Which College Has the Smartest Kids? - 10 Year Putnam Competition

College Search & Selection
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<p>Year FirstTeam Second Third Fourth FifthTeam</p>

<p>1999 Waterloo Harvard Duke Michigan Chicago </p>

<p>2000 Duke MIT Harvard Caltech Toronto </p>

<p>2001 Harvard MIT Duke UC Berkeley Stanford </p>

<p>2002 Harvard Princeton Duke UC Berkeley Stanford </p>

<p>2003 MIT Harvard Duke Caltech Harvey Mudd </p>

<p>2004 MIT Princeton Duke Waterloo Caltech </p>

<p>2005 Harvard Princeton Duke MIT Waterloo </p>

<p>2006 Princeton Harvard MIT Toronto Chicago </p>

<p>2007 Harvard Princeton MIT Stanford Duke </p>

<p>2008 Harvard Princeton MIT Stanford Caltech </p>

<p>Teams that finished in the top five since 1990 (as of 2008 competition):</p>

<p>Top Five Team (s)
18 Harvard<br>
13 MIT<br>
12 Duke, Princeton<br>
8 Waterloo<br>
6 Caltech<br>
5 Stanford<br>
4 Toronto<br>
3 Cornell, Washington U in StL<br>
2 Chicago, UC Berkeley, Harvey Mudd, University of Michigan, Yale</p>

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<p>How do you propose this correlates to the intelligence of a student body, exactly? Because excelling at a math competition reflects only upon math majors/whoever chooses to compete in it, and those majoring in math are in the extreme minority of mostly of every school. It is an extremely narrow comparison.</p>

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<p>The smartest mathematician at MIT wasn’t even a student there. Well at least in, “Good Will Hunting” it was so.</p>

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<p>By having classes dedicated to this competition, some schools game the system to try to persuade prospective students that their school is the best. That’s all the Putnam competition has ever been ever since John Nash failed it and Harvard found out that their graduate admissions system was screwed up. It now carries zero weight in the mathematical community.</p>

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<p>Then this may be junk, but at least we know which schools are gaming it. The usual suspects,… except Yale. </p>

<p>Distribution of the Top 79 Individuals in the 2008 Putnam Contest</p>

<p>MIT – 23
Stanford – 12
Harvard – 11
Princeton – 11
Caltech – 6
Duke – 2
Toronto – 2
University of British Columbia – 2
Brigham Young U. – 1
Brown – 1
Florida Atlantic U. – 1
Florida State – 1
Maryland – 1
Michigan – 1
Purdue – 1
U. Washington – 1
University of New Mexico – 1
Waterloo – 1</p>

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<p>Doesn’t this basically say what we already know, that these are the schools that attract the top math concentrators as measured by competitions for high school students like the AIMCO or whatever it’s called?</p>

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<p>waterloo??</p>

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<p>it depends on how u define ‘smart’.</p>

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<p>In 2007, the two Putnam Fellows from MIT (top 5 overall) were the IMO Gold Medalists from China. I can’t believe that they imported them from China directly.</p>

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<p>The world’s biggest math faculty (although they include CS under that label, which boosts the size).</p>

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<p>oh ok thank you ^</p>

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<p>A few days earlier on another threat I also posted the results of the ACM over the years. </p>

<p>[Past</a> Contests - The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest](<a href=“http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm]Past”>http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm)</p>

<p>If you were to click on to the Final Standings after each one of the years and eliminate all but Canadian and US schools, you will end up with results very similar to the Putnam. </p>

<p>For your information, the results of the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos were published at one time and the student finished first (senior wrangler?) was regarded as having accomplished the greatest intellectual feat in Britain. Some of the senior wranglers we all know? Lord Kelvin, Maxwell and Cayley.</p>

<p>For the Putnam, I would not stop with the top five teams. That is a bit severe. I would add the next five (honorable mentions) as well.</p>

<p>I think the results are consistent with most people’s expectation, with a few surprises thrown in. My interpretation is that quality usually matches prestige, but not always.</p>

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<p>yong, please stop with these stupid lists that you provide in endless sequence. they don’t tell us much, if anything at all…</p>

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<p>Yonjun is a Korean name, unless I’m mistaken.</p>

<p>I agree with ‘bayvcroberts.’ </p>

<p>Plus, Asians who keep oversimplifying things in their own terms are often the source of shame for us in other countries. I’m Asian myself, but I don’t really blame people for having stereotypes about us lacking the ability of comprehensive, critical analysis or trying to shove everything into a calculator and rank it.</p>

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<p>enomushiki, speak for yourself. Don’t generalize this to others, as you just said, “…who keep oversimplifying things in their own terms…”</p>

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<p>I agree strongly both ways. :-)</p>

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<p>
[Quote=]
enomushiki, speak for yourself. Don’t generalize this to others, as you just said, “…who keep oversimplifying things in their own terms…”

[/Quote]
</p>

<p>How did I oversimplify anything? And where are my terms?</p>

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<p>This list really has no correlation which school has the smartest undergrad students… Seriously…</p>

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<p>Phuriku: “By having classes dedicated to this competition, some schools game the system to try to persuade prospective students that their school is the best. That’s all the Putnam competition has ever been ever since John Nash failed it and Harvard found out that their graduate admissions system was screwed up. It now carries zero weight in the mathematical community.”</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard, Princeton, MIT don’t have to game the Putnam. If they do try to game the system, then it means that the Putnam means “something” in the mathematical community.</li>
<li>More math students are taking part of the competiotn than before.</li>
<li>You probably did not partcipate in the competition, and thus make the conclusion that Putnam “now carries zero weight in the mathematical community.”</li>
</ol>

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<p>Wow. You’re kool. With a “k”.</p>