Word: putnams
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...seem low to Harvard students used to taking SATs and Math 21a examinations, the majority of the test-takers don’t even receive full credit for a single problem. According to Ravi Vakil, co-author of a book on the competition from 1985-2000 and the Putnam coordinator at Stanford, the median score is usually zero or one. “Keeping in mind that the people taking the Putnam are self-selected from the smartest mathematical minds in the continent, this undoubtedly is the hardest test in the world,” Vakil writes...
...past eighteen years, Harvard has placed first 14 times, a record unparalleled by any other university, even MIT and Caltech. In the other four years, Harvard consistently placed in the top five. Professor of Mathematics Noam Elkies, instructor for the intense first-year Math 55 and a three-time Putnam Fellow, ascribes this performance to the quality of the math students that matriculate at Harvard, laughing that “the people who can take the most credit for that is the admissions office...
Alexander “Sasha” B. Schwartz ’04, a two-time Putnam Fellow from the suburbs of Philadelphia, came to Harvard for this very reason. “I knew I wanted to come since ninth grade,” Schwartz says. “It has the best undergraduate math in the country...Because the students in the class are at a high level, the students can be taught at a higher level...
Still, the test itself in recent years has had less and less to do with math department curriculum. According to Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Andrew Gleason, a three-time winner of the Putnam and co-author of a book on the competition, the material on the examination has gotten more abstract, moving away from the material directly covered in college classes...
...probability of “Shanille O’Keal” making 50 out of 100 given specific circumstances. “A bunch of people laughed when we started that part of the test,” says Gabriel D. Carroll ’05, three-time Putnam Fellow...