<p>i really like MIT (or at least, i think i do...havent visited yet) but i sometimes wonder if i'm too stupid to be a student there. i'm not a math genius but i really do love science and math. so, i guess my question is, are all MIT students math/sci prodigies or just math/sci lovers?</p>
<p>I hate math. I go to MIT.</p>
<p>~~~~~~ QED</p>
<p>Well... I got into MIT, and I'm not a math prodigy AT ALL. I mean, I'm GOOD at math, in the taking BC Calc and 700+ Math IIC score kind of way, but I am not amazing in any sense of the word. I think you're spot on in your second definition, I just love math/science (as well as other things. Yay for being multi dimensional!).</p>
<p>You have to love it and be good at it. Having said that, if you know the basics, MIT can teach you the rest. If you know more than the basics, MIT will help you get even further.</p>
<p>I have friends who came in having never taken a calculus course. I have friends who took calculus in the fifth grade. For that and anything in between, there's a place for you at MIT.</p>
<p>Yes, actually, MIT Admissions uses an experimental device developed in the Physics department two years ago to peek into the future. Only future Fields Medal winners will be admitted.</p>
<p>jzzsxm, sunshine_breeze and olo, thanks so much! you guys made me happy today =]</p>
<p>and thanks for the sarcasm tintin.</p>
<p>No, you don't have to be a math genius to go to MIT. You need to be good enough at math to pass 18.01 (single-variable calc) and 18.02 (multi-variable calc). Beyond that, there are around two dozen other majors besides math, many of them among the best in their field in the country. Some of them require more math beyond 18.02, some don't, few require anything like math genius.</p>
<p>MIT math is good but
No one from MIT ever won Fields Medal & Harvard is #1 in this year's math competition.</p>
<p>Harvard, Caltech, Princeton Math are top 3 math department in US
Most of Fields medal winners, Putnam Math competiton winners graduated from these top 3 schools.</p>
<p>^^ Caltech - that's totally not true. Caltech isn't even in the top 5, from what I've heard -they have a very small department, and I'm pretty convinced that MIT beats Caltech in terms of math dept. Also, Berkeley is up there, as is Uchicago, though probably in the top 5. But I sincerely believe a school's math dept can not be judged by its putnam placers, as people who do well on the Putnam are not always good math researchers. Interesting point that MIT grad has never won Fields medal - is that true? I'd have to look into that.</p>
<ul>
<li>Sorry, not to say that Caltech's math dept is bad - I'm actually considering going to Caltech and majoring math! (Though I'll probably go to MIT... or Harvard.... ok I dont' really know where I'm goign next year! haha). But most sources I have heard/seen suggest that MIT has a better math dept.; the amazing Putnam placers from Caltech were both freshmen, suggesting they just came into Caltech with amazing skillz, not that Caltech made them that way :-)</li>
</ul>
<p>From Wiki :</p>
<p>The following table lists Teams with First place finishes (as of 2007 competition):</p>
<p>First place Team (s)
26 Harvard<br>
9 Caltech<br>
5 MIT</p>
<p>Following are the Fields medal winners The highest Math Award (Wiki)
None of them graduated from MIT</p>
<p>2006: Andrei Okounkov (Russia), Grigori Perelman (Russia) (declined), Terence Tao (Australia), Wendelin Werner (France)
2002: Laurent Lafforgue (France), Vladimir Voevodsky (Russia)
1998: Richard Ewen Borcherds (UK), William Timothy Gowers (UK), Maxim Kontsevich (Russia), Curtis T. McMullen (U.S.)
1994: Efim Isakovich Zelmanov (Russia), Pierre-Louis Lions (France), Jean Bourgain (Belgium), Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (France)
1990: Vladimir Drinfeld (USSR), Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones (New Zealand), Shigefumi Mori (Japan), Edward Witten (U.S.)
1986: Simon Donaldson (UK), Gerd Faltings (West Germany), Michael Freedman (U.S.)
1982: Alain Connes (France), William Thurston (U.S.), Shing-Tung Yau (China/U.S.)
1978: Pierre Deligne (Belgium), Charles Fefferman (U.S.), Grigory Margulis (USSR), Daniel Quillen (U.S.)
1974: Enrico Bombieri (Italy), David Mumford (U.S.)
1970: Alan Baker (UK), Heisuke Hironaka (Japan), Sergei Petrovich Novikov (USSR), John Griggs Thompson (U.S.)
1966: Michael Atiyah (UK), Paul Joseph Cohen (U.S.), Alexander Grothendieck (France), Stephen Smale (U.S.)
1962: Lars Hörmander (Sweden), John Milnor (U.S.)
1958: Klaus Roth (UK), René Thom (France)
1954: Kunihiko Kodaira (Japan), Jean-Pierre Serre (France)
1950: Laurent Schwartz (France), Atle Selberg (Norway)
1936: Lars Ahlfors (Finland), Jesse Douglas (U.S.)</p>
<h1>1 MIT has had the best performance in the Putnam for about the past 10 years. If you look at the number of people from MIT at each level of performance (top 5,10,25, and 50), MIT has more than any other school. Harvard is the only one that comes close. The 3-person math team for a school is chosen prior to competition, and unfortunately MIT has had bad luck in choosing its team. The team performance is based solely on the 3-person team. There have been a number of years where MIT's top 3 performers were in the top 5 overall, yet MIT didn't win the team competition because they chose the wrong people.</h1>
<h1>2 Some of the people who won the Fields Medal were professors at MIT. I recognized one from memory--Jesse Douglas.</h1>
<h1>3 The number of undergraduate alumni who won the Fields Medal is extremely low for any field. I mean were talking 1-3 for Harvard and Princeton. It's hard to draw conclusions from this.</h1>
<p>Seriously, there are 48 people in history who have won Fields Medals. It's really suspect to draw conclusions from this.</p>
<p>Another point: I counted and Caltech has 8 first place finishes, not 9.<br>
And five of these Putnam championships were from 1971-1976. So this does not say much about the current quality of the student body.</p>
<p>The Putnam is easily the premier math competition at the college level in the US, involving over 3,800 students. In recent years, more Putnam Fellows, the top 5 individual scorers, have come from MIT than any other university. </p>
<p>Since 2000, 16 out of 40 Putnam Fellows came from MIT or 40% of the total and nearly as much as Harvard, Princeton and Caltech combined. Harvard had 11, Princeton had 4 and Caltech 3 during the same period. At the team level, MIT placed first twice and second twice since 2000. Three students are picked for each team before the competition and it is not rare for the winning team to not even get a single Putnam Fellow award. (As in 2006 for instance when Princeton won). </p>
<p>Among the top 25 winners who get cash awards, nearly a third on average come from MIT. </p>
<p>The all time winner, Reid Barton, 4-time Putnam Fellow and 4-time IMO Gold medalist was from MIT. </p>
<p>One Putnam Fellow from MIT won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Richard Feynman and another David Quillen, won the Fields Medal. </p>
<p>In addition to Quillen, another MIT student, Jesse Douglas also won the Fields Medal in 1936, the first year the Fields Medal was awarded.</p>
<p>David Quillen graduated from Harvard BA and PhD NOT MIT
Jesse Douglas graduated from Columbia NOT MIT</p>
<p>Again none of MIT graduates ever won Fields Medal, the most prestigous math award in the world</p>
<p>^^Douglas and Quillen were MIT professors, not graduates.</p>
<p>Yes Douglas and Quillen are Ivy Educated (Harvard, Columbia) MIT employees</p>
<p>
[quote]
Since 2000, 16 out of 40 Putnam Fellows came from MIT or 40% of the total and nearly as much as Harvard, Princeton and Caltech combined. Harvard had 11, Princeton had 4 and Caltech 3 during the same period. At the team level, MIT placed first twice and second twice since 2000. Three students are picked for each team before the competition and it is not rare for the winning team to not even get a single Putnam Fellow award. (As in 2006 for instance when Princeton won).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Shows how much you know about math. The quality of a mathematician is decided by how successful his research is, not by how well he places in a pointless mathematics competition (though this isn't how it's always been, which is why John Nash went to Princeton instead of Harvard). It's rather surprising that MIT doesn't have a single Fields Prize winner. Even though I always complain about how ridiculously easy MIT math courses can get, I always thought that they had one of the strongest undergraduate student bodies for mathematics.</p>