<p>If admitted to both schools, with all the needed financial aid, which one would you attend? Which one has better research opportunities? Which name looks better on job apps? How do the undergrad experiences compare? And any relevant information or opinion you might have, please post it :)</p>
<p>in my opinion, there is little competition between the two.</p>
<p>large prestigious state school or very small prestigious technical-based college. night and day.</p>
<p>would you rather be an individual or part of a huge group (HMC or Cal)???
HMC has so many oppurtunities and has such smarter students; i would go with HMC.</p>
<p>I was going to say the same as rocketda and 88keys. Mudd has better research, Berkeley I think might be in a better residence town (not sure tho), and Mudd is much more direct (learning/teaching wise).</p>
<p>There is a huge thread about this somewhere. Search for it.</p>
<p>Berkeley..</p>
<p>orinthesea proves a very good point - something worth thinking about</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd..</p>
<p>(to mock orinthesea)</p>
<p>probably berkeley, cause noone's ever heard of harvey's mudd (haha i know i said it wrong)</p>
<p>here are my rules:
1) if my potential employer has not heard of hmc, i do not want to work for them. anyone who has respectible credentials in the engineering field should know of hmc.</p>
<p>2)i always go for the experience that will be most challenging. mudd is most challenging. mudd's core alone is unmatched in rigor. put tons of engineering requirements on top of that and you have yourself one hell of an engineer.</p>
<p>///////////////////////
mudd produces a much higher % of grads that go on to get phds than berkeley. mudd alternates between #1 and #2 with caltech, at ~30%.</p>
<p>mudd grads make a bit more money than berkeley grads right out of school. the number is something like $55k to $54k. there is a thread about this in the past. i actually went through and tabulated these values.</p>
<p>mudd has a very high % of students that go on to be lead researchers, astronauts, ceos, entrepreneurs. for only having 4000 alums ever in existence, mudd has made quite an impact. berkeley graduates twice that many each year.</p>
<p>mudd only has an undergrad program with 100% of classes taught by faculty that has a phd. faculty only gets tenure based on teaching ability, as students review their courses and professors quarterly.</p>
<p>every mudd student is required to do research in one form or another. clinic, a graduation requirement (which can be substituted with thesis) pairs teams of students with companies that need a technical problem solved. it is fairly common for mudders to have their names on a patent or two before graduation. in 2005, ~12 students received patents from work on their clinic projects.</p>
<p>mudd competes and gets top-marks in the putnum mathematics competition every year. this year mudd had the third highest number of students in the 'top 100', without accounting for student body size. the overall % of mudders in top 100 is the high % of the student body in the country.</p>
<p>for the last 10 years, mudd has had at least one team be in the top 10 in the acm/mcm mathematics modeling competition. (top 10 are not ranked) in 1997 (i believe) mudd had 3 teams in the top 10 where harvard, mit and all them only had one. accounting for such a small student body and limited number of mudd teams competing, this is quite a feat.</p>
<p>in 2006, a mudd student received the apker's prize for undergraduate research. only two are given annually. the student had trouble making the acceptance because she was in england on the churchill fellowship. mudd has had 2 apker's prize winners in the last 10 years.</p>
<p>in 2006, mudd received the mathematics excellence award... being the first institution to receive the newly-developed award.</p>
<p>most mudd students are published before they graduate.</p>
<p>one of mudd's students went to carnegie to get his phd in computer science and became cisco's chief scientist - very brilliant person</p>
<p>"mudd produces a much higher % of grads that go on to get phds than berkeley. mudd alternates between #1 and #2 with caltech, at ~30%."</p>
<p>Actually, Caltech is consistently around 50% and I believe has not been #2 in the last 10 or 20 years (if they ever were).</p>
<p>Why not the best of both worlds?</p>
<p>HMC B.S., Berkeley Ph.D.</p>
<p>My father attended Berkeley for graduate school and from his observations he didn't have many nice things to say for its undergraduate program. Even then the graduate program focuses on its Ph.D. students. He discouraged me from applying to Berkeley for undergrad at all.</p>
<p>Fantastic graduate program, though.</p>
<p>Am I the only one that things that the percent of people that go on to earn PHDs is redundant? Of course tech schools will have a large amount; people in the science require PhDs for top jobs much more than business people. As for the comparison between HMC and CT, HMC has engineering as its most popular major and CT has math/physics (I think, shoot me if i am wrong). Engineering does not require a PhD for good job placement; physics does. Some generalizing occurred here, but when dealing with averages I would like to thank that is appropriate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Actually, Caltech is consistently around 50% and I believe has not been #2 in the last 10 or 20 years (if they ever were).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why don't you look at the percentage for each major. RocketDA is correct in that Mudd and Caltech are virtually equal in the percentage of students that go on to get a PhD by major. Overall Caltech might be higher because, as Seiken points out, Mudd is ~45% engineering. The data is thus skewed in a way because engineering drives the average down.</p>
<p>I personally don't like to use the % PhD statistic to describe what's good about Mudd (and Caltech) because it is skewed in general. Mudd and Caltech are both science schools and science majors are more likely to get PhDs, so the stat is misleading.</p>
<p>"Actually, Caltech is consistently around 50% and I believe has not been #2 in the last 10 or 20 years (if they ever were)."
First:
In the 1999-2001 poll, Caltech had a higher % go on to get PhDs.
Mudd wasn't too far behind (#2) as it had more in "physical sciences" and "chemistry".
<a href="http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a></p>
<p>Second:
This discussion is about Mudd and Berkeley. It is a bit distracting if you have to jump on every little thing that mentions Caltech...even if it isn't necessarily an insult to Caltech. Can't you just live with the fact that they are not too terribly different in their qualities?</p>
<p>
This is so true; I couldn't have said it better than myself. </p>
<p>I also think it's silly to compare the average student at Berkeley to the average student at HMC - it's clear the latter is dominant. That doesn't necessarily a priori meanthat Mudd is better than Berkeley for an education, thoughm as you have to consider things like total resources, flexibility, and reputation.</p>
<p>I would certainly choose Mudd over Berkeley in a heartbeat, but as rocketDA said, the schools cater to very different people.</p>
<p>My advice to the OP: figure out if you'd love being at Mudd given its atmosphere, and only go there if you are. Otherwise Berkeley has more options for someone who's not sure what he or she wants.</p>
<p>"HMC has engineering as its most popular major and CT has math/physics (I think, shoot me if i am wrong)."</p>
<p>"Overall Caltech might be higher because, as Seiken points out, Mudd is ~45% engineering. The data is thus skewed in a way because engineering drives the average down."</p>
<p>Engineering is the most popular major at Caltech as well (although of course we don't just call it "Engineering" but rather break it up into the various disciplines). Well over <em>50%</em> of each Caltech class graduates from the Engineering and Applied Science division. (see, for example: <a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf</a>) So this is not the explanation for any variation.</p>
<p>"This discussion is about Mudd and Berkeley. It is a bit distracting if you have to jump on every little thing that mentions Caltech...even if it isn't necessarily an insult to Caltech. Can't you just live with the fact that they are not too terribly different in their qualities?"</p>
<p>I'm only correcting inaccuracies as I come across them. It may not "insult" Caltech to imply that it's "not too terribly different" from Harvey Mudd, but it <em>is</em> inaccurate in a number of specific ways. I'd never jump on a general statement of opinion like that--everyone is entitled to his or her opinion--but when a factual inaccuracy comes up that I'm able to rectify (such as the above statements or the original "back and forth post" that mentioned Caltech), I will.</p>
<p>"Engineering is the most popular major at Caltech as well (although of course we don't just call it "Engineering" but rather break it up into the various disciplines). Well over <em>50%</em> of each Caltech class graduates from the Engineering and Applied Science division. (see, for example: <a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf</a>) So this is not the explanation for any variation."</p>
<p>The EAS division at caltech includes a lot of non-engineering fields, such as computer science which is a popular major at HMC. This is another reason comparing major to major PhD earnings rather than a cumulative figure. Even then, its somewhat skewed because I am sure many people didnt even both with PhDs because they got nice offers after graduation, which is a good thing (but drives the number down for both places)</p>
<p>edit- Also on that list, the word engineering popped up 83 times. How many CT graduates were there of that class?</p>
<p>Yeah, the word "engineering" popped up 83 times (so that's about 40% of the class right there), but as you've pointed out many "applied" sciences (which Harvey Mudd doesn't offer but are similar to engineering at Caltech--for example, a student doing "control and dynamical systems" or many flavors of "applied physics"--which is often just EE--at Caltech would've been doing Engineering if they'd been studying the same things at Harvey Mudd) are also E&AS. </p>
<p>If you'd <em>really</em> like to compare field-to-field, you might note that on the Reed list Caltech leads in the "Sciences & Engineering" category (which though oddly titled is distinct on the chart from Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Physical Science, and as such would appear to be largely just Engineering) as well as overall.</p>
<p>From the colleges' own Career Services pages, 44% of Harvey Mudd Students go on to grad school. The number is 55% at Caltech. This disparity is well beyond the 5% difference in "engineers" even if we only count Caltech students with the word "engineering" in their major. Average starting salary (which should favor all of those engineers Harvey Mudd has that Caltech supposedly doesn't), by the way, is $57K (HMC) vs. $60K (Caltech).</p>
<p>My point here is not to pick on anyone and certainly not Harvey Mudd. But let's keep the facts straight.</p>