<p>How is Cal Tech even in the same sentence as Harvey Mudd? Is Harvey Mudd even par with the Berkeley? I'd think not simply because of the grade rape at Cal (forces everyone to up their game).</p>
<p>"yeah the caltech vs harvey mudd stuff has been beaten to hell on these forums."</p>
<p>...because for some reason Mudd trolls keep bringing it up. To the rest of the world, there's not really any question.</p>
<p>Qwertz, if you still want some opinions, I think it'd be better if you kept this question to the Mudd forums. As you can see, Caltech does not really want to talk about this.</p>
<p>Qwertz, if you really want an opinion, read a wide variety of literature on each school. From their school websites, from college guide books such as Princeton Review and {a certain website which is censored by CC for reasons I don't know} and ISI, brochures, whatever. Talk to your teachers or professors you know or individually to current students and alums such as Ben Golub.</p>
<p>In a "vs" thread on an open discussion board, you're likely to touch off a flame war. :)</p>
<p>whoa, if i didnt know better, i'd have thought we were arguing over israelis and palestinians. yeah, i guess vs wasn't really the right word to use to compare caltech and harvey mudd, but then again, the thread title was "Caltech vs. other schools?"... Anyways, didn't mean to get you guys all riled up and s***. oh yeah, i dont go to either school, don't bother cussing me out on how i'm a harvey mudd lover or anything.</p>
<p>Hey, tiyusufaly, we'd be happy to talk about it, actually. As Ben has pointed out, we just feel kind of bad for having to correct you folks (not all of you, but a non-negligible fraction, it seems) all the time on simple points of fact (things like "How many Nobel Prize winners does Caltech have?") and we're not sure why you're so persistently misinformed in a Mudd-favoring way. (Hope and optimism must both spring eternal, I suppose.) Essentially nowhere else on Earth other than (perhaps) the campus of Harvey Mudd and the HMC forum on College Confidential are your opinions echoed--so it would make much more sense for you to "preach to the choir," so to speak, and keep the old self-esteem high. Sorry to be so blunt, but subtlety is apparently lost... that discussion of Nobel Prize winners linked above, for example, was well-nigh unbelievable.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is a fine school; don't tarnish it by looking desperate.</p>
<p>Go to <a href="http://www.xoxo">www.xoxo</a><takethispartout>hth.com or any other neutral forum, as the poster above suggests, and you'll most likely get the unvarnished truth.</takethispartout></p>
<p>Joe, you deeply underrate us. If you know where to look, you will hear that we get vast praise and criticism, and contrary to your claims, there are other places that are not Mudd-affiliated that rank us among the tops in science and math education. For example, the American Mathematical Society chose us for its first ever outstanding mathematics department award, over the likes of Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and yes, Caltech. Additionally, if you search collegeconfidential, you will find non-Mudd affiliated folk who hold us in great esteem, and I know of some professors who hold us second to none in undergrad math and science education. Also, in 2004, we underwent external review by a team of three leading physicists, one of whom was from Caltech itself. You can read their comments on the HMC Physics website: <a href="http://www.physics.hmc.edu%5B/url%5D">www.physics.hmc.edu</a>.</p>
<p>I'm sorry if all this sounds like advertising, but I feel you are dismissing us as a cheap imitation of Caltech, something that is not worthy of comparison or serious consideration. I believe I have made it clear that I disagree. By all means be proud of Caltech and love it. I most certainly hold it in great esteem. I just don't like that you are immediately calling us trolls without seriously looking at our point of view.</p>
<p>Oh and one question: Could you please point out to me where I explicitly gave misinformation or bad facts?</p>
<p>Check it out, tiyusufaly my man; the gleaming white knight of the College Confidential forums--yes, I'm speaking here of Ben Golub--found a Mudd-puffing error (which he aptly described as "overzealous HMC PR") on the very thread <em>that I just cited above</em>! I'll quote:</p>
<p>"No, tiyusufaly, you're wrong (about Putnam results). The official statistics for 2002 published by the board administering the exam do not rank spots 6-10. HMC was lumped in with that entire group. ("Spots 6 through 10 in unranked alphabetical order.") You can look it up on the official Putnam website. The assertion that Mudd was ranked 6th and the rest 7th-10th is just overzealous HMC PR. Sorry, and good try."</p>
<p>And that leaves aside <em>entirely</em> the point that my words were not "tiyusufaly, you personally have given misinformation or bad facts"--although as we see above, that's definitely true!--but rather that "you folks (not all of you, but a non-negligible fraction, it seems)" seem to do that, where by "you folks" I meant "trolls for Harvey Mudd."</p>
<p>And then, lo and behold, I give an example of such conduct (the ridiculous Nobel-, faculty-, and alumni-miscounting shenanigans of RocketDA) <em>right after I made my claim!</em></p>
<p>Again, as I said--and as Sir Ben has pointed out many times as well: Harvey Mudd is a fine school; don't tarnish it by looking desperate. It really is a fine school. We wouldn't say that if we didn't believe it--but I think I speak for more than a few people on this forum when I say that the fact-twisting and trolling really makes us shake our heads.</p>
<p>HMC in my opinion is quite an excellent place for undergraduate education. Nevertheless, it's hardly comparable with Caltech for the following reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Prestige
Historically, Caltech has established its name through its research and its affiliation with NASA JPL. Before HMC gets recognition from frontier researches and government projects, it is almost impossible for HMC to match Caltech in prestige. </p></li>
<li><p>Faculty and student caliber
As a consequence of point #1, Caltech attracts more qualified faculty and students, nationally and internationally. As I pointed out earlier in a related thread, about 1/3 of Caltech international students are IMO, IPhO, etc medallist whereas on average they hold some sort of national academic accomplishments. In this respect, I don't think HMC has a similar stature.</p></li>
<li><p>Workload
As a consequence of point #2, Caltech's faculty tends to give more workload and its students are likely to absorb more. The pressure becomes heavy when every student is seemingly overachiever and it forces the 'not too brilliant' students to work harder in order to catch up with the rest. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hence although I think HMC offers fairly similar opportunity upon graduation for its students, HMC by itself is hardly comparable to Caltech. It's like comparing Williams with Harvard or Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with MIT. Take it this way, people always compare Caltech with MIT. Now if Caltech is comparable with HMC, then logically HMC is comparable with MIT. But I've never heard even once people comparing HMC with MIT and I don't think it's ever going to happen in near future.</p>
<p>rtkysg, can you substaniate number 3 in any way? I'm sure that students at both schools work very hard, and if I were at HMC, I'm sure that I would take offense at that comment provided without any supporting evidence.</p>
<p>I have two points to make about this.</p>
<p>(1) We Caltechers have not been gentlemen in this. I'm ashamed to say it, but it's true. Joe said
[quote]
Hey, maybe I should head over to the HMC board sometime. It would be a little bit like clubbing baby seals...
[/quote]
I said other things that were just as bad. That makes us look low, because courtesy is not something the other side should earn by being reasonable or correct (by our lights). It's just something they should get as a mark of our civility. I apologize, at least for myself. And, while tiyusufaly quoted something I believe to be inaccurate about the Putnam, I also made a false statement about the Putnam (saying that HMC has never beat Caltech at the Putnam, when in fact they did -- in 1992). More about this later, but I think tiyusufaly is a better and more honorable participant in this discussion than I am.</p>
<p>(2) At least some Mudders who frequent these boards tell blatant lies about Caltech to make Caltech look bad. tiyusufaly is eminently polite and reasonable in every way, and an honor to talk with. I couldn't ask for a better representative from the other side.</p>
<p>On the other hand, from rocketDA we have
[quote]
Originally Posted by rocketDA
First, CalTech boasts a very low student to faculty ratio. It is something like 3-1. Unfortunately, they include research faculty in the count, which you will never interact with as an undergrad. (I know this because I actually just talked to my phyics lab professor today who is full-time research faculty at CalTech and is a visiting professor at Mudd but just decided to come to Mudd as a full-time professor.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>
[quote]
Originally Posted by rocketDA
While CalTech has astounding facilities, they neglect to tell you that 90% of it is off limits to undergrad. I know this from talking to my prof and because I worked at JPL (paid by CalTech) 2 summers ago. This issue is swept under the carpet for undergrad. (As I understand, there are a few acceptions from time to time though.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>
[quote]
Originally Posted by rocketDA
This leads me to my second point, which is that although CalTech is a world-famous research institute, that does not mean that undergrads are guaranteed any research during their four years. CalTech gets most of their money and prestige from the grad school, not the undergrads. You will be taught heavily by TA's, like my physics lab professor (when she was doing grad at CalTech).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Each of these things is just blatantly false -- a complete lie. You can go [url="<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=199036&page=6&pp=15%22%5Dhere%5B/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=199036&page=6&pp=15"]here[/url</a>] for the full refutation. (The 3:1 student:faculty ratio is computed only including faculty who actively teach and includes no research faculty; fewer than 5% of labs have no undergrads; TAs only run homework help sesssions and the lecturer who teaches each class is always a professor. Many homework help sessions are run by famous professors; the extra help lab for those having trouble wiring circuits is run by David Politzer, Nobel Laureate.)</p>
<p>To be fair, there is only one person who makes Mudd look terrible with such an abundance of nonsense, and without him you guys would gleam. So I hope through some method of social pressure you can stop him from doing harm to your reputation. (I'm still waiting to have lunch with you, big guy.)</p>
<p>The short story is that there have been uncivil and false statements made on both sides of this discussion, though I think an impartial observer would agree that more false statements were made on Harvey Mudd's behalf. (Does anybody disagree?)</p>
<p>Before we move on, I'd like to say again that I'm sorry, and that we can have the rest of this discussion without saying things that aren't true and without slinging mud. Both of our institutions are much, much better than that. (I view the many Caltech-vs.-MIT threads as a model of the kind of competitive but civil and gentlemanly discussion that elite institutions deserve.)</p>
<p>On the substantive issue -- and let me see if I can keep my noble promises from the above post. First, let me say that I would distance myself from rtkysg's point (3) about workload. Since this point gets voted down by Techers, I wouldn't spend time refuting it if I were on the HMC side.</p>
<p>I think the main issue here is simple. In pure science, Caltech is a big name. Caltech attracts many of the world's top physicists, chemists, biologists, and other scientists. A crude proxy for fame and accomplishment in pure science is the Nobel prize. Lots of Caltech faculty and alumni have gotten it, but the same is not true of Mudd. I think we would all agree that Caltech has had more verifiably world-class scientists in the ranks of students and faculty than Mudd has had, even accounting for the difference in age.</p>
<p>Reasonably or not, a lot of people will choose where they want to be based on which place attracts a large proportion of the people they want to be like. Since Caltech has the world's largest proportion of Nobel faculty and alumni, and people of a comparable caliber, a lot of very smart people want to go to Caltech.</p>
<p>It is often argued that Mudd has better teachers. Since much of the teaching I have had at Caltech has been so incredibly good, I will reserve judgment on this issue -- I think it may well be true, though. But let me make a simple and uncontroversial point. Many, many of the world's smartest students would much prefer to learn from a Nobel Laureate (or similar caliber scientist) who is rated 6/10 as a teacher than to learn from a relatively unaccomplished scientist who is rated 9/10. This, I think, accounts for the fact that, statistically, a student admitted to both Caltech and Harvey Mudd is much more likely to go to Caltech.</p>
<p>And I don't think those people are making a mistake. It is hard to overstate what an immense experience it is to have such close contact with such amazing, huge people in science. This afternoon, I had lunch with Mike Brown, an astronomer who discovered the tenth planet (an object larger than Pluto orbiting the sun). The week before that, I had lunch with Bob Grubbs, one of last year's Nobel Laureates in chemistry. And this was easy to do. All I did was send an email. You learn such an enormous amount about what it means to be a world-class scientist by getting to know some world-class scientists personally. No Harvey Mudd professor, no matter how good a teacher, could ever tell you from firsthand knowledge what risks to take in research if you want to do something groundbreaking, like the kind of thing that leads to a Nobel prize. They don't know how themselves. It's blunt, but it's true. And it's important.</p>
<p>Small teaching colleges like Mudd often tout accessibility, but in this respect, Mudd loses to Caltech. There are 283 full-time teaching faculty in residence at Caltech, and about 87 teaching faculty who are visiting from other institutions. (All of these people have the rank of professor, not just a Ph.D.) There are 2,172 students at Caletch, including graduate students. (About 900 of them are undergrads.) That makes for a TOTAL student:faculty ratio of either 6:1 or 8:1, depending on whether you count the visiting faculty who teach. Mudd's student faculty ratio is 9:1. So even if you include Caltech's graduate students, there are still more professors, per capita, at Caltech. And, as I mentioned above, they are bigger, more famous, more scientifically important professors.</p>
<p>These are blunt facts. I take no philosophical position on the issue of whether it is worth sacrificing being with truly great scientists to be with better teachers (assuming, for the sake of argument, that Mudd's teachers really are better). That is a matter purely of personal taste. But I think this post explains why I made this decision the way I did, and why it's a no brainer for many other people in a similar situation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
rtkysg, can you substaniate number 3 in any way? I'm sure that students at both schools work very hard, and if I were at HMC, I'm sure that I would take offense at that comment provided without any supporting evidence.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's really hard to substantiate this with numbers as many perceive workload rigorousness as a relative measure (with regard to the students' standard). My simple reasoning is as follows, Caltech and HMC both have similar average GPA (<a href="http://gradeinflation.com/hmudd.html%5B/url%5D">http://gradeinflation.com/hmudd.html</a>) which is about 3.2. Now since both schools are tech-oriented I would neglect that various depts have different GPA avgs. Now since I pointed out in #2 that Caltech has higher caliber students and faculty, and assuming that both Caltech and HMC students are working very hard in general, we hit the conclusion that Caltech's coursework must be more difficult than HMC's. This is a very rough estimate though and I will not take this as my bastion.</p>
<p>joe and ben:
why are you guys being so malicious? you quote me from months ago when i obviously did not want to get involved in this dicussion. now that you have involved me, this "troll" will say something regarding this discussion:</p>
<p>perhaps ben and joe they are still so passionate about this subject because the arguments made here hit close to home. it is equally plausible that they could be so upset because the arguments are so far off base that they are enraged with me.</p>
<p>bash me all you want. call me an dumbo... but the fact still remains that harvey mudd IS comparable and is not so inferior that the pros of hmc are not worth mentioning when someone inquires about them. your [and many techers'] superiority complex is getting old really fast.</p>
<p>i was wrong in jumping in the discussion regarding what 'techers do after they graduate'. my statements were spawned from personal interaction with techers as i am living and caltech and working at caltech/jpl. because of this, there is no logical continuity to my initial brash statements about caltech and because of this, i am sorry.</p>
<p>my solution for those deciding between caltech and hmc is this:
don't go to either; we are both way too prideful.</p>
<p>What have i started???!!!</p>
<p>Well, the whole point is that by getting personal about this, or by being careless with the truth, we make the discussion about that and not about the relative merits of the schools. You can look up the dozens of MIT vs. Caltech threads and you will note that while people marshall a lot of facts on both sides, most things said are true and people remain friends afterwards. </p>
<p>I think we can strive for the same spirit here.</p>
<p>One thing regarding your accusation that we have superiority complex. This is a simple but important point: you are not entitled by default to the assumption that Mudd is just as good as Caltech. In this case, the assertion that Caltech is better just happens to be true --- at least on trifling metrics like impact on world science, rankings of top colleges, research output, success of alumni, etc.</p>
<p>Saying that X is better than Y (in a particular way) when X is better than Y in that way is not equivalent to having a superiority complex. It's just telling the truth.</p>
<p>Rocket, just to cite one item from your vast oeuvre: "While CalTech has astounding facilities, they neglect to tell you that 90% of it is off limits to undergrad [sic]... "</p>
<p>Does a statement like that inspire passion in me? Yes, it certainly does. Why? Because it's completely false, and in fact is 180 degrees off of reality. Virtually every single lab group on campus has an undergrad or two working in it! Students work at JPL all the time, both during the school year and the summer! </p>
<p>Then read your other statements quoted in the post above. Understand that each one of them is a mistruth about Caltech in a very fundamental way--not just a "little error," but completely incorrect and stated as if it were fact. I don't think anyone appreciates that at all.</p>
<p>You are quite simply spreading misinformation. I don't think anyone here will begrudge you either your opinion or your right to defend it, but stick to the facts!</p>
<p>"the fact still remains that harvey mudd IS comparable..." personally, based on <em>both</em> the objective evidence and the general reputations of the institutions in question, I would have to say that that statement is suspect without something to back it up.</p>
<p>"This is a simple but important point: you are not entitled by default to the assumption that Mudd is just as good as Caltech. In this case, the assertion that Caltech is better just happens to be true --- at least on trifling metrics like impact on world science, rankings of top colleges, research output, success of alumni, etc."</p>
<p>I couldn't have said it better than that.</p>
<p>HMC has many very successful alumni. Many are CEO's, Chief Scientists, Professors.</p>
<p>Amongst them, JPL's Ion Propulsion Guru, Lee Johnson.
2 Astronauts (one the first to do untethered spacewalk)
Special effects academy award winner</p>
<p>Some other highlights off the top of my head...
2 Rhodes Scholars
Dozens of NSF Fellows (like Caltech)
1997 International Programming Contest Winners
2005 AAAI "Best Autonomous System" and Sony prize winner
"Outstanding" the last 10 years at MCM/ACM competitions
Had 3 groups get "Outstanding" in 2001 with one receiving top prizes
Strong contestor in the William Putnam mathematics competition for the last 9 years
Impressive % of students to go on to get PhD's (although it may be a bit less than Caltech)
One of the highest average alum salaries of any college/university in the US</p>
<p>Listen, I'm not necessarily saying that one is BETTER than the other. I'm just saying that it isn't so crazy to speak of them in the same sentence. Is that so bad?</p>
<p>hahaha... <em>waits for the list of Caltech stats to be posted</em></p>
<p>Prefrosh, you're to be seen and not heard. j/k, but please don't do stuff like that. The list rocketda posted is a respectable list of accomplishments, and it is the case that HMC has a lot of things going for it. Tom, please behave yourself more appropriately; this forum is not for debating whether Caltech's or Mudd's e***** is longer, but for helping young'uns out with the college admissions and decision process. It would be more constructive to give information on what makes Caltech unique versus what makes Mudd unique -- e.g. I'm told Mudd has a very strong sense of a close community.</p>