<p>My D and I were just at the new admit weekend this past, well, weekend. I was wondering if anyone else went and what they thought of it? Did it change any minds (good or bad)?</p>
<p>Cheers.</p>
<p>I’d love to know this too, thanks for posting!</p>
<p>I enjoyed it very much, but I wish we didn’t have to sit down for such a long time. </p>
<p>Well, I found the presentations (various panels) interesting and informative, but I liked talking to the professors and current students even more. I guess it depends on who you are, but since I’m an ED applicant and have done so much research, the information sessions did not do much for me. Rather, talking to my host and her friends and attending classes strengthened my interests in HMC. </p>
<p>By the way, the food was amazing!</p>
<p>I enjoyed it a lot as well. Just as minz said, as an ED applicant the information sessions didn’t really make a difference. I also think it would have been nice if there had been some icebreaker activities at the beginning and perhaps some hands on science labs. The night activities were alright, not anything special. I enjoyed hanging out with the students though. Attending classes was nice as well. And yes, I agree the food was great. </p>
<p>Overall, I’m glad I went even though I already know I’m going there next year. I learned more about the school by talking to more current students. It was a fun night.</p>
<p>My D and I went and had some good and not so good experiences. First off it was a bit too long especially for her as I left in the afternoon and she did all the evening presentations. Certainly the earlier suggestion of ice breakers would have been great as she had a tough time really hooking up with a group. Everyone was very nice but her dorm mate had a very busy day studying and could not provide much support. She very much enjoyed going to classes the next morning (her favorite part) and we had a nice morning walk around the other campuses.<br>
The drama surrounding the difficulty and gpa feel overdone, as obviously if you have found Mudd, applied and have been admitted you are probably quite capable of doing the work. The graduation rate is high so it must work for most! She has decided she will be Mudd 2014!</p>
<p>I enjoyed it very much but found out that HMC was not as competitive as I thought.</p>
<p>^ how so? I talked to many people who were deciding between MIT, Yale, Cornell, etc. and Mudd… and students who already made that choice.</p>
<p>I’m also very curious what you mean by not as comptetive. The average SAT/ACT scores are up there with or better than any the top schools, and it is extremely difficult to get in.</p>
<p>^
go to the RD decision thread
If you see his stats. You’ll see that it was indeed somewhat easy for him to get in.</p>
<p>Though, i also have to say that, if you are thinking of comparing it with schools such as MIT or Caltech, it really isn’t “that” much easier to get in compared to those.</p>
<p>My friend got into caltech but not mudd</p>
<p>Mudd accepts a higher percentage of applicants than, say, other Tier 1s. However, because Mudd’s name isn’t as well known as the names of its peer institutions, the applicant pool tends to be self-selecting – at least, that’s the common lore. Fewer students apply to Mudd in the first place; those who do are more likely to know what they’re looking for, know what it takes, and have stats within striking distance of the requirements.</p>
<p>They’re working on building greater name recognition. The rationale for this is obvious, but I wonder if in the process they might lose some distinctive qualities in the student body. Guess we’ll see. :)</p>
<p>I agree the higher admit rate is what keeps Mudd’s ratings lower than they should be, but it is definitely a self selecting crowd. Lots of people apply to MIT (and even CalTech) for the heck of it. Those that apply to Mudd are generally a very highly qualified bunch. If you look at the student stats and compare where people get in, you can see just how difficult it is. I know lots of folks, for example who got into Berkeley, Cornell and other “top” schools, but not Mudd. The average SAT at Berkely is not even close. </p>
<p>I really like that people go there because its such a great school and not just for name value.</p>
<p>FYI the admission rate this year dropped to ~20% from the previous years ~30%, not withstanding taking in the waitlistees. 20% is pretty good already lol, considering a self selecting crowd ^^</p>
<p>Yeah… 34.1% to 23.4% (not including the people they might take off the wait list)… big drop. </p>
<p>Although they accepted an unusually amount of girls… I’m hoping it’s partially that the girls this year were more qualified/ we had a significantly greater amount of female applicants this year… because if that increase was all due to improving the gender ratio, I think that’s pretty ridiculous… even if having not done so would have meant I wouldn’t have been accepted.</p>
<p>^ Again, it’s a self-selecting pool. Girls who apply to Mudd are probably pretty unusual to begin with.</p>
<p>I’m guessing/hoping gender and race are tiebreakers, as is geographical location within the country. If you have to decide between two equally-qualified applicants (qualified being stats, essays, EC, etc - the whole person), you choose the girl, or the URM, or the person from the state you want to become more popular in. If I’m correct, then you wouldn’t be displacing a more-qualified person, but winning the coin-flip with an equally-qualified person. Remember - LOTS of people want to go to Mudd, and since they have to turn away someone, it may as well be the someone that they have too much of anyway. That doesn’t seem objectionable.</p>
<p>To be honest, I think it’s more than a tie breaker though…</p>