Comparing Mudd and Princeton

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvey Mudd College
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<p>My son's not been accepted to Mudd yet but has been accepted to Princeton. I love the idea of Mudd because it's two hours away from us but he's leaning towards Princeton, though he won't make a decision until all acceptances/rejections are in. He enjoyed his visit to Mudd very much and may visit again if accepted. He loved the fact that his host knew everyone in his class (I think he was a sophomore or junior). He also loved Prof. Benjamin's stats class.</p>

<p>What aspects of Mudd are most wonderful and do many students choose Mudd over other highly selective colleges?</p>

<p>One of the downsides to Mudd might be the financial aid. My son got an excellent offer from Princeton and I'm not sure other schools could match that offer. He will be applying for the Presidental Scholars Program scholarship but that's extremely competitive. (Of course, it could all be moot if he's rejected!)</p>

<p>He would be a math or physics major most likely. He's also very interested in music.</p>

<p>Thanks for any input.</p>

2

<p>well, harvey mudd itself is actually a very selective college consisting of students only interested in sciences, mathematics, or computer science.
Generally, if you get admitted to harvey mudd, you get admitted to other prestigous schools. It would not be unusual for one admitted to both princeton and mudd to choose mudd if mudd is a good fit for him.
Personally, I chose Harvey Mudd over Cornell.</p>

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<p>What made you choose Mudd? The focus on STEM vs. liberal arts? The smaller size? Are you from the West Coast? My understanding of Mudd is that, while it’s a STEM school, students can take classes at the other Claremont schools, thus giving them access to a top notch STEM education as well as a solid liberal arts education.</p>

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<p>My son chose Mudd over Caltech for the liberal arts focus, undergrad orientation, and teaching focus, figuring that while Mudd probably has less-cool research, he wouldn’t have to compete for it and any research is good enough for an undergrad.</p>

<p>He chose Mudd over Rice because he wanted the slightly higher bar of academics.</p>

<p>He didn’t apply to any Ivies.</p>

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<p>East Coast son chose Mudd over Ivy because of the combination of the top notch STEM and the strong liberal arts education. Another big draw was the commitment of the students to hard work and each other. There is a very strong sense of community at Mudd, but you need to know what you are signing up for. If you go to Mudd, you have to be prepared to work like a dog. The Core and the heavy humanities requirements, which requires most students to take classes well out of the their comfort zone, are only attractive to students really passionate about learning. Maybe it is because everyone struggles with something, but from a mom’s point of view, Mudd students appear to be a very supportive and even protective of each other. Son has taken a number of art classes at Scripps and other classes at Pomona. I can’t imagine a better education for someone wanting to go into a STEM field.</p>

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<p>Azalia,</p>

<p>Was Princeton one of the schools that your East Coast son turned down? Did he visit both campuses before making the decision?</p>

<p>I agree that Mudd sounds like an amazing school! <em>I</em> have been rallying for Mudd over all other schools (um, of course, if he’s rejected, well that will certainly make his choices easier!) but I’m not the one who will be attending, but we will factor in lots of things including cost, debt, location, Christian support, and more.</p>

<p>My son continues to be very interested in Mudd, filling out scholarship applications this weekend, and then the waiting begins.</p>

<p>Geekmom, the undergrad focus at both Mudd and Princeton is very appealing (to me, at any rate). Both schools seem great and the kids at Mudd seem really, really happy to be there!</p>

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<p>Princeton wasn’t on his list. Not sure why. He was looking at strong engineering programs, I am not sure what Princeton’s program is like.</p>

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<p>I hit the send button too quick. I wanted to say that your observation that the kids at Mudd seem happy is accurate. They may be exhausted, but my impression is that as a group they are very to be there. And the lack of grad students is a real plus. There are some terrific research opportunities that normally wouldn’t be available for undergrads.</p>

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<p>My son was accepted to Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Rice and Mudd.
He visited all of the sons except for Princeton which he felt was too much into the eating clubs and kind of a school that was more concerned about your social status. He picked Mudd because of the great engineering program, emphasis on undergraduate education, ability to take liberal arts courses and the wonderful California weather. He graduated last year and would tell you that Mudd was a great four years. Presently he is at graduate school at MIT. The only downside for us was that most people on the East Coast have never heard of Harvey Mudd but the decision he made was the right one for him.</p>

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<p>It is both true and untrue that Mudd students will have lots of other selective choices. The reason it’s untrue to an extent is that Mudd is a specific kind of school, and can admit certain specific kinds of students who are somewhat unlikely to get into other schools. For one thing, it is possible to show your love and inclination for mathematics, science and engineering to Mudd, quite apparently without tons of extracurricular involvement. The average scores at Mudd are higher than at many other schools.</p>

<p>A lot of this suggests that the applicant with super high scores and a love for math/science/engineering has a much more predictable chance of acceptance into Mudd, Caltech, etc than to, say, Princeton, which looks for a diverse student body and admits a relatively smaller number of such profile applicants (you can be sure that a lot of Princeton students have almost nothing in common with the average Mudd or Caltech student, and I don’t even mean to say the Mudd and Caltech students are the same as each other).</p>

<p>Given the choice, it is quite possible that someone will choose Mudd over another selective school. It is a unique school; a school with a difficult core of math/science and engineering that pummels all its students, much tougher classes on average for math/science/engineering is naturally appealing to some students. </p>

<p>Princeton’s big advantage is variety. It is a bigger scale thing. However, more is not what everyone wants. </p>

<p>When it comes to some fields (math, for instance) Princeton is a very top choice of undergraduate school.</p>

<p>I remember reading somewhere that the difference between Mudd’s faculty and somewhere else’s faculty is that Mudd’s faculty are assessed mainly based on how well they work with its students. Whereas the faculty elsewhere are primarily hired on their scholarly benefit to that academic community. That can be both a bad and good thing. You can be assured all the faculty at Mudd were superstars at academics (after all, they have to be able to challenge and brutalize a community of exceptionally smart students :)) AND were chosen in an insanely competitive process because they are amazing at educating and promoting research within undergraduates.</p>

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<p>mathboy,</p>

<p>I’ve conversed with a couple of faculty members at Mudd via email and they are gracious and informative and have incredible resumes. I do get the feeling they are incredibly accessible. </p>

<p>It’s hard to tell what kind of environment my son would like best. A number of his friends from math circle are headed to MIT (which my son also loved when he visited).</p>

<p>I appreciate all the feedback. Guess my son will know more come the beginning of April.</p>

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<p>Sometimes, a student can do well at both places. </p>

<p>I think a few things to keep in mind: </p>

<ul>
<li><p>Do you want to be able to feel lost in an environment where a lot of people don’t know you, rather than be in a situation where a ton of you know each other?</p></li>
<li><p>Is specializing tons and tons in a specific field to the point of ignoring the other fields in terms of your formal work what you want? (A large core everyone takes together means you get exposed to a lot more things, which can be a good thing if you foresee being interdisciplinary; the engineering at Mudd, I think I remember hearing, uses lots of that core knowledge whereas engineering at many other schools will require only a small number of very specific prerequisites external to that field itself.) Basically, a school like MIT with huge departments is likely to have more breadth of activity within a single field to offer, which is important if someone wants to have an infinite amount of activity concentrated in the single field. Mudd will cover the fundamentals very thoroughly and expose you to various topics, but it simply won’t have the breadth of stuff happening in a single narrow area that a school like MIT would. On the other hand, true specialization happens in graduate school and post-undergrad work, so it depends if you want to start getting a super-rigorous, broad foundation in various fields and then learn the fundamentals of one really well at a very high level and pace/detail that kind of leaves you gasping for breath while exploring some topics of interest in that field; or if you’d rather just bounce around taking unique, interesting classes in the same field all the time, all also at a high level and with somewhat more relaxed but still very difficult classes.</p></li>
<li><p>Do you want to go to a school that truly brutalizes you with workload and difficulty? (Too many ambitious high schoolers forget that such an environment isn’t for everybody!!!) It makes some people grow, and it burns some people out. </p></li>
<li><p>Does popular name recognition matter? (“Hi, I go to Princeton.” response: “OMG really?! You must be so smart!!” ; “Hi, I go to Harvey Mudd.” response: “Wow, he goes to Harvard med!”</p></li>
<li><p>Do you want to be surrounded by math/science people and talk (yeah yeah, the humanities is good, but there’s a difference between a humanities person and a physics major who loves the humanities)? You won’t in Princeton.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>I think these kinds of things + visiting make it easier to get up close and personal with the school you’re actually going to go to.</p>

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<p>My Mudder son didn’t apply to Princeton, but we have a friend whose daughter is there and I hear very different stories about the environment. As others have pointed out, there’s a tremendous amount of work, but Mudders are close knit, supportive, and generally happy. It’s a challenging place, but not really a competitive one. My understanding is that Princeton fosters a competitive atmosphere. For example, I’ve heard that grades there are forced to a bell curve even if everyone scores well (there will be Ds and Fs). To be fair, Mudd students who never saw less than an A in high school will fail classes, but its the work - not the other students. I would say a driven student who thrives on competition would probably do better at Princeton and a free-spirit intellectual student looking for a like-minded community would probably fit better at Mudd.</p>

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<p>I’m pretty sure you’ll find lots of free spirit intellectuals at Princeton. The funny thing is that the level of competitiveness in student attitudes depends on major at a lot of schools. For instance, my experience has been with a school whose reputation is placed at <em>ultra-competitive</em>, yet the culture in mathematics is just not that way. It’s more like what Muddparent describes the Mudd atmosphere to be: the stuff is really hard, and you can find yourself struggling, but it’s because of the standards set.</p>

<p>I’d also comment that a curve isn’t necessarily there to make people compete. Rather, sometimes it’s to ensure a certain distribution of scores when you realize that the material is so hard that you can’t ask everyone to get a 90 percent or something on exams. I’m pretty sure if you ace every exam at Princeton, you’ll get an A without ever adopting a competitive attitude. </p>

<p>In some disciplines however, the competition element does exist; I think those choosing the premed track are a primary example.</p>

<p>You will definitely find more people at Princeton who are career-minded at the expense of “pure intellectual curiosity”, and of course that’s perfectly fine – not everyone’s cup of tea is doing math or engineering or anything intellectual even. You will also find many at Princeton (or any Ivy League school) that are intellectual at the expense of career considerations.</p>

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<p>Such interesting insightful comments. Thank-you. I don’t think my son has been as thoughtful as all that up to this point in the college admissions/decisions process, but I pass things along to him that might give him food for thought.</p>

<p>I hope he doesn’t make a decision solely on finances (which most likely would result in him going to Princeton since he got tremendous aid), or on the reputation (he’s never been like that but there are certainly people voicing their opinions to him). </p>

<p>Hey, he could easily get rejected by Mudd, MIT, and Caltech, and the decision would be a whole lot easier. :-)</p>

<p>I don’t think he knows what kind of a student he will be in full time college. He’s had such an unconventional education thus far, it’s really hard to pigeon-hole him. One of his strengths is that he is a chameleon of sorts-he tends to fit into many different environments. He is intensely competitive but he’s also sensitive. He’s competitive but has never been driving to be the top mathlete/physicslete around like other kids he knows. He loves puns and jokes, loves to have fun, <em>loves</em> his musical endeavors (he’s practicing even now in preparation to record next week), and he is very motivated to work and earn money. (This could be because of our financial limits making him more motivated to earn) He is always trying to earn a buck through teaching, tutoring, and performing.</p>

<p>Any math or physics class that introduces new concepts is exciting to him. He has no particular area of passion in either. He’s currently doing research in optics and will present at a research symposium in March but he’d be equally interested in plenty of other areas. Probably one area that has always fascinated him is statistics. I always thought he would be a sports statistician. </p>

<p>But he also loves to write, loves sports and Fantasy Football, and loves hanging out with musicians.</p>

<p>He loved the tight knit feeling of Harvey Mudd, loved the environment at MIT, and loved the caring, generous nature of his friends at Princeton.</p>

<p>Sorry to ramble. I honestly know he sees good things in all these schools and I know, if he’s accepted, it will be a difficult decision for him.</p>

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<p>It also sounds like he’ll fit in just fine at many of those schools, not just one :)</p>

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<p>That is our hope! :-)</p>

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<p>@sbjdorlo I noticed that you mentioned “Christian support” as a factor in one of your earlier posts in this thread. There are a number of on-campus Christian organizations, the most prominent at Mudd being 3C-InterVarsity ([3C</a> InterVarsity](<a href=“http://claremont-iv.org%5D3C”>http://claremont-iv.org)) and Claremont Bible Fellowship. I’d be happy to answer any questions about Christian life at Mudd (here or via private message), and I can get you in contact with leaders from either IV or CBF if you want to meet with them the next time you’re on campus.</p>

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<p>Hi Miru,</p>

<p>I didn’t know about the Claremont Bible Fellowship but I’ll check into it. We do know about IVF. My son visited Mudd and stayed with some students who are a part of IVF. He really enjoyed meeting them. :slight_smile: I’ll definitely give you a PM if he’s accepted and wants to do accepted students visit. (We’re close enough for him to drive there)</p>