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<p>I don’t think this is true at all. No one I know actually studies for the Putnam (except for the freshman who take the Putnam Seminar), and the people who do well on it also did well on Olympiads in high school, which suggests that MIT and Harvard don’t really do much more for than attract the top math students in terms of preparing for Putnam. Also, neither MIT nor Harvard seem to put as much effort into selecting their Putnam teams as other schools do - they just take the top 3 scorers from the previous year. So I doubt they actually care that much, though their performance (especially MIT’s) is definitely noteworthy.</p>
<p>But one of the nicer things about schools like Harvard and MIT is that there people willing to take the tougher classes like Math 55. At most other schools, these types of courses aren’t offered, or are graduate-level classes or advanced undergraduate level at best, while at MIT and Harvard, the majority of people who take these classes are freshmen and sophomores.</p>