<p>oh my gawd that is a ridiculous conspiracy theory</p>
<p>Hm, JHS, interesting information on the connection between admissions and the Math Department at Harvard. In a similar vein, the spouse of a physics professor at Stanford used to be director of admissions–I think–at Stanford . . . definitely connected with admissions. The physics prof. was Fetter of Fetter & Walecka (and much other work).</p>
<p>Fitzsimmons is married to a math prof at Harvard? This surprises me considering the way he talks about the math people like they are a necessary evil.</p>
<p>On the other hand, maybe it isn’t surprising. “Nagging me about taking out the garbage? Hey look at this IMO guy’s app, oh, looks like it fell in the garbage.”</p>
<p>Fitzsimmons is the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, not the Director of Undergraduate Admissions.</p>
<p>^What is the difference between those jobs, other than the financial aid part?</p>
<p>“rejected as a favor to the math department”.</p>
<p>I don’t believe Harvard math department did something like this. This was undergraduate admission, not graduate admission. Why did Harvard math department have a spell on the kid? May be Harvard math department wanted him to go somewhere else for undergraduate and come back to Harvard for graduate study instead of going to Harvard for undergraduate then leaving Harvard for other schools later.</p>
<p>It seems strange that this “Sergei” would have slipped through the cracks at Harvard admissions, but the alternatives posted in the last few pages are pretty outlandish. </p>
<p>QuantMech’s old explanation about the hedge-fund manager seems more reasonable. </p>
<p>I don’t know too much about the admissions process, but I know a few admissions staff members at Chicago, and it’s entirely conceivable that they overlook talent due to a lack of familiarity with the field in question. One student with very high potential had to have our undergraduate director (and occasionally the instructor of math207) vouch for him personally after being waitlisted by a commitee which didn’t consult the math department to begin with</p>
<p>this thread, although several months old, makes me wanna laugh</p>
<p>I mean no arrogance; I only wish to share my experiences, if you’re going to read the following:</p>
<p>As a 10th grader who’s finished with Calculus C/D (multi) by his 9th grade year, as well as a person who does lots of IMO problems (and has conducted a research problem on his own), I’d say that you guys are looking at this wrongly. Doing any sort of thing for factual knowledge is a big waste of time (as in, it doesn’t help you in the career world.) </p>
<p>What I’m saying is basically, there are two types of methods of thinking: Intuition and Fundamentals. What many people are saying is that people are learning ‘factual knowledge’, like ‘crystallized intellect’ from these things, which is not really the big point in doing these things.</p>
<p>Learning school math is like learning fundamentals; you learn all these tactics, but the thing is, you can’t know how they connect, which is why so many people get stuck on only being able to solve trivial USAMO #1/#4 (easiest) problems out of 6, even as the ‘best’ math students; they can’t think with intuition. Fundamentals allow you to pick up factual information very easily. This is mainly important when you want to know certain theorems, etc. like the stuff you learn in Math 55 (and contest math, and research).</p>
<p>When you get into the more in depth topics, using fundamentals gives diminishing results, while intuition gives a much more powerful result. Intuition, is like, learning how things connect, etc.
I’m going to say straight off the bat, doing stuff like Math 55 cannot help you learn these things. However, contest math does help you hone in on intuition; that is, it helps you solve problems when you do not know how to start.
One person may study the USAMO, do research, 10 hours a day, while another person can do it for 15 minutes a day, and both can give the same results. The cause of the difference in the speeds is how you learn intuition. That’s what doing IMO stuff teaches you how to do, not random precalculus methods that are useless to careers.</p>
<p>This is the main reason why some people can learn things very quickly; they can pick off the important things using a ‘feeling’, or algorithm that their mind practices. Apparently this algorithm works well, sometimes it doesn’t. The thing with intelligence, is really just an algorithmic process; it can be very slow or fast, depending on how you know intuition/learn.
Usually, I find IMO attendees very able to learn other things quite fast as well; they can easily pick up computer science and physics (research and contests).</p>
<p>In short, I just want to point out, that this argument over ‘impressiveness’ and ‘useful knowledge’ isn’t the main point. What’s important is the ability to pick up ‘smartness’ very fast.</p>
<p>Way old thread…</p>
<p>Way old, and yet I will address Tactics a bit:</p>
<p>Don’t you think it’s a bit presumptuous as a 10th grader to hold forth on which skills add value in the “career world”? There are a lot of different careers, and different careers require different skills and aptitudes. You’ve kind of gone and defined success as “whatever you are doing.” I don’t deny that you’ve been successful, but I’d warn against applying that yardstick to what others have done. Do more listening and less talking.</p>
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<p>Tactics’ main point was the quote above, and I completely agree with it.</p>
<p>And yet many of the top mathematicians at Harvard did not do (or excel) at contests. Of course many did excel at contests too.</p>
<p>Also, while I have worked with many successful contest mathematicians who were sharp as a tack, I have also interviewed many (and in some cases had the misfortune of working with them) who were <em>not</em> able to successfully transfer those skills to anything that I considered useful.</p>
<p>Finally, I’m not sure that was Tactic’s main point. I think that’s the point he made with which you agree the most.</p>
<p>Since this thread has been resurrected briefly, I would like to make two observations:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In another, recent thread, a poster with apparently pretty good knowledge about the Harvard admissions process wrote that the Math Department has about the same status as the football coach. It has a list of kids it wants, ranked and weighted, and by and large it gets what it wants from the top of its list. They do not leave it to 23-year-old former English majors working in the Admissions Office to judge the ability of applicants with high-level math backgrounds. It is far more likely that the kid who was the subject of this thread was rejected because the Math Department didn’t want him admitted, than that he slipped through any cracks. Why the Math Department didn’t want him admitted is the big question, but it was not a mistake.</p></li>
<li><p>Tactics, you are a very smart student, but you should maybe take some of your intuition over to English class and learn how to express ideas in language and how to understand what other people write, because those skills are lagging your math ability considerably. Also, even if your intuition is great, you should think about withholding judgment on things you know little or nothing about.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>^That was pretty harsh, JHS. I don’t think Tactics’ post is particularly hard to understand. Also, from experience he/se has a lot of knowledge about what different levels of performance on these tests mean or translate to in technical fields, which is something I don’t think you know about considering you are a lawyer. So I think his posts have some value.</p>
<p>I doubt the math department takes time to rank all of their top candidates as you suggested. It would be unnecessary to do so. I presume they are given a rough number of guaranteed spots, and generally the MOSP (math olympics training camp) people are automatic admits. The IMO team is definitely automatic. The numbers have changed over the years, but I’d guess there may be about 50 graduating seniors per year who have MOSP on their resume’.
The USAMO people have always been strong candidates that are highly valued by Harvard, but even in the days where only 50 seniors a year had this qualification, they were nowhere near automatic. Again, the numbers of people who qualify for each level of the US math olympics tryouts have increased over the years, but in my experience they reserve about 30-40 spots for these people on the basis of these tests alone. </p>
<p>I haven’t done any internet research on the IMO guy the OP mentions, but I would first look to see what he had on his resume’ as a junior. If he made IMO as a senior, it would be too late to help him. Someone who makes USAMO and gets an “A” in Math 55 deserves admission in my opinion based on the fact that they are great at any discipline involving math, but based on the way Harvard does things, USAMO has never been automatic and performance in classes (no matter how difficult) is not a hook.</p>
<p>Collegealum314, I wouldn’t give tactics that much credit for knowing how performance on these tests “translate to in technical fields”. He’s in 10th grade. What I’ve seen over the past few years is that a close acquaintance of mine has completed Math 55 while IMO gold medalists have taken 25, or dropped down to 25. I have also seen a Harvard admission who never competed in math, but won the Intel and skipped Math 55 altogether to take graduate classes and write a textbook. I personally have had worked with IMO gold medalists who were talented and qualified, and other gold medalists who were not. There are a lot of ways to be successful at math, and a lot of ways to indicate that you have the capacity to succeed. The idea that “the only way to succeed is the way I am succeeding” is an immature approach. Tactics is allowed to be immature at ~16, but hopefully he will grow because he seems quite talented.</p>
<p>^ Well, the IMO guy referenced in the OP got an “A” in Math55 while in high school, right? So it’s a pretty unlikely that the Harvard admissions people suspected he would hit a brick wall when he reached upper level math. I don’t argue against the fact that there are people who can be as successful at advanced coursework even if they weren’t great at contest math; I was one of these people, in fact. Still, I think it’s very rare for Havard to look beyond these contests in favor of other representations of mathematical talent. There certainly is little evidence that is what happened in this particular case.</p>
<p>Marlyn McGrath Lewis is married to Harry Lewis, the former dean of the College and a professor of Computer Science, not math. Yes, the math department does submit a list (I have this on quite good authority) of the students they want-- doesn’t mean they will always get them, but… the math department, as many departments, will be asked by Admissions to “check” on a particular applicant’s credentials if Admissions wants expert help (my S has a teach this year who slipped about something to which she could only know if she had seen his admissions file…it took my son aback for a second–he tried to be nonchalant and the teacher never caught on that she had made a slip up…)
For higher pure math algorithmic thinking isn’t particularly useful–(applied math is another issue altogether) but rather the ability to work in deep abstractions and be able to do rigorous proofs-- that is a very very different type of thinking than creating algorithms–not better, not worse, but very different. the Olympiads reward clever proof and creativity-- they have little interest in algorithms or even knowledge of advanced topics–the questions rarely go to advanced topics. rather they are very difficult concepts in relatively elementary abstract math that require the candidate to “look belong” the question to see the real question that is being asked and to solve it. Because of time constraints it is very very difficult to “brute force” through the exam and get a strong score, instead elegance is required.</p>
<p>Yes, there are certainly IMO medalists in 25, but that is not bc they don’t have the math chops but that they do not want to make math their life (last week the Pset in 55b (analysis) required understanding and using Lie Algebra and it took my son and his study group almost 50 hours to complete the six questions. This week, he has told me, is even harder–) and one can do very well as a mathematician coming from 25–so it isn’t necessary-- but while not all good harvard mathematicians take 55, all 55’ers (esp those who stick through both semesters (3 dropped between a &b) leaving 15 in the class) are good harvard mathematicians.</p>
<p>I can’t imaging that if someone did well in 55 (and again by “b” all of those who didn’t do well are long gone…) would hit a wall in upper level courses–However, as a math prof friend of mine has said there are two gates to be a creative pure mathematician–doing abstract proofs rigorously and then the ability to come up with novel questions in areas that are unexplored–it could be that a student could be a great undergrad math person-- doing well in 123, and other higher level math courses but when it came to be a researcher, doesn’t have that skill set-- there is little way to knowing–(one way may be when the professor comes back and writes on Psets–" these are ways to look at these problems I haven’t seen before and you showed me something"-- that student may have the needed mathematical creativity and fluidity that makes for a good pure mathematician.)</p>
<p>But again, pure math is as different from applied, theoretical physics or discreet math as poetry is from prose–not better, but different-- a great novelist may be a mediocre poet and an great poet may be mediocre novelist-- and both may be mediocre essayists and vice versa.</p>
<p>It’s possible Harvard didn’t provide him with a full scholarship or as much scholarship as MIT, and if they “decided they couldn’t start the year without him,” they probably would’ve given him more scholarship. But this is open to interpretation, as he could’ve been wait listed…</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure Harvard is more generous than MIT with regards to financial aid so that explanation seems unlikely.</p>