I looked for the most recent American winners I could find (there aren’t too many of them and I may have missed a few):
Edward Witten went to Brandeis for undergrad (majoring in history).
William Thurston went to NCF for undergrad.
Stephen Smale went to UMich for undergrad.
Paul Cohen went to Brooklyn College for undergrad.
And I know that Terence Tao went to some school named Flinders University in Australia for undergrad (Wikipedia says “The latest Times Higher Education rankings of the world’s top universities ranks Flinders University in the 301-350 bracket”).
Shocking as it may seem to some, attending either a public or some college that decidedly is not among the tops in mathematics did not seem to hinder these guys.
ucbalumnus’s remark about the undergrad schools of the Fields Medalists doesn’t really contradict my point. It’s unsurprising that a mathematician who was an undergrad at Princeton or Berkeley would eventually win a Fields Medal. I think that Brooklyn College and City College of New York served generations of exceptionally bright students who grew up in the city, and had various reasons for going to college there. I could make a case-by-case argument for the others.
But this reminds me of a story told by the wife of a colleague. Her spouse was a Harvard student. His family wanted him to marry a woman who had gone to one of the Seven Sisters (back in the old days, when women could not get into HYP, etc.) She did not have that background at all. So at one point, when she was getting fed up with the condescension from her in-laws, she asked, “You have to be pretty smart to get into Radcliffe or Wellesley, don’t you?” Her mother-in-law agreed. Then she said, “So imagine how smart you have to be to marry a Harvard man, without having gone to one of those colleges.”
One has no idea where the top of the capability or impact of a Fields Medalist is. Pretty Good University (PGU) may produce a Fields Medalist at some point. He/she would have to be quite smart to receive a Fields Medal without having gone to one of the “top” schools. But there is no way of telling what he/she might have done otherwise. Maybe no more. Maybe more.
“ucbalumnus’s remark about the undergrad schools of the Fields Medalists doesn’t really contradict my point. It’s unsurprising that a mathematician who was an undergrad at Princeton or Berkeley would eventually win a Fields Medal.”
Michigan is an elite university in the world of academe and is highly rated for Mathematics. Not sure why it would be surprising at all for Michigan to be listed. It seems its it’s only here on CC that it doesn’t get its due.
Purple, my point about Missouri was that even if your dry cleaner, guidance counselor, or other parents at the bus stop have never heard of it, grad school committees have- employers of engineers and scientists have- and it punches above its weight at a national level among people who “need to know” from a professional perspective.
And that’s part of it. Getting past the wow factor for a kid of “You’re going to Cal Tech you must be a genius” to “You are really smart and are going to get even smarter in college”.
There really are kids who think that Rice is the booby prize. There really are kids who think that CMU means they’ll never amount to much. This is crazy.
Quantmech- Brooklyn and City College got “thick” with exceptionally bright students because the Ivy League had quotas on Jewish kids, “ethnic kids”, African American kids. So there weren’t “various” reasons for going to college- there was one- they couldn’t get admitted. So what does that tell you- that our system is opaque-- even today- or that it is SO robust that even the fallback, public safety school can produce world class intellectuals???
And the problem with using “sub flagship public U’s” as an example is that there are places- I’ll cite NY again- which don’t have a flagship. Which means that many kids and families assume that Stonybrook is third rate. That Binghamton is for losers. So you have families paying for their kid to attend Pace, Hofstra, Adelphi, Seton Hall in order to AVOID their sub flagship university.
I can’t speak for academia, but there are very few large corporate employers which would rather hire a kid out of Pace vs. Binghamton, all things being equal which they never are, etc. Or Rutgers, U Conn, Delaware, etc. Highly respected flagships in the Northeast/mid-Atlantic region even though the "second tier " privates get a LOT more love from parents (who dig deep to pay for them). Hofstra over Stonybrook?
However, that proves the point that top-end mathematicians can come from undergraduate schools that are far from super-selective. Indeed, Berkeley used to be the kind of place where a high school applicant with a 3.7 GPA (UC weighted) and 650 on each SAT section would likely be admitted (in the College of Letters and Science division, where the math major is).
One has no idea where the top of the capability or impact of a Fields Medalist is. MIT may produce a Fields Medalist at some point (though it seems like they haven’t). He/she would have to be quite resilient to receive a Fields Medal while attending a pressure cooker. But there is no way of telling what he/she might have done otherwise. Maybe no more. Maybe more.
BTW, you realize that your argument could be used on any subject to support any side?
“Rex Tillerson became head of ExxonMobil, but if he had gone to MIT, maybe Exxon would have twice the market size it does now. Maybe more. Maybe no more (or maybe he would have run Exxon in to the ground).”
BTW, if Brooklyn College is fine because of exceptionally bright students, then should not any college be fine if a student is exceptionally bright?
I mean, if you can make a case for Flinders University or NCF*, then what college can you not make a case for?
Granted, I think NCF is pretty special, especially for a kid looking to grad school, but NCF also isn't very tough to enter or very expensive for OOS students, so an exceptionally bright kid who is aiming for the tippy-top and could be one of the best in an academic field has no excuse not to apply there (or to Oxbridge).
Coming back after a few hours to find this thread on fire…and making a delayed response to @compmom:
Oh, I think it remains highly relevant. The identity and proportions of the various desired groups have shifted a little, is all - the principle of holistic admissions has been constant throughout.
As described in the article, since the 1930s Harvard and its peers have used holistic admissions to pick a class full of people they see as winners/leaders in various ways, without being tied strictly to stats. Who has been thus anointed has evolved over time from mostly WASPs to a broader range of people. Note the anecdote in the article about Levi Jackson, Yale '50.
Plenty of kids attended Harvard and its peers on scholarship in 2005, and for decades before that. In the decades leading up to 2005, though, Harvard and its peers became extraordinarily wealthy and thereafter began to expand financial aid substantially. This enabled them to target a larger number of less-well-off students and first-gens, which was what they were looking to increase as a proportion of the mix of winners/leaders they were all the while assembling holistically for their classes.
@blossom, thank you for informing me that HR departments in large national companies have heard of MUST as I wasn’t aware of that.
But even among engineers, schools like MUST (and WPI & Stevens out in the Northeast) aren’t well-known outside their home regions, and that may be a concern if someone is applying to a smaller engineering firm or software company rather than a large national company. And of course, the alumni base isn’t as national either.
Vance Packard wrote in his 1959 book The Status Seekers that HYP were slowly transitioning from a mostly-SES-elite student body to greater emphasis on academic eliteness. The old HYP took most students from favored SES-elite prep schools (which back then were not necessarily academically elite with some academically elite students from mostly public schools. The scions on the SES-elite were the ones content with “gentleman’s C” grades, while the smaller number of the latter were those who brought academic glory to HYP. Of course, as HYP shifted more toward the latter over the more recent decades, the SES-elite and the associated prep schools had to up their academic game (and often quite effectively, considering their wealth) in order to maintain “their share” of the admissions.
National employers recruit at these strong engineering schools. A kid who wants to work at a 12 person firm in Providence Rhode Island instead of a global company with 100,000 employees around the world- that’s a choice. And like every other choice, there are trade-offs. Getting your foot in the door may be part of the challenge.
The folks who decide where to recruit don’t do it in a vacuum. When my company takes a core school off our schedule it’s for a reason. Either the quality of the kids we are interviewing has started to decline; or our yield declines (we make 30 offers and only get 2 acceptances), or the costs of recruiting there can’t be justified in the context of our overall budget. Or some other reason. But I’d get fired for not knowing where the talent is in the disciplines I’m responsible for and that includes knowing up and coming colleges, places that have invested heavily in new departments and disciplines, etc. You would have to work hard to find someone who makes decisions about where to recruit for an engineering intensive company who has not heard of WPI, Stevens, etc. It’s hard enough to make your numbers some years-- especially now that the visa situation has become really complicated.
@PurpleTitan Why would MIT be a “pressure cooker” for a great mathematician (other than perhaps the distribution requirements)? The better you are at math the less work an undergraduate course requires (no lab hours and problem sets take a fraction of the time - I chose to switch to math as an undergrad because it was the easy option compared to sciences, and I’m not that talented).
The key here is whether you will find a great and dedicated professor to work with you (though having really smart fellow students to push you definitely helps). My original concern (which was agreeing with @QuantMech) was that we may be heading in a direction where more of these kids might be missed (I liked the comment that academics should attach more value to academic ability). Sure there are really good professors at plenty of institutions other than MIT/Caltech, but the UK system excels at funneling the best math kids to the best math professors. CTY etc help to do that here, but I don’t know if those kids (especially if they have a narrow focus) are going to end up with the professors they need.
BTW I think Flinders is a red herring - IIRC he was living at home with his parents and graduated at 16.
So, some here do have a deep sense that certain kids are entitled above others. And it seems to be based on high school work and devotion, plus some opinion about his or her “potential?”
And if top colleges want something more than pure academic might, they’re wrong…
But you’re right?
So circular.
Does anyone wonder why these top colleges haven’t asked for lay opinion?
“The mission of Harvard College is to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society.”
“The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.”
blossom, #146, it’s not the issue of being a year ahead in the classes. It’s a question that Harvard teaches in 3/4 of a year what Pretty Good University teaches in 3/2 of a year. I expect that the difference in pace continues throughout. One would expect that the Harvard student would have twice the intellectual experience of the PGU student, upon graduation, assuming that the difference in pace continues. I have no evidence that it doesn’t.
Terence Tao is rather uniquely gifted in mathematics. He started university courses at the age of 9 and finished a bachelor’s and master’s degree at 16. He was at RSI at 14. He won a gold medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad just after turning 13. Two of his brothers also represented Australia in the International Mathematical Olympiad. I think that some of his early education at home was as influential in his later success as his undergraduate course work, completed before most Americans even start applying to undergrad school.
I agree, some students might be adversely affected by the pressure cooker atmosphere at MIT. So it’s not the best choice for every talented engineer.
I am only suggesting that it makes sense to match the most capable students with the most challenging universities; and that there are detectable and significant academic differences among applicants that most universities in the US overlook. I don’t really see a problem with that view. Do you assume that poorer students or students from under-represented minorities are not among the most capable? I don’t. I think they are present in that group.
“Do you assume that poorer students or students from under-represented minorities are not among the most capable?”
??? Where did that come from?
I still believe that the American college application process is very opaque to most people, but especially for STEM academia, the cream will rise to the top.
My kids had to earn their trophies winning with the team. Actually it was the experience with the team that was important to them rather than the trophy. I would love my son to have the opportunity to go to an Ivy league school for the level of education and interactions the other students. If not, hopefully a slightly less selective school or a state school with a good honors program. Just waiting for scholarship decision at a state university he really likes. Our state (Stem) university just isn’t right for him to explore his interests in liberal arts also. However, my kids only won a trophy if they actually won. My son had to quit his team in high school when he got his 3rd concussion and had headaches after for awhile.
That is mainly if you choose the higher level honors courses (Harvard Math 55A-55B is the third and highest level honors course). The regular Harvard frosh/soph courses (Math 1A-1B-21A-21B) are a typical two year sequence of single variable calculus (1A-1B), multivariable calculus (21A), linear algebra and differential equations (21B). There is even a slow version of 1A (MA-MB) that is roughly like high school calculus AB (probably with some review of precalculus).
My fathers side and my sister lives overseas. Their process is testing at the end of high school. The highest scores go to college to be the doctors, engineers ect… free. the lower scores either get to go to college for a less demanding career or have to go elsewhere and pay out of pocket.