<p>ha! take that harvard!</p>
<p>oops... I just corrected a little typo (haha, ok, big typo) in my previous post. The "4th IMO team member" chose MIT as well. If you're curious about names, Robert Cordwell chose Caltech (the Axline might have helped, lol), while Eric Price, Thomas Mildorf, and Hyun Soo Kim chose MIT.</p>
<p>Haha, Vinny, Harvard definitely got pwned last year... although they certainly deserve it for rejecting Price.</p>
<p>I'm sure he has a great personality and all, but in the siemen's presentation he seemed very nervous and didn't seem to talk that well...</p>
<p>That's just my opinion though. Otherwise, he is freakin' amazing....</p>
<p>sr6622, keep in mind that what he was speaking to was an audience of judges and like 100,000 other people that would eventually watch his presentation. He may not have had experience also.</p>
<p>zogoto, they just have really good math/science grades. my school is hyper competitive, and in the past people with much lower math/science grades/scores got in.</p>
<p>
Qualification to the IMO does not GUARANTEE one acceptance into Harvard at all. Harvard seems to look more for the total package(the jack-of-all-trades type) than some lopsided virtuoso. Besides, many factors such as a bad interview, pedantic essays, horrenous teacher recs, etc. could have resulted in Price's downfall.</p>
<p>Just for the record, he has a perfect SAT as well. Is there any chance on Earth he won't get in?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Qualification to the IMO does not GUARANTEE one acceptance into Harvard at all.
[/quote]
Well, it probably comes close. But the catch is, you have to qualify for IMO (or achieve whatever other outstanding thing we might consider) junior year or earlier. Someone who wins a gold medal at an int'l olympiad (or wins ISEF or Intel) as a senior already has their college decisions. Siemens is unusual among contests in coming early enough in the year to make a difference for seniors.</p>
<p>Harvard admits its share of "lopsided virtuosos". But there are outstanding students whose achievements (say, in engineering or CS) make them a near-definite MIT admit, who also apply to Harvard even though MIT is a better match for their talents and interests. I would imagine that Harvard might admit those folks at a lower rate than their achievements would suggest, on the theory that they are going to choose MIT anyway. Harvard can always admit them off the waitlist if they give positive signs that they would actually choose Harvard.</p>
<p>Texas, I am pretty sure that tyhe majority of the US IMO team members have chosen Harvard over MIT in the past. Isn't Math 55 at Harvard supposed to be the most chalenging undergraduate mathematics class in the country???</p>
<p>how would you measure something like that?
but more importantly...
why would you choose a school for the merits of a single class?</p>
<p>I think MIT students can register in 55a anyway.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Texas, I am pretty sure that tyhe majority of the US IMO team members have chosen Harvard over MIT in the past. Isn't Math 55 at Harvard supposed to be the most chalenging undergraduate mathematics class in the country???
[/quote]
Yes, but the most talented MIT math students have been cross-registering at Harvard for Math 55 lately.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, it probably comes close. But the catch is, you have to qualify for IMO (or achieve whatever other outstanding thing we might consider) junior year or earlier. Someone who wins a gold medal at an int'l olympiad (or wins ISEF or Intel) as a senior already has their college decisions. Siemens is unusual among contests in coming early enough in the year to make a difference for seniors.
[/quote]
This is a very, very good point. After Eric Price's gold medals at IMO and IOI his senior year, and his extremely rare perfect score on the latter, Harvard admissions would have to come up with a pretty compelling reason to reject him. He did, however, win a silver medal at IOI his junior year, which was already pretty impressive.</p>
<p>Was he from RSI?</p>
<p>^Apparently so...</p>
<p>I doubt he cares now...not like going to Harvard over MIT would really make that big of a difference for him...</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Qualification to the IMO does not GUARANTEE one acceptance into Harvard at all.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Eric Price is hardly the only IMO person to be rejected by Harvard. Anders Kaseorg and USAMO winner Jongmin Baek were both rejected in the last two years.</p>
<p>Both of them are now attending MIT. </p>
<p>Harvard was overwhelmingly the best school for math a mere twenty years ago, no other college even came close.</p>
<p>Now, thanks in part to decisions like these, it's questionable whether they're even in the top three. </p>
<p>Moreover, to anyone who believes that "poor teacher recommendations" and "bad essays" were the reason for their "downfall"; stop embarrassing yourself by jumping to wild, presumptous, and utterly wrong conclusions about people you have never met.</p>
<p>Well, I know on fairly good authority (though not derived from admissions work, so I'm not breaking any confidences) that at least one of the people listed above has pretty serious personality issues, making it difficult to be in a class with him.. Harvard can afford to shoo a few brilliant students who would be a nuissance to have around.</p>
<p>Fair enough, fair enough. I know who you're talking about, and you're absolutely correct. </p>
<p>Still, while Harvard is an amazing, excellent college, they're not the dominating mathematical Leviathan they once were partly due to newer admissions practices.</p>
<p>I'm sure adopting a more well-rounded, think outside-the-box approach has great benefits in many ways, but it does tend to weaken the math undergraduate department.</p>
<p>Fo' sho', fo' sho'.</p>
<p>That policy is not so bad for some other places though =P.</p>
<p>They rejected Anders Kaseorg? Are you sure? He was amazing! Harvard should re-evaluate is procedure...</p>
<p>a handful of the top MIT students were able to get around the prohibition against cross-registration for freshmen and to take Math55 at Harvard in the past year or two. But this year when a few of the MIT math stars tried to get approval to take it, MIT cracked down and decided they would not allow it at all for anyone. Turf protection? Bureaucratic over-application of the rule against cross registration for frosh? (there's no point to taking this course any later than freshman year). MIT faculty wanting to put their own stamp on their math stars before exposing them to Harvard cooties? Who knows? The MIT students who tried to do it this year were never really given an official rationale for the change in policy. </p>
<p>The most pro-MIT explanation I have heard for this was that MIT does not "need" to have a course like math55, and Harvard does. Here's what I was told by someone who knows a lot more about it than I do:
[quote]
One major difference between MIT and Harvard is the number of math majors. It is ~13% at MIT, but only ~2% at Harvard. Math55 is Harvard's proof-based crash course in undergrad math for their serious math majors, enabling them to fill in holes in their knowledge; it is insanely too much work at too fast a pace for students who have lots of holes, e.g., never learned much beyond Calc II in high school. MIT offers large numbers of proof-based courses for serious math majors, starting with 18.024 and 18.034 in place of 18.02 and 18.03, respectively, and 18.701 and 702 in place of 18.700 and 703, etc.. Kiran Kedlaya, a long-term instructor at MOP and former IMO Team member, teaches 18.024. Students can then start taking these math courses in greater depth at a sane pace beginning with whichever ones they hadn't yet studied in high school. <a href="the%20person%20I%20got%20this%20from%20then%20goes%20on%20to%20talk%20about%20math55%20actually%20being%20%22too%20easy%22%20for%20various%20people%20with%20a%20lot%20of%20proof-writing%20experience%20from%20USAMO/MOSP/IMO">/quote</a>.</p>