<p>I don’t know about the impact of these programming contests, however I know the US and Europe have given to the world the greatest IT tools and inventions: the CPU architectures, the Unix operating system, the Linux operating system, the X-Windows, the Internet, the web browsers, the cell phones,… I wonder when Russia, China, and other contries can contribute back to the world. So far, I only see some hacks to attack the US IT system. This is my most concern.</p>
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<p>I applaud your valiant effort here - you show progress by presenting data. But you still don’t seem to get that a single data point shows nothing.</p>
<p>This single data point actually corroborates my point about the randomness with which schools field teams: sometimes students care, sometimes they don’t. It just completely depends on who gets on the team (the very first statement I made in the first post in this thread). The wild variation from year to year, where the top CS schools will place high sometimes, and at other times not, suggests that it’s just dependent on who joins the team. And in the end, most of the brilliant CS students at top CS schools still don’t know or don’t care about these competitions.</p>
<p>I chose out this particular data point because you claimed superior knowledge of the goings on at Stanford.Is there any way you can prove that the best students do not care?what metric are you using to classify the best CS student?</p>
<p>By the way this is the ACM ICPC.We have not talked about Top Coder or Google code Jam.Or should i conclude that one characteristic of a brilliant CS student is the lack of interest in programming competitions?</p>
<p>Allow me to list another data point: the 2009 ACM ICPC Contest.</p>
<h1>7 MIT</h1>
<h1>12 CMU</h1>
<h1>20 Stanford.</h1>
<p>[ICPCWiki:</a> Results World Finals 2009](<a href=“http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Results%20World%20Finals%202009]ICPCWiki:”>http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Results%20World%20Finals%202009)
I understand.The brilliant CS students did not attend</p>
<p>Allow me to list another data point: the 2009 ACM ICPC Contest.</p>
<h1>7 MIT</h1>
<h1>12 CMU</h1>
<h1>20 Stanford.</h1>
<p>[ICPCWiki:</a> Results World Finals 2009](<a href=“http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Results%20World%20Finals%202009]ICPCWiki:”>http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Results%20World%20Finals%202009)
I understand.The brilliant CS students did not attend</p>
<p>I believe MIT got 2nd in the mid-2000’s in the competition in question here. Reid Barton, who also was a Putnam fellow, was on the MIT team. He said back then in an article that MIT students don’t have time to study much for this competition, unlike the other competitive teams which train pretty hard for it. It’s an extracurricular activity at MIT. The other years Barton was on the team, they didn’t place as well. </p>
<p>As for the difference between the Putnam and the programming competitions, it’s true that Putnam is a lot more prestigious and well-known. I went to a magnet high school and I heard about the Putnam my first year there. I heard about the ICM when I was at MIT, but no one I knew participated in it and wasn’t talked about in the same glowing terms. Feynman competed in the Putnam. </p>
<p>On a perhaps contradictory note, programming ability is not a great indication of the caliber of student in general. It’s not that it doesn’t take the same brainpower as other subjects, it’s just not covered in school. The best programmers I knew in high school weren’t the best in the more traditional academic subjects, and so they had no chance of getting into a school like MIT.</p>
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<p>So there’s a difference between I guess like general programming, and the type of programming needed for these types of contests. If you look at for example, USACO, which is kind of like the high school version of the ACM contest, the finalists generally go to top schools, with MIT being the most popular actually.</p>
<p>Just wanted to respond to phantasmagoric, post #39, with regard to Nizhny Novgorod and Waterloo (Canada). American lack of familiarity with universities in other countries doesn’t mean the other universities are populated by slouches. It’s worthwhile to take a look at the wikipedia entries for these schools. </p>
<p>Waterloo is well known among academics for applications of computer science, and it evidently leads Canadian universities in high-tech spin-offs. Also, Waterloo apparently has the 6th place record for the number of top-5 finishes in the Putnam contest. There was an interesting home page on the Waterloo web site, stating “Everything you discover at Waterloo belongs to you.” This would be true for undergrads taking courses at my university (at least so far), but not true for grad students conducting research–the discovery would belong to the university. This could give Waterloo a substantial advantage in attracting innovative students. </p>
<p>Nizhny Novgorod is well regarded in IT, in the former Soviet Union. Also, a person living in Nizhny Novgorod could attend N. I. Lobachevsky State. (I am now elsewhere on the internet, hunting for a Lobachevsky State T-shirt.)</p>
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<p>I did not say I am unfamiliar with them. Do not attribute my argument to American ignorance, because that is not the case. (In fact, I am familiar with the universities I listed.)</p>
<p>Rather, if you read what I said, I am comparing their ability to attract the best CS students to the same ability of the top CS schools like MIT and Stanford. I’m sure that the universities I listed - which included U Buenos Aires, Saratov State, and U Michigan (why didn’t you address these three?) - have many a great CS student. But I find it unlikely that they would be superior to the top CS schools in their ability to attract strong CS students, and I mean “top” as measured by international CS rankings. Those I listed could be among the most well-known and I would still doubt that, somehow, they would be attracting hordes of strong CS students, and MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, Cornell, etc. just aren’t.</p>
<p>Here’s a much more detailed analysis of the competitiveness of different countries’ CS research (see p. 250-251):</p>
<p>[World</a> University Ranking in Computer Science - Scientometrics2008](<a href=“World University Ranking in Computer Science - Scientometrics2008 | PDF | University | Science”>World University Ranking in Computer Science - Scientometrics2008 | PDF | University | Science)</p>
<p>In all four metrics - production, influence, innovation, and development - the US dominates, and is still far ahead of China.</p>
<p>The only ones that come close are the UK, Germany, and Canada, which is coincidentally in line with my perception of which countries have the most influential research in CS (many of the top CS schools reside in those countries).</p>
<p>Notice that 74% of the top 10% of CS schools (by the above metrics) are in the US. So still the US takes the lion’s share.</p>
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<p>I think this is the explanation I likely would have given too. And probably it is still inherent to the math culture that some of these old, grandiose things that have traditionally indicated talent still carry some weight. I think this is partly the appeal of, for instance, the 1 year master’s at Cambridge in the UK - it has a lot of history, is very tough, and surviving it is generally looked upon quite well, despite it not being ultimately necessary for producing great research. The math culture seems to suggest a significantly less direct path to gauging grad school success (and beyond of course).</p>
<p>Which is why I think in CS, it makes sense that people may not bother with competitions nearly as much while they are undergraduates. The culture of universities has been brought up, so I guess it is only right to harp a little on the different cultures of the disciplines out there.</p>
<p>The rankings of schools in computer science are based on the research of the faculty. It is true that the top schools do tend to attract the top undergrads. Ironically, some of the top schools, such as MIT and Stanford, do not necessarily admit all of their applicants who might do well in the competition. Case in point: one of the recent U of Michigan graduates I know took Calc BC as a high-school freshman and scored a 5 (non-Asian, by the way). He was flat-out rejected SCEA by Stanford. Finished at the U of Michigan in 3 years, and now works for Facebook. And this is to say nothing of deadparrot55, hopelesslydevote, piccolojr, and WaitingforGodot, all MIT applicants who were rejected or waitlisted, despite their academic excellence–just a few of those I have recognized from scanning the MIT boards. You could add LoremIpsum’s son to the list. The selection process for undergrads follows the admissions philosophy at the schools–but that’s a different discussion. </p>
<p>I agree with some of the recent posts about cultural differences between the fields of math and CS. It is a valid point that the competition offers students at some schools a chance to stand out, when they could not count on the strength of the school’s reputation. So there is more to be gained by placing well, and they might devote substantially more effort to the competition. Students at MIT may be putting much more of their effort into classes and research. </p>
<p>I addressed Waterloo and Nizny Novgorod because phantasmagoric’s post seemed rather dismissive of them. The University of Michigan does rank in the top 10 in a number of engineering fields, and I believe that it’s one of the “CC top” universities. </p>
<p>Brazil is a large country, and the Brazilians are putting on a big push in science. How many Brazilian undergrads are there between MIT and Stanford both? I’d guess fewer than 10. And that’s across all fields. So why shouldn’t Brazil be able to field a pretty good team at the undergraduate level? Those students may have more invested in doing well, because it gives them a chance to stand out for international graduate admissions, or going directly into CS.</p>
<p>Saratov State (in Russia) won the ICPC in 2006. I have to admit, I had to look them up. However, the old Communist-bloc countries have done very well in the mathematical Olympiads, and they have national cultures that encourage accomplishment in math and science. I suspect that they may also have an excellent coach at the current time–there are coaches who play a non-negligible role in their team’s success.</p>
<p>Finally, why would one expect the top American universities to dominate in undergraduate level competition? I would not expect that, necessarily. I think that the “equilibrium” solution is one where the placements are heavily total-population dominated.</p>
<p>To add to my last post: At MIT and Stanford, there are disincentives, in effect, for the coaches to spend time working with the teams. The coaches’ own research is much more important to their careers.</p>
<p>At a mid-level university, a person who can coach well might actually gain, in career terms, from coaching the team to a high place internationally, despite the distraction from research.</p>
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<p>It is certainly true that being outside of a top school for your field generally implies doing a lot more outside of what the school offers to secure chances of gaining acceptance. Not to mention that some of the star students who got rejected by top schools in CS may have been eager to do a little extra to prove themselves, just the way they did in high school, in hopes that it is taken into account by employers/admissions.</p>
<p>Ok, so please ignore my boosterism for Brazil. I was mis-recollecting the post by phantasmagoric. Or misplacing Buenos Aires. Or both. (D***, Jim, I’m a quantum mechanic, not a geographer.)</p>
<p>I am not so much aware of a push for science in Argentina, compared to Brazil, but there might be. I’d suspect that there are even fewer Argentinians than Brazilians, between Stanford and MIT both–it would be interesting to look that up. </p>
<p>The performance of the team just tells you how the top n students do in the competition. A populous country with a dedicated undergraduate coach could probably find n really talented students in their midst.</p>
<p>To add to Quantmech’s post, U. of Waterloo consistently places in the top 5-10 in the Putnam, so obviously their top undergrads are pretty strong.</p>
<p>Yes, I have no doubt that these universities like Waterloo are quite capable of gathering several top CS students and fielding a strong team that will place well. So my question is: why are they better at attracting strong CS students to attend?</p>
<p>Of course, I don’t think that’s the case, but rather they just happen to have strong CS students participating, and if the perennial top CS schools sent out their strongest CS students, they would dominate. The variation that we see across countries is also the kind of variation we see across years for a single school: sometimes they’ll get strong students, sometimes they won’t. None of the ‘really strong’ students participated in ICPC at Stanford (just me being superficial there), and I have a feeling that it’s the case at MIT, CMU, Berkeley, and others as well.</p>
<p>At this point, I sound like a broken record, so I’ll wrap it up with a basic point to the OP: these results show nothing about the relative “student quality” in universities’ CS departments, and neither Stanford nor MIT’s (nor any top CS school’s) student quality has declined. In fact, I’m pretty certain they’ve only improved.</p>
<p>I’ll also add, regarding coaching: at Stanford, the person who coaches the team is a lecturer, not a professor, so you might think he’d have an incentive to coach the team. But he’s only a part-time lecturer, since he works at Facebook, so I doubt he has much time to devote to coaching the team. Not that that’s a problem, since CS students usually have very little time themselves.</p>
<p>phantasmagoric, if the issue is attracting the people to attend the schools–as opposed to attracting them to attend the competition–then I think that the (potentially) top CS students <em>are</em> attracted to MIT, Stanford, and CMU, among other top schools. The question is whether they are admitted. I mentioned above deadparrot55, hopelessly devote, piccolojr, Waiting for Godot, and LoremIpsum’s son. I think we might add mathmom’s son to the list of people who were rejected/waitlisted by MIT. (Please excuse me if this is incorrect, mathmom.) My recollection is that mathmom’s son was admitted to Harvard, rejected by MIT, and chose to go to CMU. He is definitely a very strong CS student.</p>
<p>If you look at the MIT admissions blogs–perhaps you have done this already–it will not be difficult to pick up the dominant admissions philosophy at MIT. I don’t actually think it is easy to pick out the applicants who will be “top of the top” in CS in any event, and I think that MIT’s admissions philosophy (at the undergrad level) cuts the admit rate for future “top of the top” at least to some extent.</p>
<p>I know that Dick Zare, chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Stanford (National Academy member, winner of National Medal of Science, chair of the National Science Board, and in the “Kreskin predicts” category: future Nobel laureate) has complained about the ability of their admissions office to discern the traits that characterize good undergraduate researchers (in an opinion piece in Chemical & Engineering News, haven’t located the specific reference). </p>
<p>Then, among the students who are admitted, there is still a question of finances. Many of the outstanding CS students come from families of moderate means, so that the debt load for undergraduate work is of concern. Many other universities will be offering true full rides to students of this caliber. </p>
<p>The financial issue would also affect international students. While I am not sure about financial aid arrangements for students at Canadian universities, I would suspect that it is much cheaper for a Canadian to go to Waterloo. Then you would expect a high concentration of the best Canadian talent there. Despite the smaller population of Canada, it’s enough to field really strong Putnam and ICPC teams. </p>
<p>A large-ish number of students from China are now applying to the top US schools. However, this trend has not taken hold to the same extent in Russia or Argentina.</p>
<p>Re: hypothesis that student quality has improved at MIT and Stanford</p>
<p>collegealum314 sent me this link to an interview of Richard Schrock that appeared in the Tech:
[Afterhours</a> with Richard R. Schrock - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N26/schrock.html]Afterhours”>http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N26/schrock.html)</p>
<p>Incidentally, you can find a brief autobiography of Schrock at the site
<a href=“http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2005/schrock-autobio.html[/url]”>http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2005/schrock-autobio.html</a></p>
<p>Here is a relevant section of the interview with Schrock:</p>
<p>TT: So you’ve been at MIT now for 36 years. How have you seen the Institute change through that time?</p>
<p>RRS: A lot has changed, and a lot hasn’t. The physical plant has changed a lot. Buildings have gone up and Kendall Square is kind of a swishy place now — it wasn’t always that way. In 1969, it was pretty bad over there. The student body has changed a lot. Many more women, minorities, and so on, and that’s great that we’re really in the mainstream in that regard. The old MIT was just the best and the brightest male — hate to say nerds — but … you can still find the authentic nerd somewhere, but I think it has changed quite a bit.</p>
<p>I think it’s also changed in the way that students are involved in many more things. They’re doing plays or singing in chorus and this and that, and they’re really stretched very thin — too thin in some ways — but it’s good for them because the intensity hasn’t changed. Maybe it’s not so intensely oriented towards the hard-core science and engineering. We’ve got other departments that are great. </p>
<p>Schrock himself was an undergrad at UC Riverside, Ph.D. student at Harvard.</p>