<p>First, if this is inappropriate for this forum feel free to ignore/delete. </p>
<p>I committed to Harvey Mudd. I've certainly fallen in love with it, in most respects. Yesterday, I was accepted off of the Yale waitlist unexpectedly. </p>
<p>Basically, I guess I'd like to hear opinions of students who've faced similar type decisions I guess. Just trying to throw some rationale around in my head.</p>
<p>Thanks
-Ray</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s inappropriate at all.
But, I honestly can’t really give much of an in depth analysis cuz i don’t know much about yale</p>
<p>My opinion? Mudd’s an elite school. You’d get a good education at Mudd. Yale is also an elite school. You’d get a good education at Yale. I would say at the levels of these two colleges, and it could be argued to death which one is better in what department and etc., the quality of your education is going to come down you. Both schools will offer you a top tier education. It’s your choices and work throughout college that will allow you to accept it.</p>
<p>Reputation is sometimes considered. That depends on your field, but for the most part, what Mudd does it’s known for. But Mudd is involved in fewer fields than Yale. And you won’t get name recognition. But most people get over name recognition, if that’s their deciding factor, they probably didn’t fit Mudd anyway.</p>
<p>So in my personal opinion, the decision on Mudd comes down mainly to two things:
<p>2) Do you like Mudd? I’ll explain. See, Mudd’s hard, you’ve heard this. Mudd drags you down sometimes. But if you came here loving the community of the place, the culture, the people, it can still feel like the best place on Earth for you to be even when you’re being dragged down by problem sets and exams. This place can be so much fun; it’s got a completely unique feel to it that many of us love. For as much as this place tries to drag you into depression, you learn to love the people who are being dragged down with you and can have an awesome time all the same. If you’ve looked at Mudd, if you’ve visited the campus, and you’ve liked what you’ve seen, then I would say stay the course. Because you’re going to be helped in getting the best of your education if you’re happy with the community you’re in. Mudd is a school that is not for everyone. But if you feel like it’s a place you’ll love, you won’t find a replacement for it. I ED’d here because I felt it was the perfect culture, and that placed it above all others in my mind.</p>
<p>My prospective major is Engineering. I should’ve made that clear. </p>
<p>Thanks for your perspective.</p>
<p>My mom has kept telling me that Yale’s been investing a lot in engineering and that its engineering program is gonna become really good if I attend there, but I don’t really know if I can completely trust her words since I haven’t looked into Yale myself</p>
<p>Yale’s a great school. It’s got the prestige too. My dad went there as a graduate student in Computer Science and he loved it there. It’s true that they have been investing in the Engineering Program at Yale. However, it is not a program that you would typically compare to MIT, Caltech, or Mudd. It’s a completely different type of school- most notably, it is more focused on humanities, while Caltech and MIT are more focused obviously on math and Science. I think you get the best of both worlds at Mudd since you have both the math and science aspect, as well as the liberal arts aspect. It really depends on the student and what environment they’d be most comfortable in I think.</p>
<p>I have been talking to a kid who was choosing between HMC, UCLA, and Yale. Believe it or not, Yale was the first one off his list. He finally decided to go to Mudd. I think he would be able to give you a better view on the matter. If you’re interested, just pm me and I’ll let him know/ get you in contact with him.</p>
<p>Yale math is actually good 
that is, in terms of faculty and departmental strength. The student body is probably not the most mathematical in the world.</p>
<p>Mathboy, do you know how much emphasis the math department at Yale puts on undergraduates?
Yale is in general quite good in this way especially for a major research institution
and much better than Harvard but I am not quite as sure about the math department.</p>
<p>Blackroses: Coincidentally, those were the final 3 schools in my list. I’d love to talk to that student if you could connect us. I’ll PM you. </p>
<p>Thanks for the thoughts guys.</p>
<p>Ray,
Congratulations on having so many great options. You have two excellent, but very different, options here. (Full disclosure: My DD is a Mudd student and my husband graduated from Yale). The first difference I would focus on is the core at Mudd. The core is very demanding and requires you to study all of the major disciplines offered at Mudd (math, all of the sciences, engineering, computer science). It will take up most of your first two years of college. Does that sound like fun to you? Do you love those subjects anyway, so you have no objection to taking the courses (that is how my daughter felt about it)? I don’t really know what Yale requires of all undergraduates, but I am certain that there is some sort of breadth of study requirement that would have a lot more breadth to it. Would you enjoy taking a variety of humanities courses? Without meaning to insult Mudd, I feel certain that the range and depth of the humanities courses at Yale would be superior. How certain are you of your engineering focus? How broad or narrow are your other academic interests? For me, the answers to these questions would reveal which school you should attend.<br>
Second, Mudd is a very small school. Even though the other Claremont colleges are right there, your immediate community would be a group of like-minded science/math/engineering oriented people, and the group would be small and close. At Yale you would be living with a broader range of people and living in a much larger university community. Which sounds more appealing to you?<br>
Finally, consider which coast you prefer to be on. We live on the east coast and my DD is at Mudd. One factor I had failed to consider when she decided to go there is that most of the recruiters who look to hire Mudd graduates are on the west coast. If my DD wants to stay in California after graduation, I think she will have many job opportunities. If she wants to return to the east coast, she is going to have to do much more of the leg work in finding a position for herself. I don’t have any idea who recruits Yale engineers, but that would be worth looking into. Where would you like to end up? (Okay, unfair question to ask a high school senior, but think about it.)
Good luck. You can’t go wrong, but the differences are so great that you really should not be looking at this as a coin flip. You really ought to be able to conclude that you have a preference for one over the other.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response.
<p>Thanks for the points you brought, I just need to figure how to answer them because frankly I feel I would love it at both sides of the spectrum (big vs small, general vs specific). I need to evaluate what I want.</p>
<p>Thanks
-Ray</p>
<p>Twocollege, sadly I know little about the specific Yale undergraduate school, and my comment on its department comes from my knowledge of what kinds of mathematics their faculty do, etc. </p>
<p>My impression is that Yale isn’t overpopulated with math majors, though, so this could lead to it being easier to talk to professors than at some other schools. </p>
<p>Harvard’s math department rocks, both for graduate and undergraduate studies, though. </p>
<p>Honestly, my impression is strong undergraduates at most top tier math schools can get lots of attention. No strong math student I know at Berkeley [which is where I am] has had trouble getting attention, and Berkeley both is a bigger school and has [I would imagine] more mathematically inclined students. So I’m guessing Yale students get lots of attention.</p>
<p>Mathboy, very interesting post. You have reminded me why the comparison of programs is so difficult. In the end we all have to ask is this a good choice for me at this time? You mentioned that Harvard has a wonderful mathematics program and I was set to agree but then I paused. I have known a number of people who went through the first year course math 55 and ended up thinking that they were not good at math! It took them a while to get back on track because it was the wrong course for them although they survived. They were not really happy about their experience at Harvard. That being said I know others who thrived. Hence in some sense it is always the program and the individual. </p>
<p>I do agree that strong math students almost everywhere can get a lot of attention. I wonder however if good math instruction for engineers is however equally available. Princeton also has a wonderful math department but the people I know who did engineering at Princeton were less happy with the math instruction that they received. This issue might be more useful to a student who is interested in engineering at Yale. I wonder how the instruction would be for that group of students.</p>
<p>sorry if this is random, but I just watched this, and had to post it here</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - That’s Why I Chose Yale](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGn3-RW8Ajk]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGn3-RW8Ajk)</p>
<p>It’s so cheesy but so awesome!
I love the admission officer there. haha</p>
<p>I will so help out in organizing something like this (but something much geekier, livelier, and more explosive!) at Mudd if people will be willing to.</p>
<p>That’s really such an excellent propaganda.</p>
<p>Yeah, a former grad student at my school who did undergrad at Harvard did mention Math 55 sucked the life out of him in frosh year. </p>
<p>I’ll also have you note some very accomplished faculty attending Harvard for undergrad in math, but didn’t take Math 55 at all. My impression is Math 55 caters to people who did USAMO type stuff in high school, because the problem difficulty and workload far oversell what the subject matter actually teaches you. The point is the class is hard, and there is of course much harder material out there in the mathematical world - this is not something which appeals to everyone, but it does to many who got a thrill at [and were good at] hard problem solving in math competitions.</p>
<p>It’s indeed true that choosing the right environment is crucial, because you can learn and mature a lot in 4 years if your spirits aren’t crushed. This is, for instance, one reason why for some, a school with the intense style of HMC or Caltech in something like engineering may not be right. Then again, for others, it’s exactly what is necessary to push them to be the best they can be.</p>
<p>I’m curious - the people who did engineering at Princeton and took math classes may or may not have been turned off by the fact the math undergrads were heavily theoretically inclined or something? My impression from a former Princeton undergrad who attends my school for grad school is that the Princeton math class is small, and a lot of people might end up going to math careers. Whereas at a school like Berkeley, the population of math majors may be more mixed - some going on to do math as a career, and many doing other things but taking math classes out of interest, as engineers, physicists, economists, etc. </p>
<p>Now Yale is neither an engineering nor a math school by common designation. This could be a healthy thing for someone who doesn’t <em>want</em> the environment of a heavily engineering-centric or mathematical school, yet wants to learn serious material nevertheless without the burden of an environment ridden with engineers. Or, it could be a turnoff that the crowd is not like HMC’s.</p>
<p>In terms of undergrad academic prep for grad school, Mudd and Yale have very different strengths, Mudd in tech, Yale in non-tech:</p>
<p>[PHD</a> PRODUCTIVITY BY FIELD](<a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]PHD”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
<p>Mathboy, I do agree. Perhaps one of the biggest issues for an engineer would be to decide whether you want to be surrounded by others who are interested in engineering, science and math. It will be exciting for some to share that experience. For others they would prefer to return to the dorm room and be surrounded by those who are focused on the humanities.</p>
<p>Vossron, in terms of technical preparation for grad school I expect that students who go to Mudd will all (almost all) be well prepared. For Yale the preparation is certainly on offer but relatively few are choosing that route. The PhD productivity by field is interesting in the sense that you can get a glimpse of the type of student who attends Mudd, Swarthmore etc.
It would however be interesting to know which universities the students attend for graduate school. In this regards I expect that both Yale and Mudd would place the most able students into the top grad schools.</p>
<p>Educationally, you can’t go wrong. Both are great schools. Slight edge to HM in math/science, overall edge to Yale. But for degree status and prestige, there is no comparison. I got my BA at Claremont McKenna and my MBA at Harvard. When I tell people I went to CMC, 99% of the time I get a blank stare. When I then say Harvard, 99% gush and swoon with admiration. There are very few schools that have world-class brand identity, but Yale is one of them.</p>
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<p>I find this not to be a problem at Mudd, actually, on account of the other 4 colleges. I have a lot of Scrippsie and other 3C friends, very few of who are involved in math and science, so I’m never surrounded exclusively by people who are interested in engineering science and math. Ok, so my suite is obviously all STEMS majors (although last year I suited with an art major), but the mix of people that hang out there contains both Mudders and non-Mudders, so it’s all alright.</p>
<p>At the same time, I know a few people who rarely leave campus and have all Mudd friends, so both are possible. Presumably at Yale you could also purposefully surround yourself with only STEMS people that you meet through classes, etc.</p>
<p>Although, isn’t the selection date over?</p>
<p>So OP…did you choose Yale or HMC?</p>