Table of Putnam Competition winners (undergrad math competition) by school

College Search & Lists
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Putnam Competition individual winners 2015-1996 and in 5-yr increments
Any level of recognition: fellow to honorable mention
This is a math competition for undergraduates. In 2015, a total of 4275 students from 554 colleges and universities in Canada and the United States participated (per my data source below).
http://www.maa.org/programs/maa-awards/putnam-competition-individual-and-team-winners

Data compiled from here: http://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/
NOTE! The number of individual awards has gone up over time. 280 in 2000-1996 to 419 in 2015-2011

total2015-20112010-20062005-20012000-1996School
____4201631218848MIT
20643495460Harvard
11935392322Princeton
__983239189Stanford
__9310372917CalTech
497131118University of Waterloo
__44381815Duke
__3428240Carnegie Mellon
__3348129University of Toronto
__2710674Harvey Mudd
__232579University of Chicago
2211434Yale
__208462UC Berkeley
__186435University of Michigan
__163652University of British Columbia
__132344Washington University
110056University of Pittsburgh
97020Stony Brook
94302University of Illinois
81142Cornell
77000UCLA
62400Brown
60321University of Maryland
62301University of Virginia
51022Dartmouth
50122McGill University
55000Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
50041University of Calgary
40112Carleton College
42200Indiana University
40040Kansas State
42002NYU
41210Rice University
41120University of Minnesota
40310University of Washington
31200Brigham Young University
30012City College
30111Columbia
30021Denison University
33000Northwestern University
32001University of North Carolina
31200University of Rochester
20020Bucknell University
20011Case Western Reserve
21001Georgia Tech
20110Pomona College
20200Purdue University
20002Queen’s University
20002Simon Fraser University
20020Swarthmore College
22000Touro College
20020Tufts University
20110University of Nebraska
20011University of Ottawa
20002University of Penn
21001University of Richmond
20200University of New Mexico
10001Beloit College
10001Binghamton University
10010Boston College
10010Boston University
10001Clark University
10010Colorado State
10100Conneticutt College
10001Dalhousie University
10010Emory University
10100Florida Atlantic
10100Florida State
10100Grinnell College
11000Illinois Wesleyan
10100Johns Hopkins University
10001Lebanon Valley College
10001Macalester College
10001Marquette University
10010Memorial Univ of Newfoundland
10001Michigan State
10100Michigan Technological Univ
11000Ohio State
10001Penn State
10001Reed College
10001Rutgers University
10100St Joseph’s
10001St. Lawrence University
10010UC Davis
11000UC Santa Cruz
11000University of Alabama
10100University of Alberta
10001University of Bridgeport
10010University of Georgia
10100University of Massachusetts
10100University of North Texas
10100University of Texas
10001University of Utah
11000Vanderbilt University
10001Wake Forest
10001Wellesley College
10010Williams College
10100Worcester Polytechnic Institute
1100_0Yeshiva College

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Some observations and thoughts on this.

First off, this info is IMHO not very relevant for the vast majority of those interested in majoring in math. My guess is that if you are strong in math but not insanely strong and go to one of the places at the top, then you will be unlikely to major in math because you’ll have bad grades given your competition. Of course, that just means you major in something else not that you drop out of school, of course.

However, the tables shows changes in math talent aggregation over time, i.e. where is the extreme math talent going. The fraction of these awards received by MIT has steadily increased from ca 17% in 2000-1996 to 40% in 2015-2011. Harvard used to take the majority of the individual awards and more than MIT. Now MIT takes 4 times(!) as many awards as Harvard. This is partly due to a 3-fold increase in the number of individual awards taken by MIT but also due to a decline in the number of awards taken by Harvard. This during a period when the total # of individual awards has increased from 280 to 419 (50%).

From 2000-1996 to 2015-2011, the top 10 changed as follows
These increased:
MIT up 240%
Princeton up 60%
Stanford up 255%
Carnegie Mellon up Inf (was 0 in 2000-1996 and 28 in 2015-2011)
Harvey Mudd up 150%
Yale up 175%

These decreased:
Harvard down 28%
CalTech down 40%
University of Waterloo down 61%
Duke down 80%
University of Toronto down 55%
Univ of Chicago down 77%

This test measure extreme math talent of a very specific type, and 80% of the awards go to 10 schools even though over 500 schools participate. So it looks to me that MIT is attracting more of the type of math talent that does well on Putnam than they did 20 years ago. Obviously they are also supporting and training that talent.

More comments:

I wonder what happened at Carnegie-Mellon. That’s a huge jump from 0 individuals awards in 2000-1996 to 28 in 2015-2011.

I would not have guessed that Univ of British Columbia has about the same # of individual awards as Univ of Michigan, Univ of Pittsburgh, Washington University, UC Berkeley, and Yale.

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@liska21 most of the top Putnam scorers (including a few Putnam fellows) I know were either MOPpers and/or USAMO/IMO participants. My best guess is that the number of top-500 scorers on the Putnam is most strongly correlated with the number of such participants, not necessarily the caliber or size of the school.

Fwiw, my best Putnam score was 20, which narrowly missed the top 500 that year (I think 21 was the cutoff).

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@liska21 The jump at CMU was likely due to the efforts of Po-Shen Loh, which is the coach of US IMO team.

5

@MITer94 As I noted, I don’t think this is really relevant for the vast majority of students interested in majoring in math. As you note, it’s highly correlated with how many USAMO/IMO participants are at the school. What I found interesting is that the fraction of these students going to MIT versus Harvard has increased so much.

@WarriorJ Ah, that makes sense.

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BTW, this Putnam table is part of a series of tables I’ve been posting on various metrics of undergrad STEM education.

NSF graduate fellowships: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1881324-table-of-colleges-and-university-that-produce-awardees-of-nsf-graduate-fellowships-p1.html

Bac origins of PhDs in hard sciences (all schools): http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19567189/#Comment_19567189

Bac origin of PhDs (total) in hard sciences only LACs: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19801988/#Comment_19801988

Bac origin of PhD (per capita enrollment) in hard sciences only LACs: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19805310/#Comment_19805310

Goldwater, NSF, and Fulbrights for research in hard sciences at LACs: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19802123/#Comment_19802123

Rhodes, Marshall, Goldwater, Truman & Churchill awards at LACs: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19802210/#Comment_19802210

Ackerd @ LACs: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19802490/#Comment_19802490