<p>Try finding student reviews on student-powered websites like U nigo, or TheU. I found that it helped me a lot. CC helps more, IMO, in the dissection of the admissions process and intricate sub-issues kids face.</p>
<p>u nigo is really good. They have video interviews of students from a whole bunch of colleges.</p>
<p>I EDITED THIS BECAUSE I TRIED TO TYPE U NIGO AS ONE WORD BUT FOR SOME REASON, CC BLANKED IT OUT AND PUT ASTERISKS IN ITS PLACE! If you don’t believe me, just try to type it. like this: *****. see? I’m not trying to do anything suspicious.</p>
<p>@Princeton92: Yeah, I know, I figured that out recently. I couldn’t find anything about it in the FAQs or other threads, except for other frustrated users trying to say something. Is it a bad word in some language or is there some competition between student-powered sites? I guess we’ll never know…:)</p>
<p>^Yeah I know. I googled it to find out if it’s a bad word but nothing came up. Maybe you’re right about the competition thing 
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<p>Again, the “true underlying pattern” isn’t particularly useful to a prospective student, since people only go to these schools for four years. All that matters is to a prospective student is how strong the student body will be for the four years he or she attends. What I’m saying is that a school’s historical record on the Putnam is not a good way to predict its performance over the next four years in comparison with more recent data, which is actually tied to the current strength of the student body. I also think that this fact is particularly true now, since I think that we’re currently watching MIT (dramatically) overtake Harvard as the number one Putnam school.</p>
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<p>Far be it from me to say that the 2008 results tell anything close to the entire story.</p>
<p>But let me note that a single year’s data is not as useless as you seem to think, since any given year’s results are really the <em>aggregate</em> of large numbers of students’ (independent) results. If the Putnam were more consistent in its problem selection, I would argue that a single year’s results are very much a statistically significant set of data.</p>
<p>At any rate, you seem to think that we can improve the predictive power of our small amount of relevant data by adding large amounts of generally irrelevant data. Which is not true. I don’t think that one year’s results give an accurate measure of a school’s current strength – but I certainly think that they give a better measure than results aggregated over a decade or more.</p>
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<p>No, the reason we should disregard the team results is that we have the individual results. Using team results when you have the individual results is like using exit polls to figure out the result of an election instead of voting tallies. Except worse, because, again, the team ranking system is <em>■■■■■■■■</em>. And I didn’t say there was no correlation between team and individual results, I said that they’re loosely tied together.</p>
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<p>Based on my limited understanding of the current state of baseball, the Yankees are on top because they have the most money, and because lots of money directly translates to lots of good players.</p>
<p>Why has Harvard historically been on top? I think that the answer is, primarily, “because it’s historically been on top.” I think it’s mostly momentum – top kids go to the school where they see the other top kids are and are going. And I really think that that school isn’t Harvard any more.</p>
<p>And there are lots of other problems with your analogy. Baseball is not at all like competitive math. The process by which students enter and leave a college is very different from the process by which baseball players are recruited and traded.</p>
<p>The biggest problems, though, are that students only go to college for four years, and that they go there to get educations, not to make names for themselves.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is becoming more tiring than entertaining, so I’m gonna bow out. (Or maybe I won’t, who knows? I have way too much free time in the summer.) Nice talking to you.</p>
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<p>By most people, I’d assume you mean Harvard supporters.</p>
<p>At least yale has a very beautiful campus and a thriving arts/cultural scene; MIT’s campus is used to scare children.</p>
<p>But this Harvard/Princeton thing: at Harvard, if you decide to take your nose out of your problem sets, you can take advantage of house life (so much better than Princeton’s half-developed college system and appalling, outdated eating club), an energetic campus and environs, or a 10 minute subway ride into one of America’s most beautiful and interesting cities. </p>
<p>So much better than all-white, twee little Princeton, which as far as I have seen consists of little more than type A soccer moms competing for parking spaces.</p>
<p>Princeton92 – About the one edited post, I accept your explanation, no problem. Enjoy your time at Princeton or Harvard.</p>
<p>^Are you being sarcastic again, because I can’t tell. And I haven’t been accepted at either.</p>
<p>Sorry, I didn’t mean to say “again” in my previous post. I forgot that you said you weren’t being sarcastic in the first place.</p>
<p>harvard, because princeton wants me to write 3 essays for the application >=[</p>
<p>@pigs<em>at</em>sea: the more essays you are allowed to write, the better.</p>
<p>^more incriminating evidence</p>
<p>Uh…okay…</p>
<p>The more essays, the better. It gives the adcoms a better picture of your true uniqueness.</p>
<p>It also allows them to think you are too arrogant to get accepted.</p>
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<p><em>sigh</em> No, Princeton92, I was not being sarcastic. I saw your credentials and I think you will get into both schools.</p>
<p>^ok thanks :)</p>
<p>That’s true, amciw, if the essays are not carefully written to avoid such an arrogant tone.</p>
<p>“I still don’t understand why all of you continue to use the Putnam as THE measure of success. OK, the Putnam is a great competition. But it is still nothing compared to a Fields Medal, Wolf Prize, Abel Prize, which are THE TOP mathematics honors for the BEST of the BEST in the WORLD…And Princeton literally obliterates all other competition in garnering these Nobel Prizes of math. The only one that even comes close is probably Cambridge University in England. If you put the Princeton mathematics department head to head against the Harvard math department Harvard wouldn’t even stand a chance.”</p>
<p>Well, the Fields Medal is typically given to 2 people every 4 years and there has been less than 50 winners EVER so I don’t know if you can use it as an accurate measure of the quality of the math department. Harvard has had 4 Fields Medalists (although a few others who won at other schools subsequently moved to Harvard) while Princeton has had 6, so I don’t know if you can say “Princeton literally obliterates all other competition”. (The Institute for Advanced Study is not a Princeton University department and shouldn’t be counted). In terms of the Wolf Prize, which is a relatively new prize from Israel, Harvard and Princeton are tied at 3 winners each. The Abel Prize is even newer, with 9 winners so far, and Princeton has not had any winners.</p>
<p>The Putnam is taken annually by thousands of math and physics majors at pretty much all the top universities in the U.S. and Canada so it does have more value from a statistical point of view. </p>
<p>I have never tied the Putnam results to the quality of the math department. I have simply argued that Harvard does a good job of recruiting top math students.</p>