Berkeley Prestige=Perception of Selectivity?

[Foraminifera]

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Chicago’s math undergrad program has, similar to Harvard’s Math 55, the sequence Honors Analysis tested into by talented undergrads, and the program is a hotspot for people who eventually want to get a math PhD at a top notch university. It does not attract the culture of taking the Putnam, indeed. Perhaps you mean to suggest that someone with IMO/IPhO tendencies is likely to take part in the Putnam, although I’m not sure if that’s true, as there seem to have been exceptional performers on such competitions who don’t do very much competition math later on.

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<p>Just because (there exists) a difficult course does not mean that the program is a hotspot for people who want to get a math PhD. For example, just look at Caltech’s Math 1a, the course EVERY single undergraduate at Caltech must take. It is pretty much the honors analysis part of Chicago & Harvard’s hardest math courses, covered in the same amount of time. By your logic, most talented math [international] undergraduates would want to go to Caltech, which is simply false.</p>

<p>And of course there are people who do well on the IMO/IPhO who do not do much competition math later on and there are those who do not do math competitions who do well on the Putnam, but the trend suggests that the best do. Chicago does participate in the Putnam every year, and it isn’t unreasonable to assume those who take the honors math course participate in it.</p>

<p>It’s just like, for high school students, the best math students, who are given the opportunity, take the AMC/AIME/USAMO/MOP/TST and do well. There are some kids who don’t know about it who are spectacular at math, but that’s probably like 1-2 people per year (no data source) who are at that caliber of math. You’re basically suggesting that someone who is good at math who is GIVEN the opportunity to take the Putnam while taking Chicago’s honors analysis program will not do so, which is very unlikely. Chicago also fails at getting the top math students even in the United States. Let’s look at a couple of examples from 2011:
Evan O Dorney: Harvard
Bowei Liu: Princeton (I know he isn’t class of 2011 but nbd)
Brian Zhang: Harvard
Albert Gu: CMU
…(etc) point is zero of these math beasts matriculate to Chicago or Berkeley for that matter (hmm I wonder why?).</p>

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As evidence for this, I’ve found great mathematicians hail from random undergraduate schools but uniformly ending up at the best rated graduate schools which are a long shot even for many students from those excellent undergraduate schools (though not all).

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<p>Agreed.</p>

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Perhaps in the IMO camps, it’s just common to aim for Harvard and take Math 55. But it depends who you talk to. In the large crowd who wants to train as engineers, usually among internationals, the 3 schools mentioned alongside each other are Stanford, Berkeley, MIT.

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<p>Perhaps you misread my post. I was merely stating that the top students of China have no respect for Berkeley, but the middle-upper-tier do (the Tsinghua/Beijing rejects). Keep in mind my cousin was in the IPhO camp, not the IMO camp, and thus had no desire to take such a math course (nor did his acquaintances). I also explicitly stated that the middle-upper-tier is the crowd with respect for Cal, so I see no conflict in argument.</p>

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Which means that sakky’s argument of “let’s grab them” actually would work because a lot of internationals have terrific respect for the academics at Berkeley.

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<p>Again, I do not disagree, but I’m just saying the top [international high school] students, at least in China, have never heard of Berkeley or would even consider it for their undergraduate career. From my experience in China, Berkeley (undergraduate) is viewed as the ‘safety’ school’/rich kids school that you would only go to as a last resort…like if they had to choose between going to some local college and Berkeley, they’d go to Berkeley. If they had the choice between Beijing and Berkeley, they’d choose Beijing in an instant. I’m assuming you’ve never met any of these students before, which is why you make these arguments. If you suggested Berkeley like I did, you would be laughed at.</p>

<p>tl:dr Perhaps you misread my post?</p>