Many schools will have many different layers of math programs. The question to ask is what sequence is the median or the 75th percentile math major taking and when within the four year program (or the Physics major, or the CS major, or the classics major, or the Bio major etc …). You need to ask a kid in that department. This cannot be decided by looking at the course catalog. If most of the IMO kids distribute amongst MIT, Harvard, Princeton, the standard Stanford sequence cannot be at some higher or equivalent level.
I’m sure Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford all do not have anywhere near enough IMO kids to fill a freshman math class. Even MIT would fall short unless their freshman math classes are kept extraordinarily small. These few students certainly do not determine level or rigor.
All of the above colleges offer students the opportunity to take an extremely rigorous math sequences that emphasizes proofs (provided they meet prereqs and other requirements). These classes are not limited to just students from particular majors. I do not have enough information to rank them by level of rigor, but Harvard’s math 55 is certainly is the one with the reputation for being most rigorous and challenging. Harvard’s math department calls it, “probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country.”
There are 30 IMO Golds every year. The MIT math department itself is a 100 kids each year. I am not saying they fill the whole department with IMO kids. But it gives you a sense of the strength of the department, and the rigor at which the classes are taught if the 30 (and a bunch of other medalists distribute themselves amongst the three departments). It is the largest amongst HPM. Anyway I am not sure what you are saying. I am just saying I am led to believe these are the three strongest departments. And that Stanford is not that level from an undergrad strength point of view. And certainly BU is not at that level as per the original post up thread. And that the quality of the instruction / program between BU and Harvard are not the same. That was the point I was trying to make in the first place. If you disagree with me, that is fine – we can leave it there. I have been already told that this is off topic, and the discussion should be about yield protection.
The results of the team rankings of the most recent Putnam are below. Stanford was #3 after MIT and Harvard, with Princeton lower. The preceding year followed a similar pattern. In any case, at all of these colleges except MIT, there were not enough high Putnam scorers to form a math class. With the possible exception of Harvard’s math 55, the colleges do not create classes that are at a level of rigor that requires IMO level ability to be successful. They do offer several levels of freshmen math with varied degrees of rigor, including options for rigorous, proof base math, but students well below IMO level typically get A’s in such classes and understand the material well.
Putnam Math Competition Team Rankings
- MIT
- Harvard
- Stanford
- UCLA
- Waterloo
- CMU
- Columbia
- Princeton
- Berkeley
- UT Austin
I don’t believe I ever said Harvard and BU are the same. Of course they aren’t. I merely stated you could still get an excellent education at the latter. If you are talking about IMO medalists it’s a moot point. Those kids are in no danger of being shut out at T20 schools. However, most applicants to top schools aren’t IMO medalists—or anything close to that —and I doubt their futures will be negatively impacted if they end up at a school like BU instead of Harvard.
Apparently the polite request by another user is insufficient. So let me put it another way - move on, please. This includes, but is not limited to, all things not related to yield, including math courses, Putnam rankings, Harvard vs BU.
I’ll further add that the question about math courses Stanford vs Princeton vs Chicago (and similar math discussions) has been asked several times before, usually with answers from, among others @Data10 and @ucbalumnus . So any questions can likely be answered through a search rather than asking anew.
35-40m for one kid! That’s serious prestige buying.
Just to show that these colleges don’t (and shouldn’t) need to corrupt college admissions by offering donor preference, another Chinese billionaire donated $115m to Caltech a few years ago and his offspring will get no special treatment there (because Caltech offers no ALDC preferences). He did get a building named after him, however.
It isn’t on their website or advertised. I believe targeted notices to activate this “mechanism” are sent in a few waves (starting in January) in the past years.
I am cool with that.
Am I the only one wondering what yield will look like this year (and the WL situation!)?
This from Auburn: “The record number of applications for next fall is a 68.5% increase from those received for fall 2021 and a 155% increase from fall 2020.”
Colgate stated much the same, but the reality is that the number of individual applicants is down.
@TonyGrace so the statements are not true?
You mean about the increase?
I think it means that total applicants across the board is down…even though individual schools are getting more applicants…so kids just applying to more schools…
Right. That was the point I was making. In the end those kids can only attend a single school. I guess we will see which schools are good at predicting who will enroll, as suggested above somewhere.
I think part of the problem this year is that EAs did not come out until after RD deadlines.
Yep.
Also, I find it really confounding that some people can look at a particular subject and broad brush all the students who take that particular course of study as not being as apt or able. How would you prove that? How can you compare someone who wants to study mythology like Joseph Campbell with someone who wants to study math? Econ is easier than math or literature. Really. Do you think Keynes was dumber than some third tier mathematical. Really gets my blood boiling to see the narrow-mindedness sometimes.
There are smart people in EVERY field. Really important for kids to learn that one subject is not harder than another. For me, it’s respect. It’s learned and it’s important in careers and life.
They probably do but they would need to figure out how important that is vs say, yield by high school or state. UC publishes a lot of admissions data and you can get yield by ethnicity, for 2021, Blacks were 34%, Whites 37%, Latinos 40%, Asians 46%. So not really surprising if you were working in UC admissions, but I don’t think UC look at yield like the colleges discussed on the thread.
“If most of the IMO kids distribute amongst MIT, Harvard, Princeton, the standard Stanford sequence cannot be at some higher or equivalent level.”
You have to be a little careful on this one, it’s not that these kids aren’t at Stanford because they preferred Harvard, MIT or Princeton to Stanford, it’s because Stanford preferred other applicants to them based on Stanford’s needs. Medalists top colleges are Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, then probably Princeton or Chicago.
I’d expect many selective colleges do analyze yield for many subgroups including by race, but not necessarily in the way suggested in this thread. For example, the Harvard lawsuit included a Harvard internal analysis that discusses yield. The emphasis seems to be how early action is influencing yield, including yield among desirable highly rated admits. There were large differences in yield for both RD vs REA, as well as by race. Specifically, in some of the available earlier years:
Overall REA yield = 94%, Overall RD yield = 68%
Without REA, yield for highly rated Asian = 84%, Highly rated Black = 51%
While the yield is lower for highly rated applicants than lower rated applicants, Harvard shows no signs of avoiding admitting the high stat applicants who are less likely to enroll. Instead admit rate goes up as stats goes up steadily all the way up to highest admit rate for perfect stats, and among high stat applicants, admit rate is highest for high stat URMs who are least likely to enroll. This may contribute to why yield is lower for highly rated URMs. I’d expect this group tends to have a lot of good options to choose from besides just Harvard.
However, the lawsuit also found that REA applicants tend to get a significant boost in chance of admission. This could be thought of as a form of “yield protection”. At the time of the lawsuit, the yield for REA kids was 94%. I expect it is notably higher today, such that Harvard can expect REA admits will enroll. If you want to control yield for desirable admits, it seems a good way to do so is preferentially admit them via a restrictive early admission policy rather than in the RD round.