MIT v. Harvard...please help me decide

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Harvard math team place 1st on Putnam Math competition more than any other school in US. ( even though MIT math is 6 times bigger than Harvard math)</p>

<p>First place finishes (as of 2005 competition) Team
25 Harvard
9 Caltech
5 MIT</p>

<p>I just can't understand why MIT math team are doing much worse than Harvard team, even though ther are MIT math department is much bigger..</p>

<p>About 20 people get math degree from Harvard and about 120 people get Math degree MIT..</p>

<p>If MIT math is as good as Harvard math, why MIT math team consistently do worse than Harvard team ?</p>

<p>Harvard math students really don't think MIT is at the same level at all...

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<p>recently, MIT has been doing better and better.</p>

<p>also, contest math =/= math math</p>

<p>
[quote]
Harvard math team place 1st on Putnam Math competition more than any other school in US. ( even though MIT math is 6 times bigger than Harvard math)</p>

<p>First place finishes (as of 2005 competition) Team
25 Harvard
9 Caltech
5 MIT </p>

<p>I just can't understand why MIT math team are doing much worse than Harvard team, even though ther are MIT math department is much bigger..</p>

<p>About 20 people get math degree from Harvard and about 120 people get Math degree MIT..</p>

<p>If MIT math is as good as Harvard math, why MIT math team consistently do worse than Harvard team ?</p>

<p>Harvard math students really don't think MIT is at the same level at all...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Furthermore, I just can't understand why Harvard math graduates can win so few Wolf Prizes in Math, which are the REAL Nobel-equivalents for Math. Even Princeton and Chicago grads have won more Wolf Prizes than Harvard grads, and Moscow State cleans Harvard's clock. If the Harvard math students are so good, then why can't they compare to Moscow State grads? Please illuminate us, mdx49. Why is that? Maybe all these Harvard math students had the painful experience of not being admitted to Princeton or Chicago, and especially not to Moscow State. </p>

<p>I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for mdx49 to give us an answer. I'm sure he will dodge this question just like he's dodged so many others.</p>

<p>You see, mdx49 is not interested in answers. He is only interested in questioning the greatness of the MIT math dept. compared to that of Harvard (even though MIT math department is 6 times bigger than Harvard math dept.)</p>

<p>mdx49 talking about math is like Michael Jackson talking about llama farming.</p>

<p>mdx49 saw a llama once in his life and has been citing the Putnam exam ever since.</p>

<p>From mdx49:
"Most of the American High school math competition and internation math Olympiad winners choose to attend Harvard Math deprtment. "</p>

<p>Slightly off topic but IMO winners do not necessarily go to Harvard.
Example Melanie Wood
<a href="http://www.maa.org/news/melanie-wood-interview.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.maa.org/news/melanie-wood-interview.html&lt;/a>
.........
.....
Somehow I don't think she's doing that badly ^_^</p>

<p>you also need to consider the fact that Harvard alumni received more Nobel Prize than any other school in US. (even though MIT science is more than twice as big as Harvard science department)</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Great! Pound for pound, Caltech OWNS Harvard in Nobels. I guess that means Harvard is the suck.</p>

<p>(Go count! Or did you forget how to do that in the process of saying "Fields medal" eight thousand times?)</p>

<p>mdx49:</p>

<p>Umm, is it just me or is Chicago also in the US?</p>

<p>Oooh. Discovery. It seems on mdx49's measures, Chicago, in addition to Caltech, OWNS Harvard.</p>

<p>tounge in cheek</p>

<p>I thought Chicago was in Timbuktu.</p>

<p>/tounge in cheek</p>

<p>About 43 Harvard Alumni received Nobel Prize. </p>

<p>only 24 MIT alumni got nobel prize, which is significantly less than Harvard's
even though MIT sicence is more than twice bigger than Harvard Science departments</p>

<p>Chicago has more Nobel prizes than Harvard, but is not as big as Harvard.</p>

<p>==> Chicago is much better than Harvard.</p>

<p>(By the way, some of those 43 you're counting are in literature and peace, which have nothing to do with science. Knowing your facts is not one of your strong suits.)</p>

<p>Only 31 U. Chicago Alumni got Nobel Prize, far less than Harvard Alumni Nobel Laureates..</p>

<p>More to the point, where is the proof that the number of Nobel prizes has anything to do with the quality of the education? And even if you can show that there is a correlation, it would still be more useful to know the <em>current rate</em> of production of Nobel prize winners, since the quality of departments can certainly change with time.</p>

<p>Which is more important: The number of students who win Nobel prizes, the number of faculty who win Nobel prizes, or the sum of the two numbers? Where is the rigorous definition which all universities adhere to in reporting the number of prize winners?</p>

<p>Edit: In the Wikipedia article above, it sorts the prize winners by affiliation, but there are significant differences in the number of winners in each category of affiliation.</p>

<p>Count the Harvard winners IN SCIENCE, mdx49. Lumping in poets and peace laureates won't fly. Currently the number you cite is a lie.</p>

<p>Moscow State and Chicago beat Harvard into the ground in the Wolf Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel in mathematics. </p>

<p>Moscow State and Chicago are much better than Harvard in math.</p>

<p>(The Fields medal is given for work done before the age of 40, and so is not a reliable measure of a mathematician's overall accomplishment. The Wolf prize is better for this.)</p>

<p>Point taken.</p>

<p>:-)</p>

<p>.</p>

<p>You're pretty clever. That post only has three visible characters. I'm still not entirely sure how you did it.</p>

<p>Evil character limit is RLY evil!</p>