<p>news stories about MIT class of 2010 admittees. Those are some seriously amazing young people. From where I am as a math team coach, I can see why it is warranted to apply to MIT, but I can also see why not everyone who applies will get in. Just too many amazing students applying to MIT, that's all. </p>
<p>I'm a math team coach, and several of the young people on my math team have taken computer programming courses together, so they are mostly eager to major in math or computer science when they go off to college, perhaps in 2008, 2009, 2010, or later. Besides MIT, which is a "no-brainer" as a school worthy to apply to for kids of those interests, what other colleges should those kids consider? MIT is indubitably a "top five" school in both math and computer science, but what are the other four schools in the "top five" in each category? Where would you suggest applying to pursue hard-core study of math? How about for computer science?</p>
<p>The big names in computer science are MIT, Carnegie Mellon (arguably even stronger than MIT's... I don't know about that), Berkeley, and Stanford University. As far as mathematics, the top programs are MIT, Harvard, (hence the Harvard MIT math tournament...) and Princeton. Although all of the "Ivy Plusses" have exceptional math programs.</p>
<p>Princeton and Harvard for the math kiddies. I think both have pretty respectable CS programs as well. I'm also surprised that nobody's mentioned UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>Some of the computer science kids may also be interested in less theoretical programs. They might want to look at places like Rennsalear and Worcester Polytechnic Institutes. They are more hands on, have more emphasis on co-ops and have some interesting entrepreneurship programs.</p>
<p>Token - do your kids know about the computing olympiad? Free training materials and internet contests, and a chance at a free training camp to prepare and select the US team to the int'l competition. <a href="http://www.usaco.org%5B/url%5D">www.usaco.org</a></p>
<p>Yes, one guy on my team will probably be devoting more time this year to USACO than to AMC. Computer science is even more of a mystery to me than mathematics, so my "coaching" will consist largely of cheering him on and letting him fend for himself. As mentioned above, several of the guys on the math team have taken local programming classes together, by special arrangement with a local postsecondary school, and now we (we adults in my homeschooling support group) are trying to figure out what comes next. We have some mainframe PL/I programmers among our parent group, but no one who is into the trendy new languages.</p>
<p>your math kids would probably prefer algorithms, which is what USACO is about, rather than "trendy new languages" anyway. Algorithmic reasoning is very mathematical, and the language is secondary. Once the kids know the rudiments of programming in C/C++, Java, or Pascal, everything else they need is available on the USACO training pages. No one in your parent group needs to be involved. I suspect that very few of the kids who compete seriously in USACO have parents or teachers who can provide any help. It's set up for kids to do on their own, with support from USACO coaches (you can email them and ask for help if you're stuck on a training problem, for instance) God knows I wasn't of any use when my son did it, and that didn't seem to hamper him a bit.</p>
<p>Ditto texas137 on USACO. My rising junior has been doing it for the past two years. It is intensely alogrithm based -- no forced code in these problems! He tells me it requires elegant, fast code. He writes in Java, though did C++ for a while the first year. He is intending to major in math or find a joint math/comp sci program where he can get into the theoretical end of things.</p>
<p>It is not the sort of thing one can coach -- it is an individual journey, but one my student has found quite fulfilling.</p>
<p>According to the MIT</a> Department of Mathematics, the top five mathematics departments in the country are, in no particular order, Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard, MIT, and Princeton.</p>
<p>I did my undergrad at Chicago in the math department, so I can vouch for it. The CS department is very theoretical (as it should be, I'd say) and closely associated with the math department. I'd definitely look into Chicago, as it's an oft-overlooked school in general.</p>
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We have some mainframe PL/I programmers among our parent group, but no one who is into the trendy new languages.
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<p>Hahaha. That's kinda funny. You whipper-snappers and your "Eunuchs" and "See programming language."</p>
<p>Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford are generally regarded at the best computer science programs. The University of Illinois is often considered right behind those four schools. Caltech is known for extremely smart students, but not necessarily their comp sci program in comparison to the five schools mentioned above.</p>
<p>Caltech's CS is extremely theoretical. We have some of the top professors in the theoretical and bleeding edge fields (like Mani Chandy in networks/AI, Erik Winfree in DNA computation, as well as Hideo Mabuchi and Jeff Kimble in quantum computation), but not as much focus on the codemonkey parts of CS which are also important. If you want to become a professional coder, MIT, CMU, RPI, RIT, would all be good places to look at.</p>