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<blockquote> <p>I mean why out of nowhere marite says about Princeton?<< He meant the number of student major in math at H is not in the 90s. More likely in 10~20. Just like princeton.</p> </blockquote>
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<p>You can try digging up MIT's info just as well as I.
To compare Princeton's and Harvard's numbers:
For Harvard, one needs to divide the listed total by 3 (sophomores, juniors, seniors).
For Princeton, one needs to divide by 2 (juniors and seniors).
Disregard joint majors as Princeton does not allow joint majors.
You can do the same for MIT once you've got the numbers.</p>
<p>MIT's numbers by major are [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/registrar/www/stats/yreportfinal.html%5Dhere%5B/url">http://web.mit.edu/registrar/www/stats/yreportfinal.html]here[/url</a>], conveniently already divided by year. :)</p>
<p>Is math an underrepresented major here? If yes, the profs will most likely give unparalleled attention to math majors! What's the most popular major here anyway?</p>
<p>How many math geniuses are there in Harvard? By math geniuses, I mean those that have medals in IMO, USAMO winner, published paper in journals and/or have studied until fourth year of univ math or grad-level math. Any other description of a math genius is welcomed (But do state it!)...</p>
<p>Who (CCer) is a math major at Harvard?</p>
<p>Harvard College is significantly bigger than Princeton, so I would be surprised if they really had the same number of math majors. They seem to have approximately the same proportion of math majors, though.</p>
<p>For another point of comparison, the University of Chicago has 178 math majors. By and large those are only third year students and beyond. First-years aren't allowed to declare a major. Second-years can, but the stats show a number of post-first-years almost equal to the entire second-year class as "no major declared" (and third-years have to have one). One part of the explanation why there are so many math majors at Chicago is that there is an option within the major called "concentration in economics" that is popular with students who plan to go to graduate school in economics.</p>
<p>At Harvard, there is a math major and an applied mathematics major (and the "applied" comes in several flavors, of which economics is one). Differences such as this make numerical comparisons difficult. Another issue is what passes for graduate-level courses. It's very likely that courses that are considered graduate courses at Harvard (and indeed taken by graduates as well as undergrads) might be considered advanced undergraduate courses at Princeton.</p>
<p>Just to be clearer: By saying "...have studied until fourth year of univ math or grad-level math...", I mean those that have done so before going to college. One such person is Michael Viscardi. He has taken graduate-level math courses at UCSD before going to college.</p>
<p>@marite: What do you mean by "It's very likely that courses that are considered graduate courses at Harvard (and indeed taken by graduates as well as undergrads) might be considered advanced undergraduate courses at Princeton"? I thought Harvard and Princeton are on the same par? I mean it is well-known throughout the math community that Harvard, MIT and Princeton are the top three best places to study Math. So, how come Harvard grad-level courses = Princeton advanced undergraduate courses?</p>
<p>It's a matter of labeling. A lot of courses at Harvard are labelled "for undergraduates and graduates". In the math department, these are 200 level courses; in some other departments, these are 1000-level courses. If you look up the course enrollments (through the Registrar's website--click on statistics), you'll see that many 200- level courses have both undergraduates and graduates enrolled in them. They tend to be more advanced versions of the same courses offered at the 100 level. A lot of veterans of Math 55 & 25 go straight into the 200-level courses. While these kids are smart, they're sophomores by the time they take these 200-level courses, not yet grad level.
A Princeton prof told my S that such courses would be called advanced level courses at Princeton, and my S believes him.
According to a Harvard prof, courses above 250 are primarily for graduate students working on their dissertations.
The courses were recently re-numbered. There's nothing sacred or even truly consistent about course numbers and different universities have different policies governing numbering.</p>