Putnam Prep?
I'mma just shoot my shot with this question and see what happens Any Putnam fellows/honorable mentions out there that are willing to provide the resource(s) they used to train/prepare for the Putnam [if you scored well but maybe didn't train, specifically, for the Putnam then maybe could you include the resource(s) you used for AMC and/or the other resource(s) you used to prepare]? Maybe there's someone out there that used a resource and/or resource(s) that, heavily, improved their score (e.g., went from scoring 25 to 75, went from scoring 68 to 89, went from scoring 0 to 30, went from scoring 83 to 110, went from blank to perfect and/or near perfect score, etc.) Also, before answering: yeah yeah yeah Putnam hard, you're smart I'm dumb, didn't train - just be good, if you have to ask you're NGMI, and all that other stuff. Btw: I know it's a lot of tags but I'm shooting my shot. #sde #software #swe #tech #accenture #adobe #affirm #airbnb #airtable #akuna #akunacapital #alteryx #amazon #anduril #ansatz #appfolio #apple #appliedintuition #applovin #argoai #arthurai #asana #atlassian #aurora #autodesk #benchling #blend #bloomberg #boeing #box #brex #bytedance #capgemini #capitalone #captialone #chegg #citadel #cloudflare #cockroachlab #cocoon #coinbase #compass #coursera #crowdstrike #cruise #czi #databricks #datadog #deloitte #deshaw #digitalocean #discord #disney #docusign #doordash #dropbox #duolingo #ebay #engineering #etsy #ey #faang #facebook #fastly #figma #fireeye #fiverings #fiveringscapital #flexport #github #goldmansachs #google #grubhub #headspace #houzz #hrt #hudsonriver #hudsonrivertrading #hulu #imc #indeed #instacart #instagram #intuit #janestreet #janestreetcapital #jump #jumptrading #khanacademy #lendingclub #linkedin #lyft #microsoft #mongodb #mozilla #nasa #netflix #nextdoor #niantic #notion #nuro #nvidia #okta #opendoor #optiver #oracle #palantir #pandora #paypal #peloton #persona #pinterest #plaid #purestorage #pwc #qualcomm #qualtrics #quill #quora #radix #reddit #rivianautomotive #robinhood #roblox #roku #rubrik #salesforce #samsara #scaleai #shopify #slack #snap #snapchat #snowflake #spacex #splunk #spotify #square #squarespace #stripe #stytch #sumologic #tableau #tesla #tiktok #transcend #transform #twilio #twitch #twitter #twosigma #uber #uipath #unity #verkada #virtufinancial #vmware #watershed #waymo #wish #workday #yelp #zendesk #zillow #zoom #tech #
There's not a single Putnam fellow or hm on blind.
As someone who did high school math competitions and can appreciate the difficulty of what they’re doing, yeah, anyone who would be decent at Putnams would see that we consider 50 leetcode questions to be a credential and close out the website
There absolutely are people who’ve done Olympiads or scored well on Putnam
Not a mathlete but have friends who were. They tend to study older problem sets from a wealth of different resources, be it Putnam, IMO, USAMO, etc. It’s certainly less dry than leetcode.. good luck!
It’s also not exactly the sort of thing you can casually grind out like leetcode
You can’t just casually prep for Putnam if you have no contest background imo. Nobody here can give you prep to get to 70-80. Getting one or two right, sure. Start with old Putnam problems. I did a few of those and got a respectable score as a freshman but I had a decent math contest background It’s really not worth gunning for either, better things to spend time on in college like research
I feel like perhaps I can provide a unique perspective given most folks here are engineers. Firstly, I waay over-indexed on the Putnam, mostly as a resume-booster for math grad school apps. I would score anywhere between 0 and 40 depending on the year, though my school had hms each year. I think the Putnam got one classmate a Jane Street interview (and then offer, which they rejected). I think improving your problem solving ability is very important, but to confine it to pure math has seemed less important to me (and seemingly everyone else) after undergrad.
Putnam and beyond is a standard resource, but tbh it's hard to go through if you aren't already extremely well read in the areas it gives problems. There really is no replacement for asking interesting/important conceptual questions throughout your coursework. For the quick gains, your best bet is to look at the past decade of questions, either on kskedlaya or there is a series of books that collects each year's questions. The latter can help you solve 1s pretty easily. Just solving 1s and 2s well gets you to HM a non-trivial fraction of the time, so don't get too bogged down by >= 3. But also don't get bogged down in general for all the reasons mentioned before anyway
Also, perhaps this is now my injecting uncalled for opinion, but there's nothing I can find to be amazing about hm recipients inherently. I'm sure plenty make bad employees or even have a false sense of how much that skill matters (even in math research!) A friend recently solved a famous open problem and never got above a 30 on the Putnam. Lots of software engineers could do well on it if there was a good reason to substantially try (and I'm sure lots wouldn't)
What's Putnam ?
It's a math competition for undergraduates