Abstract: Let be a disk in and . We deal with the problem of the algebraic approximation of the set consisting of the set of points in the disk where the -th jet extension of meets a given semialgebraic set Examples of sets arising in this way are the zero set of , or the set of its critical points. Under some transversality conditions, we prove that can be approximated with a polynomial map such that the corresponding singularity is diffeomorphic to the original one, and such that the degree of this polynomial map can be controlled by the data of . More precisely, �egin{equation} ext{deg}(p)le Oleft(frac{|f|_{C^{r+2}(D, mathbb{R}^k)}}{mathrm{dist}_{C^{r+1}}(f, Delta_W)}
ight), end{equation} where is the set of maps whose -th jet extension is not transverse to . The estimate on the degree of implies an estimate on the Betti numbers of the singularity, however, using more refined tools, we prove independently a similar estimate, but involving only the data of . These results specialize to the case of zero sets of , and give a way to approximate a smooth hypersurface defined by the equation with an algebraic one, with controlled degree (from which the title of the paper). In particular, we show that a compact hypersurface with positive reach is isotopic to the zero set in of a polynomial of degree �egin{equation} ext{deg}(p)leq c(D)cdot 2 left(1+frac{1}{
ho(Z)}+frac{5n}{
ho(Z)^2}
ight),end{equation} where is a constant depending on the size of the disk (and in particular on the diameter of ).
