The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to the Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regardless of the students' nationalities). It awards scholarships with cash prizes ranging from $250 to $2,500 for the top students and $5,000 to $25,000 for the top schools, plus the top ten individual scores get tuition waived at Harvard, and the top 100 individual scores have their names mentioned by rank to leading universities. It is considered by many to be the most prestigious university-level mathematics examination in the world. The competition was founded in 1927 by Elizabeth Lowell Putnam in memory of her husband William Lowell Putnam, who was an advocate of intercollegiate intellectual competition. The exam has been offered annually since 1938 and is administered by the Mathematical Association of America.
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