<p>In the engineering world, Berkeley is more prestigious than Mudd.
Mudd is not equal to MIT or Caltech.
MIT and Caltech are research powerhouses for science, tech, IT and engineering, just like Cal and Stanford are.
What does Mudd produce/make in the past 10 years or so?
Even by the breadth and success of alumni, Cal has a better record than Mudd has. </p>
<p>Mudd is an excellent undergrad college though. But it is what it is. Just a college, thus it cannot compete with research universities in terms of prestige, just like Dartmouth isn’t as prestigious as Harvard or Princeton even though Dartmouth has just as good undergrad quality as H or P has.</p>
<p>Go to the school that fits who you are. All my cousins aunts uncles great grand parents great uncles went to ivy league schools but I am not, so it depends what you like, not what is going to look better.</p>
<p>"In the engineering world, Berkeley is more prestigious than Mudd.
Mudd is not equal to MIT or Caltech. "</p>
<p>Yeah, um, NO!
The company that I am at holds Mudd in the highest regard. We are actually matched against many well-known masters programs in the eyes of the engineers here… even though Mudd is only undergrad!</p>
<p>…and there are very few people who are in serious engineering professions/positions that haven’t heard of HMC.</p>
<p>“Who in the world has heard of Harvey Mudd?”</p>
<p>And as a high schooler, what do you even know about engineering in the first place? Nothing. You haven’t heard of it because you know nothing about the field.</p>
<p>IB: I see what you’re getting at. But even if it seems unfair, name recognition and prestige go hand in hand. How can a school be prestigious if no one’s ever heard of it? </p>
<p>They’re pretty much on par with each other in terms of academic quality, but HMC doesn’t have the same name recognition as Berkeley, simply because Berkeley’s a much larger research university. As another example, I’m sure the academics at Amherst are as good as if not better than at Harvard, but Harvard exerts more of a global influence because of its status as a research university. Thus, to the general public (and especially around the world), HMC and Amherst aren’t as “prestigious” as Berkeley or Harvard, respectively. No doubt this is unfortunate, because the former two are definitely as good as the latter two; but superficial or not, name recognition means a lot.</p>
<p>That said, don’t worry too much about prestige for undergraduate studies. Just go where you will be happy and succeed.</p>
<p>bdl108, you’re confusing prestige with familiarity.</p>
<p>“Prestige” means “the wealthiest, and most powerful and influential people went to school there/send their children to go to school there/respect it with reverence.”</p>
<p>You would consider Amherst a prestigious school if you knew about its history, and distinguished faculty and alumni.</p>
<p>Likewise, it would appear that top firms are regularly impressed by the strength of Harvey Mudd graduates, that it is respected and commands its own prestige in the world in which its graduates operate.</p>
<p>NYU is nationally and internationally known, extremely well known: yet, would you reckon it commands as much RESPECT as schools such as Amherst and Harvey Mudd?</p>
<p>That being said, Berkeley’s graduate schools and programs are exceedingly well-known AND respected, and their prestige may be said to undeservedly trickle down to all of its undergraduate schools and programs. Thus, Berkeley undergrad might be considered prestigious, but mistakenly so.</p>
<p>I’ve been working in Silicon Valley for ten years, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever met a graduate of Harvey Mudd. I’ve certainly heard of it, and know it to be a good school.</p>
<p>kwu: I don’t really agree with your definition of prestige. I believe prestige is grounded in a tradition of academic strength and not necessarily by its alumni. I have no doubt that there is a strong correlation between the two, but I think it’s a stretch to say they’re DIRECTLY related.</p>
<p>I never said that Amherst wasn’t great. I consider it a very prestigious and elite school. However, because of its size and undergraduate focus, the average person hasn’t heard of it. Heck, I didn’t really know much about it until I toured there.</p>
<p>And yes, I do believe NYU commands as much respect as schools like Amherst and Harvey Mudd. You can get a good liberal arts education at all three, but the undergraduate quality is no doubt better at Amherst and HM. However, in terms of business/economics, performing arts/film, math, and law, NYU is world-renowned. There’s really no basis for comparison though, since they’re so different. Like Berkeley, NYU’s strength is derived from the strength of its graduate programs, and this trickles down to undergrad; but as I said, the quality of undergraduate instruction is superior at HM and Amherst.</p>
<p>If we’ll pull one bright, talented HS kid out from, say, Canada and give him full ride scholarship offers, one from Berkeley and the other from Mudd, I’d bet the HS kid would get the one from Berkeley. And, I would surmise that for every kid around the world that will be offered a full ride by both schools to do engineering, 90% will decide on Berkeley. </p>
<p>Maybe in California Mudd is giving Berkeley a good fight in terms of enrollment yield, but if everything is equal, I bet Berkeley would win in the cross admit battle. It might be different if it were MIT or Stanford. But Mudd isn’t either of the two.</p>
<p>High School student outside the US: Berkeley!!!
Engineer working on top secret projects: Mudd!!</p>
<p>This goes to – consider the source.</p>
<p>Prestige in connection with an academic institution is primarily a measure of 1) academic respect by faculty at other schools for the faculty at the school in question, and 2) respect from practitioners in the field for the quality of the work done by practitioners graduated from the school in question.</p>
<p>Among engineers, it is probably the case that Mudd and <em>the top 20%</em> from Berkeley (I’ll bet that is roughly the same number) are equivalently admired. I’ll bet that the average engineering alum from Berkeley will not be viewed with as much admiration as the average alum from Mudd.</p>
<p>One telling stat is that Mudders have the third highest 25/75 ave. SAT of any college in the country, behind Caltech and just behind Harvard… which of course means higher than Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford. That’s great raw material and Mudd shapes that material intensely over four years… to the point that a Mudd engineering degree <em>is</em> considered by some to be equivalent to a masters degree in engineering from MIT, Berkeley, etc.</p>
<p>For Ph.D. work, undoubtedly Berkeley generally reigns supreme along with MIT, depending on the engineering specialty.</p>
<p>I agree that outside the world of practicing engineers, and outside the US, very few will have heard of Harvey Mudd College. Does that matter?</p>
Ummm, have you looked at Mudd’s engineering faculty compared to Cal’s engineering faculty? It’s like the J.V. team vs. the Div 1. Varsity All-Star team. How much “molding” can they get from essentially “junior” faculty?</p>
<p>Hi! I’m a moderately bright, talented kid just out of high school from Canada. I chose Mudd as my first choice by far, for many of the reasons stated already. How did I know about it? Because I actually did some research into the top colleges in the US and which ones would offer me the best education, experiences, and future as an engineer. And sorry to tell you this mate, but if you grab a “HS kid” from Canada who hasn’t actually done any research, they won’t have a clue what either school is; they’ll probably just assume UCB was a misspelling of UBC. Kids here know Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and anything else they saw in a movie. But someone who actually looked into schools to see what fit them will know both, no matter where they are in the world.</p>
<p>I’m afraid internationally, it’s just quite a different knowledge base. Believe me, I was in one of the best high schools for bright students and sending them on to good universities, and only the people who had actually done serious research in their senior year had any inkling of what UC Berkeley was. And if they knew what it was, they knew what Mudd was.</p>
<p>UCBChemguy – yes, that’s true. Comparing UCB’s faculty with ANY faculty in the world outside of Stanford, MIT,and Harvard and possibly Cambridge is an excercise in futility and humilty for any other school.</p>
<p>Mudd graduates (all fields combined) are number two in the country (behind CalTech) of future per-capita PhD earners. Some think this says something about the quality of undergrad instruction.</p>
<p>^ Mudd is about the same size of Caltech and is full of kids with similar academic pursuits. The schools are highly selective taking in the best and brightest. I don’t think it is a testament to the quality of undergrad instructon more than it is a function of a small cohort of smart, ambitious, research-oriented young scientists.</p>