<p>Try to hear me out. I applied EA to MIT and was accepted! I was overjoyed! But when April decisions rolled around and I received my acceptance package from Harvard, my parents pressured me into going to Harvard. I am a future Math major and the idea, developed by so many people on these threads, that MIT is superior in Math and Science to Harvard daunts me. I think I may have made the wrong choice.</p>
<p>I know this thread may seem pointless, as I don't really have any questions to ask. I just wanted to share my concerns. If anyone has any feedback, please respond. </p>
<p>Well, I think Harvard is also really great for Math specifically, at least that's what I've heard. One of my friends chose Harvard over MIT this year and he's going to be a Math major too.</p>
<p>Also, isn't it true that you can cross-enroll at MIT if you go to Harvard? So at the very least you can always take some MIT courses if you find the Harvard Math department lacking.</p>
<p>Hope your concerns don't eat up your fun as you go off in a few weeks! I'm sure the difference between the two schools (in regards to math) will be relatively minor and that you'd be no better off going to MIT versus Harvard. In the end, I think you will get the same education if maybe not the same opportunities.</p>
<p>Everyone has the "pre-college" jitters. I was wondering myself when I enrolled at Harvard if it was the right choice for me. Now that I think about it going into my sophomore year, it definitely was. I never had as much fun as I did in high school as I do here.</p>
<p>Math is fantastic here, and I know that you know it. We have so many different levels of mathematics available here and students work with professors on math research. If you are well prepared, you can even take mathematics tutorial classes in a topic of your choice. The possibilities are endless.</p>
<p>Wow, I was strangely the same way. I had been down to MIT and the H, and my family had been crazy pressuring me into MIT, but I didn't choose that for personal reasons, so now I'm going up to Cambridge. Then time passed, and I had been in the same place as you, concerned that MIT was clearly superior in mathematics and such, but in reality the quality of their math department is practically equal to that of MIT, but yeah, so... hurray for math majors :D</p>
<p>If you have concerns, you can post on the Parent's Forum. Marite, has a son who is a math person who is now a sophomore at H. He particularly decided if I remember that for pure math H was better.</p>
<p>I would not say that Harvard is superior in pure math, but, from what I understand, MIT's superiority lies chiefly in the applied side of math, which was not what my S was interested in. MIT does have a larger math department than Harvard, so I assume that in pure math MIT is probably equal to Harvard.
But the chief reason S decided not to apply to MIT was that he was concerned he would be swamped by engineering types, even though some of his best friends are engineering types and are at MIT. He also wanted to be surrounded by people with different interests than his own.
What makes Harvard or MIT exciting is the quality of fellow students. There seems to be quite a few very strong math students coming to Harvard this year.</p>
<p>Harvard Math alumni received most Fields Medal and absolutely no MIT alumnit got Fields medal ( even though MIT math is 6 times bigger than Harvard Math)</p>
<p>^^Statistics like which school put out more Fields Medalists or Putnam Winners are useless since all they basically state is that the "cream of the crop" in one school is more talented than the "cream of the crop" at another school. Say, the top 5 kids at Harvard Math could be far more intelligent than their 5 counterparts at MIT but it's possible to induce that the math-major student body at MIT as a whole is more gifted at Math than that of Harvard's(this is just a plausible hypothesis as I have insuffiecient data to actually compare these two peer institutions in any field of study). Besides, I don't think any pure statistic can singly prove anything like what we're discussing here.</p>
<p>I would think you'll end up being very happy at Harvard, but if you do end up wanting to go to MIT don't worry too much - you can always transfer. I'm pretty sure people that want to transfer out of Harvard can get in practically anywhere.</p>
<p>Harvard Math alumni received most Fields Medal and absolutely no MIT alumnit got Fields medal ( even though MIT math is 6 times bigger than Harvard Math)
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<p>Mdx49, you're back! Perhaps you can answer those questions that I asked you before which you never responded to, which is why is it that Harvard grads so rarely win the Wolf Prize for Mathematics (which is the true equivalent to the Nobel Prize for mathematics)? Or why, according to your logic, both Cambridge U and Moscow State University are far superior to Harvard at math. </p>
<p>I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for you to respond, as you never responded before.</p>
<p>MIT obviously has far more depth. I think this says more about their math program than whether or not they win the team event (which uses a very unsatisfying scoring method).</p>
<p>I find it a little odd that MIT has no Fields Medalists but w/e. That's probably partially attributable to the the vast number of interesting majors at MIT that sweep away all the awesome math students. Harvard has a lot of options but they aren't nearly as science/technology veered as MIT's are.</p>
<p>I think it's misleading to look at just a single year. Looking through the list of Putnam fellows on the Wikipedia site, Harvard simply has had many, many more Putnam fellows than MIT. Sorry, but there's no way getting around that Harvard has dominated the Putnam for most of the past 30 years. And the Putnam isn't about which school has more people interested in math or which school has more "very good" people. It's about which school has the very very best. The difference between the #1 scorer on the Putnam and the #10 scorer can be huge. Remember, the median score on the Putnam is zero, and you only need to get a couple of problems right to be in the top 10. The #1 guy, though, often gets everything right. And it's the #1 guy who often stays on as a Harvard math professor, not the honorable mention guy.</p>
<p>MIT can certainly claim to be more "math literate" than Harvard. Its students probably have a slightly higher average math SAT than Harvard (although much lower verbal SAT than Harvard). It has several times more math majors than Harvard, and has several times more Putnam takers than Harvard, and probably more higher scorers at lower levels. MIT students can take pride in their "Integration Bee Competitions" (apparently they hold a competition to see who can do integrals faster) and other geeky rituals while their counterparts at Harvard (even the math majors) experience the true meaning of a liberal arts education, choose from hundreds of exciting extracurricular activities, and prepare to be their masters in the real world. While MIT excels at producing "math literate" engineers and other math students of modest talent, when it comes to producing world-class mathematicians, MIT is unfortunately a notch below Harvard. </p>
<p>Harvard has tended to stay away from engineering in the past probably because it looked down on it and because there was this little school next to it called MIT that could do the dirty work. But Harvard has always been a powerhouse in science and outranks MIT there. Harvard has many more National Academy of Sciences members (roughly 170 to 100), more Nobel Prize winners, larger research grant income ($2 billion a year), many more top notch papers in leading journals such as Science and Nature (do a PubMed search for Nature and Science), higher citation indices, all spite of not being "as science/technology veered as MIT". According to the Shanghai ranking of world universities, which is purely based on objective criteria, not surveys, MIT received a score of 66 on publication in Nature and Science (Harvard being 100), 73 on Nobel-Prize winning alumni (Harvard 100), 80 on Nobel Prize winning faculty (Harvard 100), 67 on highly cited researchers (Harvard 100), and 62 on Science Citation Index (Harvard 100). The #1 university in science is Harvard, not MIT, despite MIT being "dedicated to science and technology". Only an idiot would say something like "MIT is superior to Harvard in Math and Science".</p>
<p>homebuddy, you didn't really get into Harvard, did you?</p>
<p>For the record, and as one of the few people on this board who has actually been a student at both MIT and Harvard, I have to say that I think it's absurd to say that either Harvard or MIT is "superior" to the other in math and science. Both schools have outstanding programs in the sciences, and more to the point, professors at both schools collaborate extensively with each other. </p>
<p>It's ridiculous to make fine distinctions between schools which are so clearly outstanding, and vitriol is certainly unnecessary.</p>
<p>At any rate, Harvard has a larger science faculty at MIT (including a sizable medical school), which probably contributes somewhat to the numerical score disparity.</p>
<p>homebuddy, I had a similar situation as you did. I applied SCEA to Stanford, but decided to go to Harvard. (I did get into MIT, but wasn't loving it as much). I'm on the math/econ track (for now). Yes, I may be a little nervous (I'm leaving tomorrow for orientation!), but I think Harvard has a fabulous Mathematics Department. Have you checked out math 55? Anyways, there are other benefits of college that aren't founded on the strengths of departments...and I wouldn't carry around with you the fact that your parents pressured you into accepting Harvard over MIT, or else you'll end up with some resentment towards the school, which really isn't a good way to start out college.</p>
<p>Ranking schools' math departments by Putnam results exclusively is absurd, I admit. Trying to decide between which is better of MIT and Harvard's math programs is pretty much ridiculous and extremely hard to do. Although, I do have to say that if you are a huge fan of the MOP culture, Random (at MIT) is probably the best dorm for you. I don't know much about Harvard's housing but I don't think they have anything equivalent to Random. Unless there is something very specific you are looking for in a math department, the difference between Harvard and MIT is, I believe, too small to matter. </p>
<p>Back to the Putnam deal. I haven't researched past Putnam results, so I only know what happened last year. Perhaps last year is an indication that the tides are changing a little. It also has a lot to do with which students go to which school. If one year all the seniors from IMO decide to go to one year, that will obviously have a large impact. Putnam isn't a very good measure of a math department as a whole (I'm going back on a statement from my earlier post a little...) since most of it is decided by math students who were already at the top of the field in high school and either study for Putnam on their own or take a seminar for it. Many of them already go into an analysis class or higher (at least at MIT) which is already beyond the scope of Putnam, I believe. I'm guessing that Math 25/55 (especially 55) at Harvard really helps students for Putnam.</p>
<p>Anyway, regretting choosing Harvard is silly, imo. As much as there is a friendly rivalry between MIT and Harvard, I'll admit that picking Harvard is best cho...er, no I won't admit that :P....you should never regret going to either Harvard or MIT. There's so much to do at either school that I'm sure you'll find a way to have the best time of your life there even if it's not exactly how you planned it in high school.</p>
At any rate, Harvard has a larger science faculty at MIT (including a sizable medical school), which probably contributes somewhat to the numerical score disparity.
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<p>This is not true. MIT engineering /science/math is much bigger than Harvard engineering/science/math. </p>
<p>MIT engineering faculty is 30 times larger than Harvard
MIT science faculty (especially Physics & Chem ) is about 4 times larger than Harvard
MIT math is about 6 times larger than Harvard</p>