<p>My son's number 1 choice is Harvey Mudd, but I am concerned about the number of current/past Mudd students who seem to have some reservations about Harvey Mudd. Some of his other college choices include schools where students almost always post how happy they are and I know from personal experience with my daughter who attends WashU how much the students love their college experience. Is there anyone out there who really loves Harvey Mudd, as well as those who regret their decision. Please tell me why. Please help a concerned mom!</p>
<p>People on college confidential are a very non-representative sample. I would encourage your son to visit on an overnight. Then, he’d have a chance to talk face to face.</p>
<p>Personally, I’ve had a blast. I’m a little grumpy about not getting summer research, but very few Frosh engineers got summer research. I should also note that I’m a Freshman, and Frosh tend to have fairly reasonable course loads. Sophomores tend to get a bit more brutalized.</p>
<p>I think most dissatisfaction stems from:</p>
<p>1) Low GPAs. Choosing Mudd over any other school (besides MIT or Caltech) means you’ll have a lower GPA. Grad schools take this into account, as do some employers, but it’s definitely more of an issue as you get farther from the West Coast.</p>
<p>2) Workload. Being next to the other Claremont colleges makes it all that harder. Few CMCers have Friday classes. Most others at the Claremont colleges only take 4 classes per semester. We have 5, or maybe 6 counting labs collectively as a course. The workload may not be that disproportionate compared to other engineering schools though.</p>
<p>@esquiar:</p>
<p>Dont grad schools know about the grade inflation problem? Surely they should rank the student based on their own college’s GPA system than compare student’s GPA from one school to the other.</p>
<p>Make sure your son is mentally prepared to get low grades on assignments he spent 5+ hours doing and for being average when getting a 65 on a test. And remember you have to keep it up for 4 whole years, while knowing that if you had taken the easy way out and gone to a state school you’d have 20+ more hours of free time a week and a GPA half a point higher. I recommend an excellent work ethic and a strong attraction to math, science, and engineering.</p>
<p>I don’t regret my decision, as I learned quite a lot, but I’m glad I’ll be done in a month and a half.</p>
<p>My son is a sophomore and working like a dog at the moment. During Spring Break, I asked him if he had any regrets about going to Harvey Mudd. He looked at me like I had two heads, and said “Of course not, I couldn’t ask for a better foundation. I can sleep later.” So yes, he could have gone someplace else and had more free time, but he is happy with the choice and the friends he has made.</p>
<p>Just to give a little background: I’m a fairly recent graduate who greatly enjoyed my time, so my input may be a little favorably biased, but I’ll try to be as fair as possible.</p>
<p>As I said above, I really loved my time at Mudd. I was really happy most of the time. That being said, I felt like I fit Mudd really well, both personality-wise and in the “being able to handle the workload” persuasion. I was reasonably confident of that when I visited, and especially when I went to the admitted students part, though. </p>
<p>However, I’ve also seen people who weren’t happy; most of the time I’ve seen those people (at least of those I knew well enough to diagnose), there’s been 2-3 common causes. </p>
<p>Firstly, most of the first two years is going to be tied up in the core. There’s no way around it, and there’s no way to just kind of fudge it off. Some of the core classes are fairly challenging (and are sometimes considered the hardest classes you’ll take, if only because they don’t always line up with the way that you’re used to thinking). If you’re considering Mudd, and you think the core doesn’t sound very good but the rest of the stuff sounds great, honestly, you’re probably making a mistake. I’ve seen the core burn more people out than anything else combined.</p>
<p>Secondly, there is definitely a non-trivial emphasis on humanities classes. You don’t have to take a ton, but you’re going to be averaging something like 1.5-2 a semester, and they’re going to be varied. This is less of a problem than the first one, especially because if you want to, you can use these classes as a break from technical classes, both in terms of content and difficulty. But you need to make sure you’re ready for it.</p>
<p>Thirdly, and much less so for the people who think Mudd is right for them, the culture at Mudd is not the most normal culture in the world. It’s full of people who genuinely love learning and enjoy trying new things (if nothing else, you could check out the Rube-Goldberg Machine that a bunch of students made over Spring Break this year). It should be very obvious to your son whether it fits him or not, but if it doesn’t, it’s probably not the school for him.</p>
<p>And now that I’ve sounded negative (although I don’t think any of the above are bad things: I liked the core and loved my humanity classes), I want to come back to the positive. I absolutely =loved= my time at Mudd and have no regrets whatsoever about my decision. There’s a lot of work, but even in that work it’s a bunch of your friends and classmates getting through it together, because there’s very little competition with each other. The people there are really close, and it’s a fantastic environment for learning. But you’d better enjoy learning, because you need to do a lot to it. Heck, just notice that esquiar was upset that he was grumpy about not being able to do undergraduate research in engineering as a freshman; it’d be unbelievably hard to even have a chance at it at any larger school (and for what it’s worth, I do know plenty of freshman who got research their first summer).</p>
<p>So for the happier senior and graduates… was the Mudd value-add enough to justify any extra loans you carried? (as opposed to cheaper options)</p>
<p>If you are concerned by Mudd’s intense general requirements (core + hums), you may want to considering going to Pomona, and then cherry-picking the Mudd classes you are interested in. I’m a Pomona student doing just that, and I’m overall quite pleased with the arrangement:</p>
<p>Pomona has a total of 9 required classes, 3 of which are language and possibly avoided, and 2 of which you can probably satisfy with major-related classes. As a consequence, you can a) take 4 classes each semester and still have room for most of the things you want, without worrying about graduating, or b) have a 5-6 class load, and take that many more classes you are really interested in. The downside of being at Pomona and taking classes at Mudd is that you don’t have such immediate access to professors, mentors, and other students.</p>
<p>I would definitely reiterate that CC is not the place to get a feel for the student body. The people who are truly enjoying themselves would scoff at the idea of spending precious free time writing responses to high strung prospective students and parents. Think about it, wouldn’t you rather be dancing, lying in the sun, going to LA, hashing (running), playing capture the flag, playing board games, etc? Most Mudders are well balanced enough to know how to use their free time in the most invigorating (or relaxing) possible way.</p>
<p>I only do this because I’m horribly addicted to the internet, and can’t resist a plea for advice, even if I’m not really qualified to answer. I’m happy - even though the workload is a pain and can make me rather angry at times, its worth it for the people and the education - but I would not consider myself to be among the happiest on campus. Those people will never touch CC, but they would happily talk to you if you come visit in person. If your son wants to get a good feel for the student body, he should come for an overnight visit. There’s no better way to judge life at Mudd than to follow a Mudder around for a day.</p>
<p>Also worth noting: there’s a reason why everyone who says positive stuff about Mudd also mentions the brutal workload. We’re friends with people, both here and back home, who have much lighter loads than us. When I was a senior in high school, a lot of the graduates of the AP program gave me the impression that college was easier than high school. So, we feel obligated to warn people that Mudd is <em>not</em> the typical college - if you’re looking to have loads of free time to fritter away, don’t come here. But if you want to spend your free time with brilliant people, doing crazy things that will make your friends back home jealous (even though they have more time than you to do such things…), then Mudd is the place for you.</p>
<p>Miru - We are lucky that you are addicted to the interenet 
Your input has been very useful!</p>
<p>@colorado_mom</p>
<p>Are you encouraging internet addiction here??</p>
<p>haha
just joking</p>
<p>“I would definitely reiterate that CC is not the place to get a feel for the student body. The people who are truly enjoying themselves would scoff at the idea of spending precious free time writing responses to high strung prospective students and parents. Think about it, wouldn’t you rather be dancing, lying in the sun, going to LA, hashing (running), playing capture the flag, playing board games, etc? Most Mudders are well balanced enough to know how to use their free time in the most invigorating (or relaxing) possible way.”</p>
<p>Excellent job defining what Mudders think is fun and how they should spend their time.</p>
<p>Maruhan2 - If Miru is addicted to the internet, this is a useful place to do so ;)</p>
<p>Miru - Have some fun in the sun!</p>
<p>i miss the sun 
</p>
<p>for weather: socal >> seattle</p>
<p>Visiting is extremely important for getting the feel of the place. If you don’t like Mudd community, you may end up hating being here, because getting through the Core provides no joy by itself.</p>
<p>(Note: I love the community. I’m happy here, despite my displeasure with the Chem problem set in front of me right now.)</p>