange.com you'll notice that people are able to display nice math formula using something that is essentially a subset of latex.

LaTeX/MathJax Quick Guide just to get your feet wet

@AdamPřenosil "The answer to that question is that no, obviously there is no such secret requirement" I really don't think this is obvious. Stranger and more obscure things have happened in the academy

I'd certainly expect a maths student to be competent in LaTeX by the time they graduate, but expecting it when they start at university seems a bit extreme. That said, knowing it from the start would definitely be an advantage over those who don'tf

Anecdotal, and a very long time ago, but during my undergraduate mathematics degree, one of my colleagues decided part way through to start submitting his weekly assignments using LaTeX. His tutor (not the same as mine) responded that clearly he already knew how to use it, so he wasn't gaining anything from doing so. And that furthermore, if he had time to typeset his answers rather than hand-writing them, then the tutor would suggest some further reading that he could more profitably spend that time on. Obviously this changes once you're writing a thesis: that needs to be typeset.