Anecdotally, it seems to give a little boost for Yale. No one has the numbers on this, but if Yale’s acceptance rate this year was 3-4%, my guess is the acceptance rate for kids who did YYGS is probably higher than that. YYGS has also become more competitive after Covid. For instance, this year was their most competitive ever: they received over 10,000 applications for 2,000 offers.
[Hey, where would you put MIT Primes for the Reading Group vs. the Research Group, as linked here:(List of Top, Prestigious Awards - #1303 by dropper). Maybe a 7 out of 10?
Nope, sorry. Wrong link: MIT PRIMES: Program Details
Also @hebegebe is there any real difference between qualifying for Blue Mop vs. Red or Green worthy of mention on college apps?
First of all, if you are using your real name, please contact a mod to help you change it. This is College Confidential after all.
Second, any level of MOP is a very high math award, and slight differences between the different colors will be dwarfed by the quality of the rest of the application. If the rest of your application is good (strong grades, recommendations, essays), chance of admission to MIT is high.
Finally, re MIT PRIMES reading group, yes a 7/10 seems reasonable.
ISEF Finalist should be between 4-5. The majority of ISEF Finalists are the grand winners of regional science fairs. Instead, 1st prize in state fairs should be around 6 (less than 20 awards per state).
In YYGS Instagram story, they actually announced they received over 20,000 applications this year.
Also is ARML like a 7 on this list?
Additionaly @hebegebe I feel that mathcamp is more prestigious than ross- should we put it at like 7.5 or smth… I just think that not all the summer math camps besides primes are equals
Math Research
I saw on the list of Top, Presigious Awards thread that research in a relatively prestigious journal is a 9. What counts as “prestigious” and how hard is it to for math research with a T10 grad student to meet that requirement? I am (currently) doing math research and am curious what "prestigious "really means. What if I simply do math research and get results and don’t publish- is that like an 7 or 8 then?
To give some context, I am a junior and last year missed USAJMO and am worried about not making USAMO this year and would like some advice about research since I am not very knowledgeable. Thank you!
EDIT: Sorry for putting on the larger thread meant to private message. Sill getting used to how College confidential works since I just joined… thank you for understanding!
It’s useful to think of math research (or any research) as being akin to athletic talent. Just as there are hundreds of thousands of high school students that play basketball, but the absolute stars are really in demand, the same is true of research.
The key is to become recognized by colleges as one of the true talents, and colleges rely up on trusted outsiders to help with that. There are two major ways to become vetted:
- Be published in a well-respected journal
- Win a major science/math award
As an aside, attending one of the well known research camps like RSI also provides a boost, but that’s a topic for a different day.
A “prestigious journal” (I wouldn’t use those words myself, but let’s continue with that for now) is a peer-reviewed journal that’s respected by the professors in that specialized field. We’re not talking about Science or Nature, but rather more topic specific math journals like say Advanced Nonlinear Studies, Representation Theory, or Journal of Differential Equations, and even then we are likely talking about a Level 8 rather than Level 9. For a high school student to hope to be published, the work really has to be completed by the end of 10th grade, because the review process takes a long time.
If you have great results, in addition to submitting to peer-reviewed journals, you should also submit it to science contests like ISEF and Regeneron STS. Getting an ISEF Grand Prize award or Regeneron STS Finalist can be considered a Level 9 award, and they have the advantage they consider research completed after 10th grade.
Now suppose you don’t get published or win a major national award. Then you can do the following to strengthen your application
- Get a recommendation from your T10 grad student (or even better his professor), preferably on university letterhead.
- Present your research at industry conferences. For example, a good one is the annual MAA Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM), which has a section for undergraduates (that high school students can also present to). Getting selected to present there, and winning an award there, can help with admissions.
4 Likes
Genuine question: This is such an extensive list, I wonder how versed your average admissions officer at a T20 school would know the relative rankings. I can see they would know of the top programs like RSI, and care if you indicate if it is a national level vs state level competition win. But would they really be able to differentiate for example UC COSMOS (5) vs UCSB RMP (6) vs Stony Brook Garcia (7)? Or do they think of it in tranches: 1 - strong applicant in local context, 2 - state/national level competitive, 3 - best of the best?
1 Like
For a perfect 10 - Governor of CA, OH, RI, VT, WA, and/or WI.
Does IMO (65th International Mathematical Olympiad) related awards only help for MIT/Caltech or it will have help for all universities? How much of an impact will it have given the student have perfect testing and grades.
Some universities do not consider IMO or other outside awards and extracurriculars at all. However, these typically tend to be less selective universities where applicants with “perfect testing and grades” would be admitted easily.
For a domestic student, it’s basically a lock at MIT/Caltech. For other highly selective colleges, that is a high probability admit.
In both cases, that’s assuming no serious deficiencies in the rest of the application.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. If you’d like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.