Putnam Fellow…
They are called merit scholarships although WashU has some for service etc.
I know a local kid who got a full ride at Duke last year. The most interesting thing about this kid was a 2400 score. An ivy school admitted the kid but there was zero financial aid. Guess where the kid went.
@menefrega How was he taking a spot from anyone? As soon as he rejects the offers, an applicant will be taken off the wait list.
Wise kid and great choice. Go Bama.
@TV4caster - of that list, about 14 went on to get their PhDs (winners in 2009 and later may still be in the process of getting their degrees). It looks like the favored school is Harvard followed by MIT and Berkeley (not surprising at all). It looks like Andrew Gleason was (is?) influential. Even though he never did a dissertation, it looks like he has a boatload of math descendents. I suspect later winners (1985 and later) may have chosen a different career path - either finance or computer science or maybe something totally different.
So are the Putnam winners necessarily math superstars like Terence Tao or Jordan Ellenberg? No but they are likely very well respected people in their fields.
While I agree with your assessment about honors programs in general, I disagree when you are talking about the elite programs within many of the honors programs. These programs are highly selective and are not just stat driven. UFE, for example, states The UFE selection committee will consider a candidate’s records of academic, extracurricular, service and leadership achievements more heavily than grades and test scores. They also have to go through an interview weekend.
Most of the kids in these types of programs do have what it takes to be admitted into top schools.
@SlackerMomMD after I posted I googled a bunch of them and found a lot of professors. A couple went into business (like the first 4 time winner, who went to IBM and did cryptography ) but they seem to be few and far between.
Steve Ballmer actually scored pretty well on the Putnam:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/business/yourmoney/28ballmer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Most students who would choose to attend Alabama (or similar public flagship) over HYPS don’t apply to HYPS as a backup in case they don’t get into Alabama. Instead they only apply to Alabama, so they don’t appear in the yield results as having chosen Alabama over HYPS. However, students who would choose HYPS over their local flagship often do apply to the flagship as a backup, so they do appear in the yield results as choosing HYPS over their flagship.
There are many excellent students who could be accepted to a highly selective college, but instead prefer to attend a less selective (than ivy) public, and as such do not apply to HYPS. Some of the common reasons for this decision are cost, location, and lack of infatuation with selective colleges. Lower income students in particular rarely apply to highly selective colleges, as discussed in the study at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring-2013/2013a_hoxby.pdf . However, this group represents only a very small fraction of the student body at such less selective colleges.
Wait… people on this thread are telling me that schools that really like to admit competition winners are more likely to have students that win competitions?
I’m shocked.
Personally I don’t care how many schools a student applies to, but this is certainly not how it works. At all-look it up.
Pretty sure UA accepts pretty much every competition winner that applies…
Speaking in general terms, why is the entirety of college confidential obsessed with the University of Alabama?
With that said, I’m sure he made the best choice for him.
Someone has to state the obvious @romanigypsyeyes.
I want to write a check for that student and pay his tuition for him!
He made a terrible decision:
- Alabama is NOT an Ivy experience (i.e., an experience surrounded by the best and the brightest, in a new part of the country for him). "Alabama" and "Ivy" do not belong in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence. He's going to a state school just down the road, and he won't have the personal growth from living elsewhere and being exposed to a new culture.
- People can differ on how much a prestigious undergraduate school will help a student, but studies show that if it will help anyone, it will help lower-income people, and members of under-represented minority groups, the most. The student may not be lower-income, but he would be helped by an Ivy a lot more than some kid from Greenwich who goes to Princeton.
- He's African-American, and we NEED more African-Americans in the Ivy League, and in Ivy League alumni circles. (I'm white.)
My Ivy classmates who were African-American who chose low-level jobs after graduating, rather than aiming high for the ultra-prestigious jobs that they could have gotten, also make me sad. If we’re ever going to have equality in the US, we need a lot more members of historically-underrepresented minority groups at the highest levels of power and influence- which a degree from HYPS will be more likely to send you into than a degree from Alabama.
@HappyAlumnus
I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but your comment comes off as incredibly patronizing of this young man and those who attend state schools in general. It’s astonishing how some people are acting as if this young man is attending a community college in Timbuktu. University of Alabama is a perfectly respectable university and has a fantastic honors program. Believe it or not, there is an entire spectrum of schools that lie between mediocre and ivy league. CC seems to have an “Ivy league or nothing at all” mentality that’s super unhealthy and troubling.
- Personal growth has nothing to do with how far a person moves away from home. I've had some of my most profound "aha" moments and breakthroughs right in my backyard. At the end of the day, a student who is dedicated to growing personally and intellectually will have no problem doing so. A student who flies 3,000 miles across the country isn't necessarily going to have a more enriching experience than others. There are plenty of kids who go OOS for school and spend all four years jackassing around at kegs and football games.
- As you said, this kid is not lower income so I'm not entirely sure what you're hinting at by this statement.
- I actually agree with you on this, however it is not the responsibility of this young man to be the token black person at an Ivy League school. It's the responsibility of the institutions themselves to commit to recruiting URM applicants and creating opportunities for lower income students.
- Your last point is so backwards and illogical that I'm not even sure how to go about addressing it. If you think that institutionalized racism is going to be fixed by a few black kids attending Harvard then I fear for the future of this country. The reasons why white men are in power run a looooot deeper than where one receives a diploma.
- If you actually pay attention to all of the reasons why he chose Bama, it was actually a pretty smart move on his part. It would be one thing if he didn't plan on going to grad school, but this young man is heading to medical school after receiving his bachelors. Med school alone can put a student 150,000 dollars in debt ON TOP of what was accumulated in undergrad. Passing up on a full tuition when he's likely going to accumulate six figure debt in the near future would be pretty irresponsibly on his part. This man just saved himself years of paying back unnecessary student loans.
@Marihorror I’d look at Happy’s previous posts before taking his/her posts… seriously.
@shrinkrap "@Much2learn; I’ll be frank; I meant black women. Is that racist?
FWIW, my son does not appear to be racist. Yay. Wonder what my daughter would say. Both think perhaps there is something “wrong with them”. Maybe. Not to worry. We don’t disagree. We try not to share any views that might be racist."
Honestly, I am not sure what you are trying to say here.
To my ear, it does sound racist to assume that any student would prefer a partner of the same race. I don’t know how any poster here, unless they know this young man personally, could presume to know his dating preferences. I would not assume that this young man is straight or gay, and I would not presume that because he is African American, that he would prefer dating other African Americans. I would have no idea. It really does not matter to me. I am not sure why any posters are making assumptions about those things.
I do think that the posts about women from lesser colleges being more attractive than women at top colleges is offensive. We continue to send the wrong messages to young girls, “Just look good; be a cheerleader; your mind does not matter.” I think this is terrible. We send these messages out, and then we don’t understand why we don’t have many women in engineering, like it is a big mystery. Ugh.
Well, I did say MAYBE he might prefer the …demographics of Alabama. Maybe. One of many reasons offered, and following the comment about pretty girls. AndI mention my own kids because they do not seem to have a preference, but wonder why thier relationship status is different from their friends. They ask me “whats wrong with u s?”. Fom my perspective, which is NOT the same as my children, it’s not just about who he students prefer, it’s also about who prefers them. I suppose inferring that might matter is racist too.
@romanigypsyeyes I realize that they were likely not intending to be offensive which is why I began with “I’m sure you didn’t mean it this way…”, however there were some problematic things said that I didn’t feel comfortably leaving unaddressed.
Nope, not what I meant at all. I meant that his/her posts always seem a little… off… or far-fetched…