I think MIT has been specifically trying to recruit IMO winners - if you look at the Putnam winners recently MIT has been dominating. This wasn't the case until the past few years though.<p>For example see:<p><a href="https://news.mit.edu/2024/four-peat-mit-students-first-place-putnam-math-competition-0301" rel="nofollow">https://news.mit.edu/2024/four-peat-mit-students-first-place...</a>
I'd also be interested to see this for Putnam fellows. It looks like there's been a start from Joe Gallian (<a href="https://www.d.umn.edu/~jgallian/PutnamCareer.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.d.umn.edu/~jgallian/PutnamCareer.pdf</a>) which "part one" of this series links to.
See also -> <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2022/mit-math-problem-solving-class-putnam-competition-1214" rel="nofollow">https://news.mit.edu/2022/mit-math-problem-solving-class-put...</a>