<p>What advantages does one school have over the other for a prospective math major?</p>
<p>Two words: John Nash.</p>
<p>Although I won’t put down Stanford, I can GUARANTEE YOU that the math department is fantastic. Not only in the sense that the professors are well-known and good - they teach VERY well, and they actually care about their students. There is also the highly regarded 4-course Stein Sequence at Princeton.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can go wrong with going to either of them for Math. Perhaps you can ask this question to the math department at each university during their preview programs. If you can’t attend, you can always send an email to the department head and I’m sure they would be happy to reply and try to get you to attend :P</p>
<p>I think Princeton’s is generally regarded as better but both are great.</p>
<p>In pure math, Princeton is the best in the whole world. Princeton has won most Fields medals. It has the most memberships in national academy of science in mathematics. Stanford is also great, probably a top 5 program, but not at Princeton’s level.</p>
<p>In applied math, Stanford is better. Stanford is super strong in computational math, statistics, and operations research. It is 2nd to none in those areas.</p>
<p>Stanford has a better reputation for mathematics.</p>
<p>Many think Princeton is better, however, look at some different rankings, like world lists, and Stanford is regarded many times better than Princeton.</p>
<p>Only great mathematicians are elected to national academies. The top 5 universities are:</p>
<h1>1. Princeton (15 members in pure math, 1 member in applied math, total=16)</h1>
<h1>2. Berkeley (7 members in pure math, 7 members in applied math, total=14)</h1>
<h1>3. Stanford (5 members in pure math, 7 members in applied math, total=12)</h1>
<h1>4. Havrad (8 members in pure math, 1 in applied math, total=9)</h1>
<h1>4. MIT (7 in pure math, 2 in applied math)</h1>
<p>best fit is what would matter to me.</p>
<p>In judging the date in post 8, keep in mind that Princeton is much smaller than the other schools. Stanford and Harvard, for example, is 3 times larger than princeton. Quite impressive for a relatively small school.</p>
<p>On a similar note, I believe the math major: math professor ratio is 2:1.</p>
<p>Stanford is more Prestigious, without question. Even though Stanford is much bigger school than Princeton, it still remains a lot more selective than Princeton. </p>
<p>P can not maintain its current selectivity, if its class size increases.</p>
<p>Gourman Rankings–top 10 undergraduate math departments</p>
<p>Princeton
UC Berkeley
Harvard
MIT
U Chicago
Stanford
NYU
Yale
Wisconsin Madison
Columbia</p>
<p>Putnam Competition Winners</p>
<p>Princeton is incredibly strong over the life of the competition. However, in recent years, Stanford has made great strides</p>
<p>2008 winners</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard University</li>
<li>Princeton University</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Stanford University</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
</ol>
<p>2007 winners</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard University</li>
<li>Princeton University</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Stanford University</li>
<li>Duke University </li>
</ol>
<p>2006 winners</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton University</li>
<li>Harvard University</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li>University of Toronto</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
</ol>
<p>Bottom line is that both schools have very strong departments, Princeton is arguably stronger (although probably not enough to matter) and the OP should make a decision based on fit.</p>
<p>Oh and I assume that the OP and everyone else in this thread understands that JomJom has no specific knowledge about the question asked and that small differences in admissions rates are irrelevant to both the quality of the math department and the quality of a school.</p>
<p>The following table lists Teams with First place finishes (as of 2007[update] competition):</p>
<p>First place Team (s)
26 Harvard<br>
9 Caltech<br>
5 MIT<br>
4 Toronto,Washington U in StL<br>
3 Brooklyn College, Duke, Michigan State<br>
2 Brooklyn Polytech, Cornell, Waterloo<br>
1 UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Case Western Reserve, Chicago, Princeton, Queen’s </p>
<p>Princeton won Putnam only once…</p>
<p>Princeton has been in the top 5 in the Putnam Competition 27 times, versus Stanford which has been in the top 5 only 7 times (and yes, Harvard has been in the top 5 54 times, but that was not a math department that the OP asked about).</p>
<p>Once again, I think that even though Princeton probably has a slightly stronger math department, the OP should visit both schools if possible to make a decision. They are two wonderful schools and there is no right or wrong choice here.</p>
<p>Both are great. It all comes down to fit. Personally I like Stanford’s warm weather and more fun atmosphere</p>
<p>I don’t think the people in this thread talking about the Putnam know much about it.</p>
<p>A school’s placement on the Putnam (by which I mean the <em>school’s team’s ranking</em>) is determined as follows: the school chooses the three students it believes will perform best on the Putnam IN ADVANCE OF THE TEST. Every student who takes the Putnam gets a rank – the top scorer gets a rank of one, the second-highest gets a rank of two, and so on. A school’s team’s Putnam index is equal to the sum of its participants’ ranks. The lowest-indexed school team is the first place team, and so on.</p>
<p>This is a really terrible method for gauging how well a school did on the Putnam, because (1) a school’s top scorers often are not on the school’s team [which is why MIT hasn’t won since 2004, despite being unquestionably the strongest school in every recent year except MAYBE 2007 – which is uncertain, because the Putnam doesn’t release much information about students’ individual performances], and (2) a school with, say, the top scorer, the second-to-top scorer, and the 40th-from-top scorer might not place top five, despite probably having the highest total of actual Putnam scores among its team members of any team.</p>
<p>If you want to know how a school did on the Putnam compared to another school, compare individual placements ([2008</a> Putnam Competition Results](<a href=“http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/putnam/-html/putnam2008results.html]2008”>http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/putnam/-html/putnam2008results.html)). In recent (i.e. relevant) years, Princeton has consistently been much stronger at the top than Stanford, but the two schools have had similar depth – although I would argue that this is a symptom of the fact that Stanford has more math majors than Princeton, and that Princeton is in fact substantially stronger per capita. (Harvard and Princeton’s performances have been very similar, except for in 2007.)</p>
<p>The number of times that a school takes first place is pretty much meaningless, especially when we consider the whole history of the Putnam – the strength of a school 20 years ago implies nothing about its current strength if we have current data.</p>
<p>In US News ranking for math, Stanford was #2 (with Harvard, MIT, and Cal), whereas Princeton was #1. I’m pretty sure there is no significant difference between the two in math. Go with fit.</p>
<p>I don’t consider Putnam scores to be a very good indicator of anything. Competition math is an entirely different beast from “real” mathematics. Obviously, the mega-geniuses can kick ass at both of them. Some people spend a few hours a week during the year doing practice competition problems. But there’s plenty of people that are capable of doing “real” math that aren’t good at coming up with cute little tricks or working with a time limit. And hard as it may be to believe, some people have better ways to spend 8 hours on a Saturday.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure there is no significant difference between the two in math. Go with fit.”</p>
<p>This.</p>