<p>Our son is now deciding between math at Yale and Harvard. His current goal is to go to graduate school and become a math professor. He fits well at Yale (loves it, actually), but understands the strength of Harvards math department: grad school placement, reputation, Math 55, etc. He knows less about Yales math department and its strengths and weaknesses. Assuming that he does well at either Harvard (will probably start with Math 55) or Yale, will he limit his grad school opportunities by going to Yale? Any information regarding graduate placement for recent Yale math grads is greatly appreciated. Thanks for your input.</p>
<p>I can’t answer your specific questions, but the caliber of his classmates in math classes will be dramatically higher at Harvard. My intuition says that he can still go to a great grad school from Yale, particularly if he does research and gets published, but if he wants to be a professional mathematician, the friendships he builds at Harvard will last his entire career.</p>
<p>I don’t have hard facts for any of this, just my $0.02.</p>
<p>I seldom venture over here, but dramatically higher? Dramatically? Really? </p>
<p>These are peer institutions.</p>
<p>Yes, DRAMATICALLY.</p>
<p>2011 Putnam Results</p>
<p>Place,Harvard,Princeton,Yale
1-5,1,0,0
6-14,3,1,0
15-24,0,0,1
25-84,1,4,0
85-100,2,1,0
101-200,11,1,2
201-500,18,16,7
(sorry, I don’t know how to make a table here)</p>
<p>They are peer institutions overall, but not in every subject.
And, for the record, MIT has many, many more highly ranked mathematicians than this. Stanford is right up there with Harvard and Princeton.</p>
<p>I think it is absurd to choose a college based on the results of a math competition or to label Yale math majors as inferior to Harvard math majors. There may be fewer of them, but they’re plenty smart. If a math whiz has a marked preference for H, s/he should go there. But choosing Y will not relegate him to the company of “dramatically” inferior peers.</p>
<p>okaaaaay, if you say so. However, just this one time, I think I’m in a position to know something about this. Can you support your claim? I think the Putnam results, the USAMO competitors, the Math 55/Math 25 group, together conspire to bring more top students to Harvard than Yale has. In mathematics. You can’t just ignore all that stuff, it’s all on one side of the balance. Remember that we’re talking about a student who is actually planning on taking Math 55 if he picks Harvard, so these things matter.</p>
<p>^^It doesn’t sound nice when you say a group of people is “dramatically inferior” to another, but it’s true that at the very top, Harvard’s math students are “dramatically superior” to those of Yale, whatever nasty inferences one can draw from that.</p>
<p>To the OP: You might find previous threads on this topic helpful. This has been discussed a lot in the past.
[site:talk.collegeconfidential.com</a> yale vs harvard math - Google Search](<a href=“site:talk.collegeconfidential.com yale vs harvard math - Google Search”>site:talk.collegeconfidential.com yale vs harvard math - Google Search)</p>
<p>Polyglot, fair enough.</p>
<p>^^My post was in response to wjb’s.</p>
<p>Yale math still has the long standing dark cloud of Serge Lang-- the worst teacher and worst writer of mathematical texts in the US (I can’t speak of other countries). Other than the late Prof Mandelbrot, no one of note has come out of pure math at Yale (they have terrific applied math/finance–but that is very different than pure math…) in recent memory.</p>
<p>When one goes to IMO or are around other top tier math talent, the question is: Harvard, Princeton, Chicago (esp since they hired the two Number Theory guys), Cal Tech, MIT or Stanford. Yale isn’t spoken in that group. Again that is among pure math folks–</p>
<p>imntwo: For those who make college decisions based on competition results, I will grant that H beats Y in pure math.</p>
<p>My son studies math at Y. He has found no dearth of challenging classes, peers, and professors. He turned down H.</p>
<p>I firmly believe that students should make college decisions based on more than the strength of a single academic program. The OP has clearly stated that her son loves Y and fits well there. </p>
<p>And I still find it absurd and arrogant to label any group of Harvard students “dramatically superior” to any group of Yale students. We’re not discussing East Peoria State College here.</p>
<p>I agree w/ wjb. How the student performs in general, and what s/he makes of all possible opportunities are going to be the important part. No students are accepted to grad school solely based on where they got their undergraduate degree. If the OP’s son feels more “at home” at Yale, the math program rankings by far should not be the determining factor. Last time I checked, Yale wasn’t admitting deadbeats either.</p>
<p>etondad: I haven’t heard the name “Serge Lang” mentioned since I graduated. When I saw that, I practically had a “yeech” moment. You’re 100% right about his text and teaching ability. </p>
<p>I can still envision that beat up red cover Calc book of his – what trash. Bleah!</p>
<p>^,^^ I never said OP should pick Harvard, or that the math curriculum was the most important decision factor. I merely said that more of the top math students, by a variety of measures, do go to Harvard (and MIT even more so). This is borne out by the Putnam exam and recent Intel prizewinners.</p>
<p>From the Yale math department (<a href=“http://math.yale.edu/undergrad/competition-and-prizes):%5B/url%5D”>http://math.yale.edu/undergrad/competition-and-prizes):</a></p>
<p>The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is a U.S. and Canada-wide undergraduate competition for individuals and teams. (Three students chosen from each university comprise a team.) The competition consists of two three-hour sessions generally held on the first Saturday in December. A strong showing on the Putnam exam carries a good deal of weight in the mathematics community, and generally helps if the student later applies for graduate study in mathematics.</p>
<p>Has he had a chance to visit Harvard and stay with a math major?</p>
<p>This is one of the small handful of departments where I believe there’s a material difference between Y and H, and H is stronger. If he didn’t plan to be a math professor, I wouldn’t think the difference ought to be a deal-breaker, but he does. Undergraduate originality and mentoring/endorsement by top people in the field will matter a great deal. Under these circumstances, I think it’s a mistake to pass up H for Y. If you search my 4000+ posts on this board, I don’t believe I’ve ever said that before.</p>
<p>Student life at Y and H outside the classroom is practically interchangeable. I don’t believe that any student who loves Yale College couldn’t love Harvard, too.</p>
<p>I do agree that Harvard’s math majors are definitely smarter on average than Yale’s. However, I think the “grad placement” term the OP used is a misnomer. Math graduates, especially theoretical math graduates, aren’t placed to the same extent chem grad students are.</p>
<p>If the OP is good at math contests and/or research, his grad school results will probably be comparable to if he is at Harvard. If he can get honorable mention on the Putnam (top 60) and his performance in class is comparable, he probably will get his pick of grad schools. If he’s one of these people that’s better in class than in contests, maybe H could help because he can show he is as good as Putnam fellows. However, I knew a guy in theoretical math that got an NSF Fellowship in math coming from a far lesser school than Yale, and he wasn’t that great at math contests either. He was one of those people who was far better in class and research than on math contests, the kind of guy good at connecting disparate things together but not lightning fast. My point is that the cream rises in math more than other fields. </p>
<p>If you have a definite preference for Yale, that’s not something to discount. Remember that in grad school you will spend years taking classes anyway, so more advanced coursework can come later.</p>
<p>You should make the decision based on which school experience you like better, which classes you are more excited about, and who you want your classmates to be in your major. Honestly, I’ve heard conflicting accounts on the benefits of Math55. It’s sort of like MIT engineering or being coached by Bobby Knight in basketball; it’s brutal but it might not actually benefit you. There is an MIT undergrad alumnus who got a PhD at Harvard in math who wrote a rather long critique of Math 55 on the MIT forum. You might check it out or contact that poster. (See Deejaiy’s post on the following thread on Math 55.) <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1068223-math-55-2-0-mit.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1068223-math-55-2-0-mit.html</a></p>
<p>“If he didn’t plan to be a math professor, I wouldn’t think the difference ought to be a deal-breaker, but he does. Undergraduate originality and mentoring/endorsement by top people in the field will matter a great deal.” - Hanna</p>
<p>I would generally disagree with the assertion that Harvard is better for “mentoring/endorsement by top people in the field.” You will be hard pressed to find a major mathematical field that Yale doesn’t have a distinguished professor in, and in many ways, due to the relatively small size of the undergraduate math community compared to faculty, there are plenty of opportunities for interaction and mentoring.</p>
<p>I would also direct people to my somewhat lengthy post in the Yale thread about this: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1131460-yale-harvard-math.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1131460-yale-harvard-math.html</a></p>
<p>Hard to understand why the son of the OP didn’t apply to the school with the Top Mathematics department in the country. That would have been the solution, instead of deciding between Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>By which you mean MIT? Perhaps he did, but didn’t like the culture there. That’s what my S found.</p>
<p>Ditto for my son. He is enjoying MIT for grad school.</p>