<p>On the putnum?</p>
<p>^ I’m not arguing this. I’m just saying I know mathematicians who had nothing to do with Putnam and are quite famous. Math academia is a strange world.</p>
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<p>No, putnam is like one of thirty or forty choices for the seminar. It’s supposed to be a fun thing. The other math one I remember was “How to make money with math” or something.</p>
<p>Oh, okay. thanks.</p>
<p>“he seemed to like my idea of extending “Celebrating Our Common Humanity Day” to a full month”</p>
<p>MITChris is back in school and does not know what he is agreeing to because grad students are too zoned out.</p>
<p>collegealum314,
I know there are many freshmen seminars. Maybe you know what percentage of math majors take the Putnam seminar?</p>
<p>Another thread lost to a math topic only the best and brightest can discuss. And another reason students should be insufferably sad about not getting into HYPSM: they will one day be marginalized from best CC parent discussions.</p>
<p>Hi, texaspg, #1225. MITChris agreed to nothing and promised nothing–but from his remarks, I am certain that he understood my points about the MIT Blogs, and it is possible that something might change. I posted a sequence of comments on a thread that he is participating in. Is he not still Director of Communications for Admissions at MIT? Perhaps not–I haven’t checked. He didn’t seem zoned out to me.</p>
<p>Amen, thegfg. We can certainly come to consensus on this topic! Another thread hijacked by discussions of arcane math contests that we are supposed to find meaningful or relevant to anything.</p>
<p>So now the thread the tag “life is unfair.” Hmmm. I rarely know what to make of that comment. It could be a sincere lament. It might be dismissive. Can some of you non-literal people help me out?</p>
<p>Of course life is unfair. Any healthy person born in the U.S. to caring parents who live until the child is at least 14 or 15 has already come out reasonably well in the “lottery of life,” regardless of anything else.</p>
<p>Some of my colleagues use the statement that “life is unfair” as an argument that we do not need to do anything about unfairness that could be corrected quite easily. And I don’t think that those specific colleagues are on the front lines of challenging the unfairness that is harder to correct.</p>
<p>Hey, PG and TheGFG, give me some credit here! I haven’t been contributing to the math contest discussion!</p>
<p>(On this thread, anyway)</p>
<p>It’s not unfair that MIT chooses not to auto admit the students you want them to. It may be unfortunate, misguided, or frustrating, but it’s not “unfair.”</p>
<p>I’d be just as happy to hear how super bright and highly motivated kids are doing at places like Truman State and ctcl, but it seems few resurface.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’ve talked about auto-admits on this thread, either, Pizzagirl. Nor were my colleagues and I talking about undergraduate admission at all when the comments have come up.</p>
<p>The sad thing about the mental energy lost to the auto admit talk? That none of us know how many top performing math kids wanted MIT and were rejected. Only some conjecture. And that sort of assuming happens so often on CC.</p>
<p>I did have one surreal conversation with a colleague that concerned graduate admissions.</p>
<p>Part of the time, undergraduate majors at my university have been advised about course selection (mainly) and post-graduate plans (a little) by faculty. I was advising a student who had survived one of Pol Pot’s “re-education camps” in Cambodia as a child. His family had somehow managed to reach the U.S., and he had graduated from an American high school, although I am not certain that he had spent four years in a U.S. high school. His English was still a bit weak, to the point that I think it had affected his college GPA. He had roughly a 2.8ish GPA on a 4.0 scale, with somewhat stronger grades in STEM (Uber Alles) subjects.</p>
<p>At the time, my department would only admit students with GPAs greater than 3.0 for graduate work. However, realizing that we might be losing some late-blooming talent that way, or students who had been disadvantaged during their earlier education, we set up a cooperative agreement with another university, where the students could get an M.S. degree, and then upon successful completion of the M.S., come to our department for a Ph.D.</p>
<p>To me, the student seemed like a great candidate for that program. I recommended him enthusiastically. He was not admitted, and I was told by my colleague in charge of the program that the student needed to be “more realistic.”</p>
<p>I think the circumstance that I mentioned in #1236 was unfair, and I doubt that most people would brush it off.</p>
<p>Isn’t that an example, tho, of a problem that should have been caught earlier? In a way, you’re suggesting only the later discovered talent matters, not the holes in the overall educ and prep.</p>
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<p>I think scores on standardized tests and math contests are as meaningful as the BA credential, considering the college grade inflation that has occurred and the existence of Mickey Mouse majors (economist Bryan Caplan has recently taken a stab at defining what they are). I look forward to a future where employers give more weight to various certification exams than the Bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>ETA: quantitative money management firms find the AMC meaningful, which is why Jane Street and DE Shaw sponsor it, and why they and a few others sponsor classes at the Art of Problem Solving.</p>
<p>Please indulge me as I add my $.02 about Putnam. I think that the face of Putnam will change as more colleges heavily recruit top math students. Schools like UCLA, Carnegie Mellon and Duke are offering generous scholarships to lure these kids. I believe Caltech got rid of those scholarships so I wouldn’t be surprised if their rankings start to fall. </p>
<p>Take a look at the top 5 finishers from this year. Maybe some schools that we wouldn’t normally expect to see? </p>
<p>[AoPS</a> Forum - Putnam 2012 results ? Art of Problem Solving](<a href=“http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=526859]AoPS”>http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=526859)</p>
<p>Winning team: Harvard</p>
<h1>2 team: MIT</h1>
<h1>3 team: UCLA (a new face in the top 5)</h1>
<h1>4 team: Stony Brook (another new face)</h1>
<h1>5 team: Carnegie-Mellon</h1>
<p>Honorable mention teams: Brigham Young, Northwestern, Princeton, Univ. British Columbia, Yale</p>
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<p>I find them relevant because I think that colleges use these results to tout their math programs and by extension, it adds to their overall reputation.</p>