<p>UofC ranked 5th nationally in the Putnam Mathematics Competition this year , which, if you're not familiar, is like a collegiate USAMO (i.e. we kick ass) despite my own horrid performance lol. To all you future math prospies..yeah, we pretty much are the ****.</p>
<p>In case you're wondering, 1st through fourth were, in order: Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Toronto.</p>
<p>Wow, nice. I just tried one of the old tests and got owned. I couldnt get any points. How do they score the tests for the school? Like the top five at each school count?</p>
<p>That is tight!</p>
<p>Where'd you find this? I'm a math major entering UChicago as an undergrad next year, and this is quite exciting, as I know that UChicago didn't even place in the top 10 the year before. Of course, I don't think the Putnam means much of anything in comparing the top 10 schools, since schools like Caltech don't do well because their leading mathematicians won't participate. It is, however, a good sign that UChicago's math department hasn't fallen like it seems to have done in the last few years. </p>
<p>Very good news, but please, give me a URL.</p>
<p>Do also keep in mind that our Putnam team is also pretty unorganized - ends up just being most of the honors analysis class... taking that into account as well, its pretty impressive, I'd say... also consider school sizes... UofC is the smallest of all of these... very exciting!!!</p>
<p>Just because a school ranks well in the Putnam competition doesn't mean it's good at math. Putnam is, honestly, more of an individual effort than anything. If a student does exceptionally well, the school recruits him or her onto its team. Why that student is so good is left for you to decide, but I have a hard time believing it's because the school is some mystical place that makes math gods in its spare time.</p>
<p>It might mean the school attracts many talented mathematicians, but nothing more :)</p>
<p>Artofproblemsolving has most of the info. in its board on the Putnam in the 'College' section. Usually, people get 2x's their USAMO scores if they qualify or their AIME scores in the other cases. The Putnam is also graded a bit more stringently.</p>
<p>Our team was actually optimized this year. We probably wouldn't have placed above 10 otherwise. But our math department is still pretty good, and our students are pretty sharp:). I'd like to think that the faculty is probably a little better, comparatively, than the student body in UC, but that's speculation. </p>
<p>And finally, Putnam math isn't exactly research math.</p>
<p>But we still have bragging rights for future yrs, and really, isn't that the only thing that matters?</p>
<p>So as for the team that won, were most of the people juniors or seniors? I heard someone say that the team was just mostly Honors Analysis students, but don't many of the people very good at math take that their freshman year? I'm certainly studying to get into it... (using Apostol instead of Spivak, though)</p>
<p>"Why that student is so good is left for you to decide, but I have a hard time believing it's because the school is some mystical place that makes math gods in its spare time. It might mean the school attracts many talented mathematicians, but nothing more"</p>
<p>Most mathematicians are self-made and you're not going to get anyone who scored really high on the Putnam who just took courses at UChicago; they'll all have studied independently, especially since the Putnam's content really diverges from typical subject matter taught in college mathematics courses.</p>
<p>No school MAKES talented mathematicians. Mathematicians are more independent than probably any group of people, and the really great ones will have tons of independent study in addition to doing well in their courses. A great math school will attract great mathematicians and nurture their growth. Most schools don't know how to handle mathematicians and stump their growth. I'd say any school in the top 10 in the Putnam Exam is a good math school, since you not only have a few individuals doing well, but you have at least 5 members doing very well. And 5 very good mathematicians at one school is very rare. Comparing the members in the top 10 is really difficult, though... especially since there's so much deviation from one year to the next.</p>
<p>congrats, asiaknight!</p>
<p>^haha. Thanks, but I didn't actually do anything. I probably got around 10-20pts, which isn't good, to say the least :P. </p>
<p>Our best scorers are actually sophomores who also did fairly well last year. We have one guy who placed in N2 as a freshman and in HM this year and another who was HM as a freshman and top 100 this year.</p>
<p>The way the scoring works is that each team has to pick three(five?) team members beforehand, and only the scores from those people count in the total team score, which is the sum of three team members.</p>
<p>OK how do you join this if you are admitted? Is there any entrance test for this team? I have not taken AIME or USAMO, but i have qualified for UIL Texas state mathmatics and number sense.
Is there one for Science too?</p>
<p>I'm guessing it's more of an informal process by which teams are chosen.</p>
<p>There's also a huge gap between AIME, USAMO, and the Putnam. Only the best mathematicians are chosen to take the Putnam and represent a certain college, and the median score is usually 0 or 1 (out of a possible score of 120).</p>
<p>It's not 'general mathematics' like the AIME either. You'll be expected to know a lot of probability theory, number theory, and most importantly, calculus, which isn't utilized in high school tests.</p>
<p>There can be more than one team for a particular college, however. For example, in the past few years, MIT hasn't won because it's picked people for the wrong teams. That is, the really strong people have been spread out over 2 or more teams rather than being on 1 team. Thus, even if you don't qualify for the "#1 team at UChicago", you can take the test no matter what, on a lesser team or individually.</p>