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I'm trying to go to a summer math camp either this summer or the next one. Do any of you know any good "selective" math camps that are known nationally?
(i.e. SUMaC)

Thanks in advance.
(I'm a Sophomore btw)

By Anduin (Anduin) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 12:54 am: Edit

I don't know exactly what you mean by "selective". You should look into the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics. You have to apply, get a recommendation from a teacher, and do a series of unusual problems known as the Interesting Test, and not everybody gets accepted to the program. The Summer Studies is located at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, but it's not connected to Hampshire in terms of taking official, Hampshire-College-sanctioned courses in the style of, say, the Harvard SSP.

I went to Hampshire last summer and had the time of my life. Basically, I did a lot of really cool mathematics from a number of different areas (including combinatorics, number theory, group theory, graph theory, and topology). There is not much "contest math", though the stuff I learned there has helped me on many a contest problem. Instead, the emphasis is on conjecture and proof, and I got to do a lot of both. There's a ton of math there that I would never see until college (that was even true for the people who were from math/science-oriented schools like Stuyvesant), and the fact that I got a taste of it during high school just made me hungrier to learn more.

The people who go there are quite brilliant (not to mention quite cool), with something like 22 HCSSiM alums being on the IMO team in the program's 31 years. I got a chance to play ultimate frisbee almost every day, we took cool trips to Boston and Tanglewood, and I got a taste of college life. It runs for six weeks, and you do a lot of math each day, but there is plenty of time for fun as well, whether in should take the form of swimming, Ultimate, reading, writing postcards, working on the student-written Program Journal, learning basic Mandarin phrases, learning C++, or thinking up even more interesting math questions.

If you're interested, you should visit the website: www.yp17.org

By Danielsjang (Danielsjang) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:18 am: Edit

THank you SO MUCH!
mmm... ultimate... (best sport i think)

By Marite (Marite) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 06:06 am: Edit

Daniel:

You should also look into PROMYS, USA-Canada Math Camp and the Ross Program.

By Texas137 (Texas137) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 11:36 am: Edit

Here's a website with a whole bunch of them:
http://www.ams.org/employment/mathcamps.html

By Danielsjang (Danielsjang) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:38 pm: Edit

Thank you so much!