Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education How does MIT do it?

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is the preeminent undergraduate mathematics competition in the United States and Canada. Each year on the first Saturday in December, more than 4,000 students spend two 3-hour sessions solving 12 problems. Prizes are awarded to the participants with the highest scores and to the mathematics departments of the five institutions whose teams obtain the highest rankings. Over the years, many of the winners of the Putnam competition have become distinguished mathematicians. A number of them have received the Fields Medal, and several have won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In 2022, MIT mopped the floor with the Ivy League schools. And this is because MIT admissions policy
1. Requires SAT
2. Doesn't discriminate against Asians
3. Doesn’t use legacy

Herewith, the results of their policy. https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Putnam/2022/AnnouncementOfWinnersFall2022.docx%20%281%29.pdf

Related The University of California Is Lying to Us https://archive.ph/2021.11.23-001604/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/why-university-california-dropping-sat/619522/

It’s actually much simpler than that.

Unlike all the other top schools, MIT actively recruits top talent in areas such as math or physics. Members of the USA IMO or IPhO team are “invited to apply”, and are accepted unless they have poor grades or poor recommendations.

Before MIT started this invitation process about 10 years ago, Harvard got roughly the same number of top kids. Now, MIT gets all of them.

Seems to go a long way towards explaining it.

https://news.mit.edu/2023/mit-wins-putnam-math-competition-0223

The MIT math dynasty continues to break records for its performance in the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. For the third year in a row, MIT students corralled all five of the top Putnam Fellow spots, and for the fourth time in as many years, won the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize for the top-scoring woman. In total, a striking 70 out of this year’s top 100 test-takers were MIT students, including 21 of the top 25.

In its 83rd year, the Putnam Competition is the premier mathematical competition for undergraduate students in the United States and Canada and is administered by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The intense six-hour exam, which features 12 proof-based math problems, was taken by 3,415 students from 456 institutions on Dec. 3, 2022.

…About half of the top scorers are alumni of the MIT Math PRIMES (Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science) high school outreach program. This list includes Liu, Robitaille, and Zhu, five of the next top 11, and three out of the next nine winners, along with many of the students receiving honorable mentions.

MIT PRIMES certainly serves as a useful pipeline, but I am talking about something else. My son was in MIT PRIMES, and was accepted to MIT (he chose Harvard instead). Most MIT PRIMES students get accepted to MIT, but our observation is that about 25% do not.

But "invited to apply" is an entirely different category that is reserved for US applicants that have proven they are world-class in math and physics, and to a lesser extent in Chemistry.

Interesting. What would be some typical “invited to apply” qualifications. Maybe its like “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Or “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. I wonder now many are in that category each year.

As far as I know, "invited to apply" only applies to those selected for the US teams for the International Math Olympiad and the International Physics Olympiad, and to a lesser extent the International Chemistry Olympiad. That's up to 18 people per year, or 1.5% of the class.

Over the past several years, at least for the IMO, MIT has gotten every one of those that it wanted (there were two rejects I think, supposedly due to grades or recommendations).

Outside of these "invited to apply" group, there are certainly some high probability groups (70% according to my observations). PRIMES as mentioned above was one, but also those who did exceptionally well in the Regeneron science fairs, and those who came close to getting selected for the international competitions. For example the top 30+ students who are being considered for the IMO attend a program called MOP, and putting MOP on the application looks pretty good.

And of course, there is considerable overlap between these awards. The people winning international competitions have often won science competitions as well, further improving their prospects.