What is the Putnam exam?
The Putnam exam is the preeminent undergraduate mathematics exam in North America. It’s organized by the Mathematical Association of America and is taken by over 3,600 participants at more than 500 colleges and universities. Although there are cash prizes for the top-scoring participants and teams, the most common motivation for taking the Putnam exam is “because it’s there”: participants enjoy the challenge of attacking extremely difficult math problems that wouldn’t come up in the typical math curriculum. The exam is given on the first Saturday of December every year; it begins at 8 AM (on the west coast) and lasts until 4 PM. Participants work on one set of six problems for the first three hours, then there is a lunch break, and participants work on a second set of six problems for the last three hours.
