<p>Also, I don’t know if this will actually happen but there was at least talk last year that fewer students would be accepted this year in an effort to reduce the number of students who spend all their time at the gym instead of working.</p>
<p>So In your own ranking, what are the best to worst?</p>
<p>Ross, PROMYS, MathCamp, AwesomeMath and HCiSSM?</p>
<p>and also how skilled or what are the qualifications of the instructors?</p>
<p>shushugah, I don’t think it makes sense to compare the camps from best to worst. The camps cater towards different interests. For example, if you want to spend 8 weeks doing math almost constantly Ross is probably the best choice. But if you want to do things that aren’t math related Ross isn’t as good of a choice. From what I’ve heard HCiSSM places a large emphasis on its inside jokes and having fun. Awesome Math seems very geared towards competitions. Mathcamp seems to focus on various interesting subjects of math. Ross and PRMOYS are both entirely number theory. Another consideration is whether you prefer to work alone or in groups. At Ross working in groups is generally looked down upon. Often times at Ross you might spend hours or even days working alone on one particular problem. My understanding is that the doesn’t really happen at other camps. While spending 8 days on one problem like I did at Ross last year might simulate actual reseach it wouldn’t be very helpful in terms of math competitions.</p>
<p>In terms of instructors, I’m only familar with Ross. The instructors are good but most of the learning you do by yourself anyways so they’re not that important.</p>
<p>Thank you!! And I have decided, Ross will be my top choice, for these reasons, because while I enjoy competition math, it’s not the same beauty as doing research and analyzing interesting problems in their fullest. It’s interesting what you said about the instructors, do we ever get any instructional or is it purely self discovery?</p>
<p>Glad to have helped. At Ross, there is an hour of lecture each day and 3 days a week there is a 1 hour seminar. The lectures generally either explain new concepts, explore interesting tangents, or will go over old problem sets. The seminars are run by different people and some of them explore more tangential stuff like set theory while others focus on discussions of problems from the problem sets. Another important thing to note is that you work at your own pace. Oftentimes, a lecture will go over a proof from an old problem set so if you’re going at a fast pace you’ll have proved it by yourself but if you’re going slower they’ll give you the proof sometimes.</p>