Harvey Mudd / UC Berkeley / UCLA/ Carnegie Mellon for Computer Science

That’s very insightful. Thank you Otterma.

Getting accepted into CMU SCS is impressive. Does your D have an area that she’s particularly interested in?

She’s done a lot of autonomous code with her couple of years in FTC robotics. She’s not leaning towards CMU though, she likes California better.

@momincal First off, small correction, but it’s not “HVM.” Rather, its “HMC.”

Socially speaking, even though it is small, the 5C consortium makes it so much bigger. The schools are directly adjacent to each other, and “Mudders” are encouraged to take classes at the other schools. In fact, it’s necessary to fulfill the humanities requirement of the core curriculum. That gets them acclimated to the other schools and students. And since athletics is combined with Scripps and CMC, your kid will find herself, if she likes sports and wants to see her friends compete, on the athletic fields, almost all of which are on CMC’s campus.

There are lots of parties at all the colleges too, and each school has its own “flavor” of party. But if your daughter doesn’t want to go to parties, there are plenty of students to socialize with and do lots of other things.

The great thing about HMC and the other 5Cs is the sense of family and inclusiveness. Everyone wants to succeed and see that their classmates do as well. Classes are not curved, nor do they have to be. If the entire class aces a test, they’ll all get an A. That’s not to say top grades are easy to come by – they are not. But your daughter has to be wicked smart to have gotten into so many great schools. And she’s clearly got to have a excellent study habits. I wouldn’t worry about her keeping her GPA at 2.75.

By the way, my son just committed to CMC. So, perhaps our two will cross paths. Good luck!

Thank you 83stag for the good info. Good luck with your son!

My Mudder found so many people like herself at Mudd that it felt like a bigger social group than it was. Plus she made friends at the other 5Cs. She misses her Mudd cohort so much now that she is in grad school in another part of the country! They are really a tight knit group. It is challenging academically, but very cooperative and with a lot of academic support from peers, older students, and profs. My kid also got amazing mentoring from profs, too.

The average GPA at Mudd is around 3.3 at graduation. My kid wasn’t very well prepared going in (less advanced science and math than most of her peers), and never slipped below a 2.75. Your kid will work hard, but if she likes it, I’d definitely let her go.

Thank you intparent. How is your son’s experience in applying for grad school as a Mudder? I’ve heard HMC has grade deflation, do you think that affect the competitiveness of your kid when applying for grad school?

Sorry intparent I meant your daughter.

http://www.gradeinflation.com/Harveymudd.html says average was 3.31 in 2008.

Try Mudd’s net price calculator to see what FA would be like without the scholarship if you are worried about the effects of losing the scholarship.

Mudders tend to do very well in applications to grad school. Some have slightly lower GPAs, but they usually have excellent research experience, strong recommendations, and do well on the STEM GRE tests that many grad school programs require (like Physics GRE, for example). Mudd is really committed to giving students research experience early on, too - many freshman research on campus summer after freshman year. My kid was a CS major for a while before switching to Physics, and she did CS research summers after freshman & sophomore years. Mudd is second only to Caltech overall in colleges sending students to PhD programs:

http://www.thecollegesolution.com/the-colleges-where-phds-get-their-start/

@momincal , You shouldn’t worry about the 3.3 grade requirement at Cal.

CS at Cal, though competitive, is not cutthroat. People there are helping each other out to get that required grade. If you can’t manage to earn a 3.3 grade in CS, you’re more likely not going to thrive as a CS student elsewhere.

If you really like CS and you enjoy computing, learning how to code and computer languages, etcetera, you shouldn’t be afraid to get weeded out.

I’d strongly recommend Berkeley CS over all the other options given on here.

The learning experience you may get at Cal may be the same with the other schools, but Berkeley’s location and strong connections in the Valley set it apart from all the rest.

Sounds to me that a kid who got accepted to Mudd, Cal, UCLA AND CMU SCS has the chops to academically and later professionally cut it anywhere.

Sounds to me that a kid who got accepted to Mudd, Cal, UCLA AND CMU SCS really really needs to look hard to find her tribe. Sounds like Mudd is basically made up of her tribe, with the option to branch out socially with the slightly different type of kids going to Pomona, Scripps, etc.

I would base this choice completely on where she feels she would be happy.

Thanks for everyone’s reply. I agree that at this point, it’s up to her to decide which school she feels she will fit in the best. All the CS programs in these school are top notch. I think part of the reason it’s so hard for her to decide is because she knows they are all good programs.

@momincal did any college offered her better aid, or finance is not a concern to you folks. We are looking as our daughter will be applying next year, any color on aid will be appreciated. thanks

@ultapradesh You do know about the net price calculators on each school’s website, right? The Common Data Set for each school (you can Google it) also gives some clues about merit aid (% of students that get it, average amount, etc) — take that in conjunction with the school website info on scholarships and accepted student threads on CC to triangulate on chances for merit aid.

Wow… great choices! I would vote for CMU SCS… tremendous renown and pedigree!

ultapradesh: We got very similar financial offers from the private colleges, which made sense because I think these aids are need based. The hard part is getting them to accept you, imo if they want you they will make it affordable to you.

I just forwarded the link to my daughter so that she can take a look at all the good information here. Thanks everyone.