I just had an opportunity to go to Claremont McKenna’s admitted student day, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to go to Harvey Mudd’s. While there I asked some CMC students about Mudd. One question I had was how tough is Harvey Mudd. And I kept getting told that it was really difficult. I was told that a competitive GPA at Mudd is about a 2.7 and that only 6 people have gotten 4.0’s in the history of HMC.
I didn’t know if I should believe them, but I knew that there was some truth behind it. I’ve gone through some discussions here and average GPA seems to be about 3.1-3.3, is that accurate? I am hoping to receive a lot of local scholarships, but a lot of them require me to maintain a certain GPA(different scholarships have different requirements, it ranges from 3.0 to 3.5). I am beginning to worry that I will not be able to maintain a good enough GPA, and I will lose several scholarships.
What is a typical GPA at Harvey Mudd and how difficult is it to maintain that GPA?
I would check with the financial aid office on this to make sure my response is correcct, but if you might find it difficult to afford Mudd without those scholarships, the lower GPAs could be a problem. Getting a 3.5 is really tough to do. I think Dean’s List while by son was there was somewhere around 3.2. That means there are a lot of students with less than a 3.0, and I don’t know how many students have more than a 3.0 after the second semester (the first semester is pass/fail). The average 3.1 - 3.3 for graduates sounds right, but the grades tend to go up in the later years. (And being average at Mudd is not easy.) An average of 2.7 at the end of the freshman year could be correct. An awful lot of Mudd students have the rude awakening of getting a C or D freshman year in one of the Core classes even though they worked very hard. The good news is that the grades don’t affect the ability to get into STEM grad schools or to find jobs. But that isn’t much help if you can’t afford to get your degree.
@azalia - I don’t buy the argument that GPA does not matter in grad school admissions for HMC graduates. Top grad school cutoff seems to be 3.7. Engineering is hard as it is. We visited admitted students program. Current students we talked to, all brought up the issue of stress that this brings on. Apparently the strategy used by avg HMC graduates is to get into low ranked grad/masters programs do really well there to get decent job or school.
In short you pay top dollar to get HMC education with 90% probability of 3.1 GPA and pay some more for masters to undo the GPA effect.
Is that education worth 5-6 years of stress?
I don’t know.
I hadn’t heard that strategy. My recent Mudd grad is happy at her chosen PhD program and doing well. GPA wasn’t as much a hindrance as research history and specific program desired. I’m sure that every school has it’s benefits and drawbacks when it comes to price, size, prestige and projected future outcomes. Have a look at the 2014 graduates outcomes (link below). Good luck choosing!
Ok. I’m just going to list the Graduate/Professional colleges chosen by the grads that year. One can decide for oneself which are low ranked…
Art Center College of Design
Carnegie Mellon University (3)
Chalmers University of Technology
Colorado School of Mines
Columbia University
Cornell University (7)
California State University,
Los Angeles
Delft University of Technology/
University of Leuven
Duke University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of
Medicine
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Oregon State University
Purdue University
Stanford University (4)
Tufts University-Sackler School of
Graduate Biomedical Sciences
University of California, Berkeley
University of California,
Los Angeles
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Riverside
University of California,
Santa Barbara (2)
University of California,
San Diego (3)
University of California,
Santa Cruz (3)
University of Cambridge
University of Chicago
University of Florida
University of Houston
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (2)
University of Maryland
University of Michigan (2)
University of Minnesota
University of Southern California
University of Texas, Austin
University of Toronto
University of Washington (3)
Washington State University
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Yale University