I would hope that medical professionals wouldn’t consider this group to be “losers” either.
Not sure what the rest of your post has to do with anything I have written, and expanding the discussion to medical school seems too far afield, so I’ll leave it at that.
I did math competitions as a high schooler (AIME x2, USAMO x1; I lived in Canada so I did a bunch of Canadian ones like the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad and Euclid, top 100 placing and 12th) and I am an engineer.
I still review a lot of math competitions for kicks. I didn’t realize that USAMO was only around 300 people and therefore pretty decent until about 6-7 years ago, around the time I started interviewing for MIT (on the Educational Council).
It’s too much data just to track all the USAMO people or people who didn’t do great.
AFAIK, my data says:
The majority of people who did the International Mathematical Olympiad went into math (concentrated in or majored in math) and largely went into academia.
A minority became Google engineers, data scientists, post docs, CTOs, researchers, CFOs, etc.
I knew a lot of people who were really good at math (like state math champions, IMO medalists) at my time at MIT and some became engineers, one is a staff statistician/adjunct professor after a stint as an associate professor.
And talking about tippy top, there’s a very high correlation between IMO gold medalists and Putnam Fellows (or doing well on the Putnam). Various people have mentioned that schools do well largely do well on the Putnam because they recruit that talent…
As for not tippy top, I don’t generally talk with my CMU/MIT/Ivy+ friends about whether they did math competitions or not or how they did. Largely never comes up in conversation.
With a couple of East Indian coworkers, math competitions came up, once. They’re both software engineers.
Frankly, I don’t understand why some people get so offended by the word losers. We are all losers, since we don’t always win.
Do I think that my older son, losing the HYPSM admission competition is a loser? Nope, neither does he. He just lost a competition.
FYI, the author of post 522 is the same person who compiled the list of top award winners at MIT that I linked to in post 514. He shared with me a pointer to the results of the 2019 and earlier International Physics Olympiads, and where they ended up:
Now, while MIT ended up with almost all of these people, these students will also likely get admission to multiple other HYPS colleges as well if they chose to apply. In case you were wondering why Gopal Goel who won Gold in 2018 didn’t go to MIT, it turns out he was a freshmen at the time and only graduated in 2021.
Granted, this is the extreme tail, but you can expect the admit rate for lower level awards in physics, math, chemistry, etc. to still be much more predictive of admission than the “average excellent” student that applies.
My DD’s Harvard interviewer told her the same thing - you are amazing but I’ve interviewed so many amazing students over the years and none were accepted so good luck, but don’t get your hopes up and it’s not you if you don’t get accepted. She got in and interviewer was ecstatic to get her first candidate in.
How small is “near negligible?” For example, MIT admits 1100 freshman each year. Including international students, how many would have to be admitted from USAMO, IMO, and x-MO for you to consider it non-negligible? Between just USAMO and IMO that is almost 700 potential applicants, and that is before considering x-MO competitors in other countries. Seems like a lot of potential admits.
The different admission rates suggest larger differences in interest in math between boys and girls. Until we figure out how to quit driving girls away from math at younger ages, true imbalance will likely persist.
As to cause vs. effect, it seems more likely to be a some of both. Girls win less competitions because many fewer girls participate because they are less likely to become and remain interested in math. But they may be less likely to become and remain interested in math in part because they want no part of the constantly competing in math, whether in class or in formal competitions. And around it goes.
Maybe it is your insistence that others look at it the same way you do . . .
It’s not factual, it’s definitional; the way you choose to describe and organize the world so it makes sense to you. I neither agree with your definition nor find it particularly helpful in understanding college admissions. But that’s just me. And while I do think that it is offensive to refer to kids who don’t get into a particular school as “losers,” that is not why I keep repeating the term. As I tried to express initially, this worldview may tell us something about math culture. To take it back to well before college admissions . . .
Many little boys who love math often view the world the same way you apparently do, a series of competitions with winners and losers. And in math they pit their skills against each other for grade school glory, a chance to beat their friends and show off in front of the class and even their parents. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but they are always competing. And when they win, they might even laugh and call their friends “losers” knowing that the next day, they may be the “loser,” because that’s how competition works.
But some kids, especially some girls, will not constantly compete in math. That is not how they learn. Maybe they have different attitudes toward risk taking. Maybe they prefer a more collaborative approach. Maybe they lose self-confidence when they are made to feel like a “loser.” Or maybe they just find the math boys to be really obnoxious, and don’t want anything to do with them. Whatever the reason, for them math as competition is toxic. Even kids who start out enjoying the competition at first may ultimately end up in this second group.
If math education shares and fosters and the same values as the boys in the first group, then those in the second group will continue to want nothing to do with it. To try to speak your language, math is a big “loser” when math culture alienates all those potentially brilliant girls and boys who will not embrace math as competition.
Are you trying to tell me that girls don’t compete? You are joking, right? Are you actually saying that there is gender difference between girls and boys? Seriously?
See, that right there.
You have made this thread a competition. It is fun for you. Not for me. I have loads to say, but why bother.
You win. I concede.
Or wait, did you in reality lose?
Team USA has 6 members per year. Ivy Plus colleges have ~30,000 admissions per year. If you mean USAMO qualifier, rather than IMO participant, then I expect the typical admission boost is significantly smaller. However, it still represents only a minuscule portion of the total number of Ivy Plus admits. MIT could potentially be an exception with a small minority, rather than minuscule.
I see. 
What did I win?
What did I lose?
Of course that is not what I am saying, but you must realize this?
It seems @CateCAParent is correct, and I am a fool for bothering. To quote Falken from WarGames, “the only winning move is not to play.”
Love that movie. Matthew Broderick is so young. BTW, Professor Falken named the computer Joshua, after his deceased son. The computer, Joshua, says the quote above after blowing up on playing tic-tac-toe.
And you’re right.
You are right of course. Joshua. I knew Falken didn’t sound quite right right. I have a horrible memory. (I’m so old I saw it in the theater.)
I could understand many types of sports being essentially as series of competitions, but math? Only a small portion of kids who are interested in math participate in math competitions/teams. As others have noted in this thread, many kids who are interested in math haven’t heard about any of the listed competitions. Are math classes really more of a competition that other classes like biology, where women are overrepresented?
The reasons why women are underrpresented in math are complex and mutifaceted. There are well documented differences between genders as early as preschool. By the end of elementary school, there are quite significant differences between genders in portion that say they are good at math, enjoy math, want to pursue a career involving math, etc. Women rate lower in these areas in spite of averaging similar or higher grades in math classes than men.
I won’t go far off topic and talk about the wide variety of what I believe are contributing factors. However, I will say, I think there is some irony in the War Games reference. This is an example of one of many popular 80s movies with a smart/geeky/techy male kid that inspires many kids to pursue related fields in school and beyond, but the girl… not so much of an inspirational role model .
If the child of a Phd certified research scientist participates in elite science fairs is it really true that that kid possessed more initiative than a child of a janitor who has zero cultural exposure to the science field out side of their school classes?
If colleges are using participation in any activity that has high socio- economic, geographical and cultural “ gate keeping” as representation of an individuals initiative then that is plain faulty logic.
Competition isn’t a dirty word. It’s what makes our economies and societies vibrant. It offers incentives that drive innovation, letting the best ideas, and people with the best ideas, in a variety of fields to emerge. The main downside to competition is people breaking rules and taking advantage of others. But that’s not the problem for math competitions and many other academic competitions. They have very strict rules. All competitions have incentives and incentives are what make competitions work. Do we want to give talented students an opportunity to emerge or do we just want everyone to feel equally good?
I have a friend who does interviews for Harvard (she has her BS and PhD from H), and she tells candidates the same thing! 99% are qualified and equally impressive. Her average acceptance is about 1 kid for every 30+ interviews, and she is never able to predict who will get a spot. She tries to reassure them that it’s really almost a lotttery at this point, not that they are unworthy.
And yet, hundreds of thousands of students every year “play”.
See I thought the WarGames reference was addressed to people who participate in the discussions the subject of this thread.
I brought up math because that’s an area that I know well. But there are humanities awards that likely skew the other way. One well known one is TASP (Telluride Association Summer Program) which I see comes in at level 9. A lesser known one (not even on the list), but which has excellent outcomes is Concord Review (where high school students write a history research paper). And as others have mentioned, girls excel in science fairs.
For many kids, the love of math is innate. We discovered my son’s interest when we gave him money in first grade for a school book fair, expecting him to buy a cartoon book, and were dumbfounded when he brought home Algebra for Dummies. We laughed, and a few weeks later we were shocked when he discovered he taught himself to solve multiple equations with multiple unknowns.
Math contests were not initially about competition at all, but about keeping a mind engaged and active when the schoolwork is not remotely challenging. And for my son at least, math contests were not even his primary activity, as he had another activity where he spent most of his free time.
