<p>As per the Putnam Competition, the premier Math Olympiad at the collegiate level: </p>
<p>First Place</p>
<p>Harvard 28
Caltech 10
MIT 6</p>
<p>Why has MIT only won 6 times, whereas Harvard has nearly 5 times the amount. Also, MIT has nearly 4x the amount of participants, so you would expect them to be better than the rest. </p>
<p>Maybe Harvard attracts the top Math kids (USAMO qualifiers)???</p>
<p>William</a> Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>The following table lists teams that finished in the top five since 1990 (as of 2011 competition):
Top Five Team (s)
21 Harvard
16 MIT
13 Princeton<br>
12 Duke
9 Waterloo
9 Caltech
7 Stanford </p>
<p>How about:</p>
<p>Schools of the Top 80 Placers at the 2012 Putnam Competition:
MIT: 29
Princeton: 9
Stanford: 6
Harvard: 4
Caltech: 3</p>
<p>As you can see… noone comes close when it comes to the number of qualified students at MIT. The number is quite similar for all the previous years.</p>
<p>What happens is that your team score is comprised of the scores of 3 individuals that are selected before the competition. Harvard only has one strong team, so it’s pretty easy to select them. MIT has so many people who are qualified that it’s very difficult to predict which 3 will do the best. And more often than not the top 3 placers from MIT are not all on the team. In 2012, if MIT used its actual top 3 placers as a team, we would’ve finished first.</p>
<p>So if you think 4 Harvard students placing in the Top 80 is better than 29 MIT students placing in the Top 80, then I guess you really do belong at Harvard :P</p>
<p>Or MIT kids are too hosed to study for the Putnam, but more open to doing interesting math problems for fun.</p>
<p>^Lol. I think I got hosed enough that I forgot about Putnam registration. Oh well, next year.</p>
<p>…You’re a freshman.</p>
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<p>Of course - Harvard produces the most engineers. So they are clearly better in that area.</p>
<p>I can’t believe this is an actual discussion. Hahaha. Harvard and MIT are both insanely good schools where only geniuses go. At their level, I really don’t think one can simply degrade into words which team is smarter by virtue of degree.</p>
<p>@lidusha: Eh, good point. 8.012’s currently my hardest class (also taking 18.022 and 5.111, both are quite easy compared to 8.012 and other classes).</p>
<p>Also, USNWR says MIT has #1 undergraduate engineering program.</p>
<p>@rspence: I was leaning more towards you’re on P/NR and should not be sacrificing the opportunity to do things you want to do because you’re hosed. Probably none of us should be sacrificing the opportunity to do things we want to do because we’re hosed, but that’s another story.</p>
<p>This is totally irrelevant to the point at hand, but it’s the first time I get to point out that I am an alumna of both Harvard and MIT, so I can pontificate if necessary (although not about anything related to the math department…).</p>
<p>See what I did there? Alumna? ;)</p>
<p>I just thought it was interesting that Harvard does so much better than MIT when MIT actually has far more competitors. I feel this is a symptom of MIT missing out on many top math kids (IMO medalists, USAMO qualifeirs, etc…)</p>
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<p>Thats because Harvard is a lib arts college, where most of the student body isnt a math/engineering concentrator. THe fact of the matter is, Harvard wins the competition far more often than Harvard since Harvard has a stronger team.</p>
<p>sheep,</p>
<p>The Putnam is hard enough that the engineering, science, and even physics majors are irrelevant to the outcome of the competition–its very rare anyone other than a straight math major would get in the top 50-60. When you compare the top 5, top 10, top 50 scores on the Putnam, MIT has had more than Harvard since the turn of the century. MIT just chooses its 3-person team poorly.</p>
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<p>MIT does do well in the Putnam, just not if you look at the team ranking, so I’m not sure what this means. It is true that most MIT students, apart from those taking the freshman problem solving seminar, do not study for the Putnam. But they still do well.</p>
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<p>You might still be able to get on the waitlist. Unfortunately, the Putnam seems to be only publicized in an e-mail to math majors and those taking the freshman problem solving seminar.</p>
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<p>Thats just because they have far more kids taking it (think about the relative sizes of math kids at Harvard vs MIT). The fact of matter is they have fewer kids winning the thing because they attract fewer of the top math students. Why, I dont know.</p>
<p>@shravas, I think I’ll still wait an extra year before taking Putnam. I don’t know a whole lot of linear algebra/analysis yet…I did qualify for USAMO in HS though.</p>
<p>sheep,</p>
<p>I can tell you one reason why Harvard might attract more math majors, and that is the prestige of Harvard. I know several top mathletes from our region who chose Harvard over MIT because of the name. My son didn’t apply to Harvard and he’s a math major, but he’s also not a top student (as in, IMO or USAMO) in the nation in math.</p>
<p>Harvard is still the top school for students of certain backgrounds regardless of what Harvard does or does not have to offer them.</p>
<p>@rspence I would still try taking the Putnam. Many of the problems require no college-level math, and the ones that do tend to be the more difficult problems that very few people get. And given that you made USAMO, you do have a good chance at doing well. For a point of reference, I never qualified for USAMO, but have gotten top 500 on the Putnam.</p>
<p>@shravas, nice. I’ll see if I can take it. I’m pretty sure the registration deadline passed a while ago but I’ll see…</p>
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<p>No, you didn’t really read what I said In the past ten years, MIT has had more Putnam winners (top 5) than any other school. We attract top people. The problem is that they aren’t on the official Putnam team, so their performance doesn’t count toward the team score. We also probably have had the most people in the top 10, 20, or 50. </p>
<p>Harvard did used to have more top math people in the 90’s, but that changed in the early 2000’s. There was one really top math kid in the early 2000’s who was very interested in computer science, working in MIT’s media lab. He bucked the trend and went to MIT, and around that time, we started to get all the top people. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence. Maybe we’re too deep now or the top people we have aren’t consistent (maybe due to lack of practice?), but the people we put on the team don’t do as well as some of our other people.</p>