<p>Synergy is good......cohort is important to me, being able to exchange, interchange....it is all necessary. It breeds happiness and contentment. It helps folks drive their friends less crazy.</p>
<p>I appreciate and laud your comments regarding your sacrifices which enable your D to have the cohort & synergy.</p>
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there are schools that have made a practice of trying to lure the kind of students Texas137 is discussing with extremely generous merit scholarships. (Both Duke and Chicago have tried this strategy, but even though Chicago has an incredibly strong graduate math program, in a number of years Duke seems to have been more successful in attracting top math undergrads with their offers, perhaps because of their good weather, their campus culture, or some other mysterious factor.)
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<p>Duke is a little more generous, offering full ride scholarships vs. Chicago's Dolan scholarships for tuition only. Duke probably lets these kids specialize more also. To be happy at Chicago, you really have to buy into the whole well-rounded, renaissance person thing they have going on with their undergrad curriculum. Too many of the live-and-breath-math types would rather have bamboo shoots stuck under their fingernails than sit around in a black tutleneck discussing Kant's intellectual materialism, much less writing a 20 page paper on it.</p>
<p>Wisteria - thanks for the link to the Putnam interviews. Very interesting! I like the idea of those kids getting together to form a bargaining unit, too ;)</p>
<p>Great idea, Wisteria. Why not go a step further and let them gather some place balmy, then hire their own professors to come teach them. Isn't that the way universities started?</p>
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Too many of the live-and-breath-math types would rather have bamboo shoots stuck under their fingernails than sit around in a black tutleneck discussing Kant's intellectual materialism, much less writing a 20 page paper on it.
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lol! My son loves sitting around discussing Kant -- though I swear I've never seen him in a black turtleneck. Further proof he's not a live-and-breathe-math type. However, Noam Elkes, the Harvard math wunderkind, did his undergrad at Columbia, where he presumably also sat around discussing Kant in his sophomore core class, and I assume did quite well at it.</p>
<p>Wisteria,</p>
<p>Conceptually the idea has been tested a few times. In the computer industry a few programmming "teams" have put themselves up for bid on eBay. Trouble is, how do you determine the winning bid . . . would you take Harvard at a 50% discount over XYZ at a 100% discount? How would the offers be packaged? Special classes at XYZ may be better than Harvard . . . special housing? Research $$, Varsity math team and Putnam sponsorships? Many variables . . . what to do.</p>
<p>Not to mention where to go. S's idea of nice weather does not seem to match any one else's. :(</p>
<p>Thanks also from me, Wisteria. I read a few of the profiles. We know one of the students. One student who does not seem to have been profile is Ian Le who was a classmate of Gabriel Carroll at Harvard and is currently doing a M.A. in music at Chicago.<br>
I was struck by how many end up doing Physics. S may also go that route in the end.</p>
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Wisteria,</p>
<p>Conceptually the idea has been tested a few times. In the computer industry a few programmming "teams" have put themselves up for bid on eBay. Trouble is, how do you determine the winning bid . . . would you take Harvard at a 50% discount over XYZ at a 100% discount? How would the offers be packaged? Special classes at XYZ may be better than Harvard . . . special housing? Research $$, Varsity math team and Putnam sponsorships? Many variables . . . what to do.
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<p>Well, at the faculty/postdoc/grad-school level, this sort of thing does go on occasionally. One university will bid away several star senior faculty in a department and their entire entourage of junior faculty, postdocs, and grad students. UT Austin raided about half of Princeton's physics department in this way back in the 70s, for example. (As far as I know, all the undergrads stayed put--it must have been disappointing for the undergrad physics majors left behind!)</p>
<p>Because of important collaborative relationships among colleagues, it can be difficult to woo away a single star-performer without taking on their whole entourage, because their continued productivity (and general professional happiness) depends on being able to continue to collaborate with their long-time colleagues.</p>
<p>Deals like these are indeed hard to put together. It's especially tough to move a bunch of established faculty whose spouses may have jobs that can't easily be replaced in the new location.</p>
<p>As I indicated above, I was just being fanciful in talking about undergrads forming a "union" of kindred spirits. Clearly lots of practical problems but still fun to think about.</p>
<p>And Texas137, the merit scholarships offered by Duke (to math stars and other academic stars) are full-tuition plus some summer travel & research funding, not full rides in that they don't cover room & board. (Of course, students who have very low EFCs would qualify for additional need-based funding, but that's not part of the AB Duke merit offer.) <a href="http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/alumni/dm18/best.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/alumni/dm18/best.html</a> has an interesting discussion of how Duke's merit scholarship program got more aggressive over time.
This link indicates the program is still just tuition plus travel & research funding. <a href="http://www.duke.edu/web/abduke/about.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.duke.edu/web/abduke/about.html</a></p>
<p>Chicago's Dolin Scholarship, by contrast, is indeed a true-full-ride, in that it does cover tuition, fees, and room & board. However, there's only one a year of those. Chicago does, however, offer 30 full-tuition College Honor Scholarships a year, which are pretty comparable to Duke's AB Duke scholarships. (Although the College Honor scholarships don't carry summer research money per se, the type of student who wins one will generally have little difficulty securing such research funding if they want it, either from Chicago or from NSF or other outside organzations.) </p>
<p>(Both Duke and Chicago also offer some additional smaller merit scholarships, on the order of $10K per year.)</p>
<p>According to the article I linked above, Duke's yield on their AB Duke full-tuition merit offers is pretty impressive, running about 15 acceptances out of 25 offers per year. That yield is significantly higher than their overall yield. </p>
<p>(By way of comparison, Caltech, has a 20% yield on their Axline merit scholarships--half are full rides and half are full-tuition--vs. a >40% overall yield for the class as whole. Caltech also offers full-ride Presidential Merit Scholarships to URM students and has a 36% yield on those. <a href="http://diversity.caltech.edu/dpg_reports/irvine06-04/Data.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://diversity.caltech.edu/dpg_reports/irvine06-04/Data.pdf</a>)</p>
<p>Well, there seems to be different career paths for math majors besides physics or economics. See this profile of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Plamegate prosecutor:</p>
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Fitzgerald was born into a working-class Irish-Catholic family in Brooklyn and grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood. His father worked as a doorman in Manhattan. Fitzgerald attended Regis High School, a Jesuit Catholic school in Manhattan, and received degrees in economics and mathematics from Amherst College before graduating from Harvard Law School in 1985
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Well, there seems to be different career paths for math majors besides physics or economics. See this profile of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Plamegate prosecutor:
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<p>For that matter, Harriet Miers was also a math major!</p>
<p>I wish some of these kids would go into politics. I was discussing this with S2 one day becasue he keeps up with national issues and likes to discuss politics. I asked him if he thought he might be interested in politics someday and told him that we need people of integrity running for office. Before he could answer S1 piped up, "No one would every vote for him, he's much too smart." Sad but true.</p>
<p>Can stay in math all the way to ph.d or branch into other tech fields, engineering, computers, physics, economics, etc.</p>
<p>Here is an interesting article by Steve Olson (who conducted the interviews in the link I previously noted above) about nurturing mathematical talent, which especially points up the explosive growth in very strong international students in math (particularly from Russia, Eastern Europe, China, and Southeast Asia) coming to the US for their college education. </p>
<p>Part of this is due to a changing immigration system which has allowed in more scientists and engineers, partly this is due to the end of the Cold War, which has permitted students to come from former Soviet-block countries, and partly this is due to the growth of the IMO, which has made it easier for some international math to distinguish themselves, even if they came from high schools unknown to US admissions committees.</p>
<p>The influx of international students at all levels (not just international college students on student visas but also children of immigrants arriving in, say, their middle school years) is focusing increased attention on whether the American educational system is doing a good job of meeting the needs of students for whom the usual US K-12 math curriculum is boring and unchallenging. </p>
<p>Basically Steve Olson's piece below takes those Putnam interviews I mentioned above as a jumping-off point and combines them with some broader data to raise some provocative questions.</p>
<p>Steve Olson also wrote a very interesting book entitled "Countdown" which explores some of these same issues within the framework of the US team to the 2001 IMO.</p>
<p>Thanks again, Wisteria. An excellent article.</p>
<p>Very interesting article. I've always wondered about the role of competitions -- whether that's the best way to pull in more middle and high school students.</p>
<p>As for the difficulty of packaging a group of kids to a single institution, there is an interestesting article in New York Magazine on how Columbia just put together a deal to attract 10 new economics faculty -- by picking those who might like to work together, and keeping them informed of how negotiations were proceeding with the others. They landed almost all of their first picks.</p>
<p>Good article. The geography is so true; competitions, summer programs, and advanced classes were certainly not known in my area. S and friend formed a math club and represented school for first time.</p>
<p>A couple of points that I retained.
1. Middle school is crucial for developing math interest; and yet (this is me, editorializing) the middle school curriculum in American schools is the weakest.
2. by college, competition math is no longer very useful for learning math. Good news, since S never took to math competitions!
3. Lots of Mass students ending up close to home. It makes me feel better about S doing so. Since he wanted snow, he's getting snow. First time I've seen snow falling in October. The leaves have not yet turned!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>USofA has approx <10% of worlds population. China (ROC and PRC), and India has >50% of world's population. If US colleges caputures just a small portion, perhaps as little as 10%, of these two country's smartest technoids, that number may be already very large in comparison to US's home grown tech, regardless of ethnic persuasion. (Law of Large Numbers)</p></li>
<li><p>I am not sure what Steve Olson is trying to point out other than US mathematicians are well rounded. Perhaps he is trying to point out that the place to study mathematics is in the US because of its opportunities, open mindedness, and appreciation of genius. (Law of Cream rises to the Top)</p></li>
<li><p>When the US discourages foreign student study, then we do so in becoming something other... (Law of Politics)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>IMO.</p>
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2. by college, competition math is no longer very useful for learning math. Good news, since S never took to math competitions!
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Do kids learn how to write proofs in math competitions? (Pardon my ignorance, but my kid also did not do competitions -- except in chess). It was experience writing proofs that seemed to separate the A+ students from the rest of the students in his honors math sequence -- and they were mostly East Europeans. Those of you who are more knowledgable might have some opinion on whether that is a skill that could reasonably taught in middle or high school to many more students.</p>
<p>Sac: S learned to write proofs in summer math camp.</p>
<p>Yes it can be successfully taught in middle school....that would be an appropriate place to do it. And you are wondering why many US students are behind in math???</p>