Rose Hulman and Harvey Mudd tied in USnews

College Majors Engineering Majors
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It certainly is possible that your school is just that good, but I don't see where I implied that it wasn't. Am I ignorant because I believe location plays a factor in college selection for most people? Do you want 20 degree winters or 60 degree winters? I definitely don't know anybody who would choose the former with all else being equal.

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<p>You just said that because Mudd is in California it has a good location. However, you don't seem to realize that there are really bad parts of California. I'm sure there are really good parts of Indiana. Coming from Ohio, I know there are many good places in the Midwest. For example, Northwestern definitely has a better location than Harvey Mudd even if it has Winter. </p>

<p>I'm an actual student here so I think I would know how many people choose Mudd for the location. People who choose to come to Mudd come here because they want to learn. Someone would have to be insane to come to Mudd for the location when there are way easier schools that have better locations and are just as prestigious. </p>

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I'm saying that all else being equal, yes, some people probably do choose Mudd over Rose because of the location.

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<p>More people choose Mudd over Rose because Mudd is just better. The very top students don't care about location as much as a less qualified student going to a less elite, easier, school. We aren't talking about Pepperdine or USC here. </p>

<p>Also, the original argument doesn't even make sense because people who would come here for the weather wouldn't be the nerdy type that we attract (which gives us the high SAT scores). Saying that people come here for the location is essentially a slap in the face. We aren't exactly surfing on the beach all day or partying it up in LA.</p>

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Do you want 20 degree winters or 60 degree winters? I definitely don't know anybody who would choose the former with all else being equal.

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<p>I would. I'm ****ed how winter out here in Pasadena is so boring.</p>

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<p>^ We just had a <em>big</em> rainstorm...and expecting more tomorrow night...:rolleyes: Well, if you watch the local L.A. news, they think it's exciting.</p>

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This is a ridiculous argument based on ignorance. You're saying that people with near-perfect SAT scores are choosing Mudd over Rose because of the location.

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<p>No, he's not saying that Harvey Mudd gets an advantage from its locations - he's saying that Rose Hulman is dragged down by its obscure location. </p>

<p>Let's say there is a stellar student in Florida. He's naturally thinking MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Stanford, and let's just say that he likes Rose Hulman too. </p>

<p>Going on a college road trip costs money. He can go on a road trip to New England where he can hit all of the Ivies, go to Californa where he can hit Stanford, Harvey Mudd, Berkeley. Or, he can go to Terre Haute Indiana, where he'll only be able to visit one school. </p>

<p>We're not implying that Mudd's SATs are higher than they should be. They're an elite school with great recognition, and SATs to match and exceed the Ivies. We're saying that Rose Hulman has relatively low SATs given its national recognition. </p>

<p>Geography probably plays a huge role in that. </p>

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Yet, the smartest students generally will go anywhere they can get a stellar education. Absolutely no one I know here came here for the location. They came here for the education.

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<p>Yes, we agree. </p>

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By the way, not all of California is on the coast. We're 50 miles inland in an boring retirement city. We're surrounded by cities like Pomona and Chino, which aren't exactly known for being great either.

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<p>Yeah, but you're not in the middle of nowhere. Rose Hulman is literally in the middle of nowhere. It is nowhere near any other private engineering colleges. Let's say you're in RH and you want to go shopping, your only real choice is a wal-mart that's about 30 or so minutes away (this is from an info session, so I might be wrong). That's just how isolated RH is. </p>

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Why does everyone try to rationalize why our SAT scores are so high? Is it really that impossible for us to just be good??

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<p>We're not doing that, we're rationalizing why RH's SATs are on the low side, considering that they seem to have a solid endowment, national recognition, and top notch facilities. </p>

<p>USNews.com:</a> America's Best Colleges 2008: Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs</p>

<p>Usually schools that get that kind of good ranking become pretty competitive, and end up having really high SATs.</p>

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<p>Disclosure notice: I'm a current Rose-Hulman freshman, but I'm not here to hype my school or anything :-). Just throwing my $0.02 in.</p>

<p>I think that location and other non-academic factors do heavily influence college decisions...I don't see how anyone could argue that they aren't factors. One of the most oft-repeated bits of advice here is to find a school that is the right fit for you...wouldn't that include location, gender ratio, and a slew of other non-academic things? If a student would not be happy in Terre Haute, Indiana as compared to Claremont, California, why would they commit to spending 4 years in misery at Rose?</p>

<p>Also, just something to note....SAT scores might not be the best metric of comparison here. For example: Rose' freshman class profile says the median math ACT is 32 while the median math SAT is 670 - not a whole lot different, but the ACT is higher (using basic ACT/SAT comparision tables). The attitude toward the SAT versus the ACT is a lot different in the midwest.</p>

<p>One other thing that I wish to mention about the disparity in scores is that I think Rose-Hulman and Harvey Mudd are different types of school that attract different types of students. HMC seems to produce more graduate-school oriented students while Rose seems to be more focused on producing engineers suited for the work force. If this is the case it would certainly attract different types of students with different abilities.</p>

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<p>Common sense dictates that rankings should be based upon not just SATs/GRE but also with faculty and research capabilities. If a program is filled with faculty from MIT, UCB, Standford and have better research capabilities then it should thump the other program even if their SATs are better.
If those kids are really over-achievers then they should choose the former. However, if they have non-academic related problems then it's perfectly fine, but still doesn't mean that their program should be higher ranked.</p>

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<p>
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One other thing that I wish to mention about the disparity in scores is that I think Rose-Hulman and Harvey Mudd are different types of school that attract different types of students. HMC seems to produce more graduate-school oriented students while Rose seems to be more focused on producing engineers suited for the work force. If this is the case it would certainly attract different types of students with different abilities.

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<p>Actually, HMC is graduate-focused in every discipline except engineering. We have absurd graduate school placement in math and all of the hard sciences, but that doesn't make our engineering program any less job-oriented. </p>

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I think that location and other non-academic factors do heavily influence college decisions...I don't see how anyone could argue that they aren't factors. One of the most oft-repeated bits of advice here is to find a school that is the right fit for you...wouldn't that include location, gender ratio, and a slew of other non-academic things? If a student would not be happy in Terre Haute, Indiana as compared to Claremont, California, why would they commit to spending 4 years in misery at Rose?

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<p>57% of Rose students are from out of state compared to 51% of Mudd students. Yes, I realize that California is a huge state and that definitely decreases our out of state number. However, I think if we adjust for California's size we still see around the same proportion of out state students at Mudd and Rose. If your theories about the location of Mudd being so superior and having such a large effect on student quality were true, then we'd expect to see many more students that were actually not from the area compared to Rose. I think it's safe to say that the location of Mudd vs. the location of Rose has a pretty small effect on the student quality. </p>

<p>UCLA and OSU are similar schools with UCLA clearly being better. Do people argue that it's mostly due to geography? </p>

<p>Once again everyone in this thread seems to automatically assume that one location is superior to the other. It's all a matter of opinion. Guess what? Not everyone likes Claremont, California. Most people here at Mudd actually don't like Claremont. </p>

<p>People have different preferences about where they want their school to be. You could say that a lot of people from the midwest and east coast like to go to the west coast for college. But, you could equally say that people from the west coast like to go to the midwest and east coast for college. </p>

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The attitude toward the SAT versus the ACT is a lot different in the midwest.

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<p>I'm from the Midwest and everyone I know there thinks the ACT is idiotic.</p>

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According to the HMC engineering department website 50% of engineering graduates go to grad school - much higher than that number at Rose-Hulman (I think for us it is about 20% school-wide). That huge disparity doesn't necessarily mean one curriculum is more work-force oriented than the other, but it probably does influence where prospective students apply and attend.</p>

<p>RE: your comments about student geographic distribution...I hadn't looked at those statistics for HMC before, so I'm glad you brought those up. That data does support the location-neutrality case, but I'm still not ready to give up the idea of non-academic characteristics heavily influencing college decisions - especially when that data you present is laden with many confounding factors....although maybe my view is distorted by uncommon personal experience (my main reason for not applying to HMC was because they did not accept ACT scores, so I see HMC's refusal to accept ACTs before this year as a self-selection of applicants against the midwest/south).</p>

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I didn't mean that students in the midwest liked the ACT more than the SAT (or vice-versa) - I meant that the largest concentration of ACT test-takers is in the midwest (and south), and consequently the largest concentration of SAT test-takers is on the coasts. I probably said that wrong originally...my bad.</p>

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<p>I'd rather be anywhere in California than anywhere is Indiana...so it would definitely affect my decision.</p>

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<p>It affected my brother's decision. Yeah, Mudd's a good school, but so's MIT. When it comes right down to it, despite Claremont being a total hole, the 70-degree weather year-round sure beats the eight feet of snow in Boston. And he's not miserable, what with 2 AM Thai delivery and Hero's fairly-decent beer selection in the village. As an Illinois alumna and one who's spent some time in Claremont, it ain't a bad little town. Complain about the smog, complain about the cow-odors wafting over from Chino, but you're still in SoCal and it's still not a bad place to live for four years. It's not Terre Haute.</p>

<p>It might not have been a choice between Mudd and RH, but between Mudd and, say, MIT or Princeton or Illinois or what have you, Mudd looks pretty good. It's a factor. Probably not a huge factor, but it's one that's allowed to be brought up, for the love of pete.</p>

<p>Despite the fact that you're from the midwest and you think that the ACT is idiotic, many, many midwest schools prefer the ACT over the SAT, so that's another point that is at least interesting to consider.</p>

<p>And most Mudders I know have, at least one time or another, strongly considered grad school. That's not the case at RH. Mudd caters to different folks.</p>

<p>No need for hostility, dude.</p>

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<p>Once again you are making statements about one location being "better" than another based on opinion. I've been to both Claremont and Cambridge and can easily say that I would definitely prefer to live in Cambridge. Some people like actually having seasons and Boston is an amazing college city. </p>

<p>Obviously there are specific cases where people came here partly for the location, but in the grand scheme of things I'd think you'd find those effects not really affecting student quality too much. For every case of someone choosing Mudd over MIT partly for its location, I can give you several cases of someone choosing MIT over Mudd partly for its location. It's a factor, but an insignificant one in the end. Except maybe for a few schools (Pepperdine comes to mind).</p>

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<p>
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Why does everyone try to rationalize why our SAT scores are so high? Is it really that impossible for us to just be good??

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We're not doing that, we're rationalizing why RH's SATs are on the low side, considering that they seem to have a solid endowment, national recognition, and top notch facilities.

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<p>The location issue was just one of a few put forth. ACT was another (given that colleges generally accept either, I don't see why one should be seen as any more or less idiotic). Does either school superscore the SAT? That could be a reason. If I didn't know much about Mudd, I might suggest that Rose-Hulman takes a more holistic approach to admissions, but I know that Mudd is good about that, too. Because Rose-Hulman isn't included on USNews' general rankings lists, it may not attract the attention or interest of as many super-high scorers, who often draw from these lists to form their own. Someone who's interested in grad school is likely to be someone who's "good at school" and "good at tests", and it's already been noted that HMC grads more often head to grad school. We could play this game for a long time...</p>

<p>Who knows if any of this is actually meaningful? The premise of this thread is a fair one. If we begin with the presumption that these rankings are accurate, and that HMC and Rose-Hulman are academically on par with one another, then how do we account for the score disparity? What went into this ranking to 'compensate' for that? If you're qualified to disagree with the premise, then fine, disagree with the premise. But the geography issue is just not that big of a deal here...</p>

<p>ETA: I like the town of Claremont :)</p>

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ETA: I like the town of Claremont

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<p>Beats Urbana-Champaign with a big ol' stick.</p>

<p>Incidentally, I'm crashing at Baja (@ South... my brother's one of the four keepers) on Friday night, so I actually stay in Claremont <em>voluntarily</em> on occasion!</p>

<p>Also... Didn't address this before...

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Why does everyone try to rationalize why our SAT scores are so high? Is it really that impossible for us to just be good??

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Not in the least. My perpetual argument is that y'all <em>are</em> just that good (in fact, I spent hours on the phone with my old firm's HR department trying to convince them that recruiting at Mudd on a regular basis was crucial to the survival of the company), but as Student615 mentioned, we're trying to rationalize the inanity of USNews. I personally think that they're smoking something, but I'm trying to see what they see, and I'm trying to consider the notion that maybe, for some reason, RH doesn't get a fair shake of things. I still haven't had my mind changed, but there are a couple of points that have been brought up that are interesting to ponder.</p>

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<p>I just don't think the disparity in SAT scores has much to do with geography. There are probably much more important factors that we aren't even talking about (like the fact that Mudd is in a consortium with other elite LACs).</p>

<p>Also, Mudd didn't even accept the ACT until last year. So, if anything, that policy actually decreased the number of students at HMC coming from the Midwest.</p>

<p>The US News ranking that Rose and Mudd are tied for is pretty dumb. It only takes into account peer review scores. Basically US News just asks people "How good do you think Mudd and Rose's engineering departments are?"</p>

<p>So the real question we should be asking is: why do people think Mudd and Rose have equal strengths in engineering when Mudd appears to have stronger incoming students?</p>

<p>Instead of the current question that assumes the student quality at both schools is roughly the same and the SAT score difference is some kind of anomaly due to things like... geography.</p>

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It only takes into account peer review scores. Basically US News just asks people "How good do you think Mudd and Rose's engineering departments are?"

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It's not asking just random people...the polls are asking academics and administrators at engineering colleges all over the US - including HMC and Rose.</p>

<p>One aspect why Rose may be rated as high as Mudd, despite having lower SAT scores, is that POSSIBLY Rose has a stronger faculty in engineering and offers more specialized engineering disciplines than Mudd. There is more to a college than just high scoring SAT students.</p>

<p>Different strokes for different folks.</p>

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It's not asking just random people...the polls are asking academics and administrators at engineering colleges all over the US - including HMC and Rose.

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<p>Yes, but have you <em>talked</em> to your local academics and administrators at engineering colleges about anything not having to do with engineering lately...? =\ Honestly, all my grad advisor could really talk about was his own research... Grew up in Champaign, went to the high school across the street from where he now has his office, went to undergrad at Illinois, did his masters and doctoral work out east, worked one year out where he got his doctorate, then came back to Illinois, where he remains to this day, not really talking to anybody about anything aside from seismic shear in masonry. Basically lives in his office. Nothing wrong with that, but the dude doesn't really have a social life, at all... He's the one who's choosing who's "reputable" and who's "not reputable" in these sorts of surveys...</p>

<p>Which brings me to another couple of hypotheses... Are all engineering fields as regionally insular as structural engineering was? The majority of the collaboration that I did with other universities while I was at Illinois was with people at schools in the midwest and south. There's definitely a feeling of all-the-midwest-schools vs. Berkeley-and-Stanford. If all the profs at the midwestern engineering powerhouses vote for their local hometown hero of RH where they've got a couple of buddies that they collaborate with on a frequent basis, that'd leave Mudd out in the cold.</p>

<p>I think it also hurts Mudd that there aren't any specific engineering disciplines. Any engineering research and publication and collaboration that goes on is in areas that are a little more cross-discipline, which doesn't allow for as much mainstream intra-discipline inter-school collaboration as some of the programs at RH tend to allow. Might be another thing to consider.</p>

<p>As I recall, there were a lot of folks at RH who had undergraduate engineering research projects and collaborated with people at other schools. Mudd's engineering research projects tend to be within the clinic system, with corporations, who don't vote. That might have something to do with it, too.</p>

<p>Probably more than geography or SAT scores.</p>

<p>It's always that stupid peer review that gets ya...
...and I think it's a real testiment to the Mudd way of doing things that y'all have been top of the heap for so long.</p>

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<p>aibarr, </p>

<p>The professor that you're describing is from a research university. It could be different criteria for professors at smaller LACs and tech colleges. Unless someone sees a sample of the USNWR survey and who they poll and obtain results from, we won't know...we can only surmise.</p>

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My question is: if USNews sees both programs as being equal academically, then how come Harvey Mudd has so much higher SAT scores and GPAs on average?

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<p>Rose Hulman and Harvey Mudd are tied in the general engineering ranking. IMO, Rose-Human's high rankings in the individual engineering disciplines raises its standing despite the lower SAT average of its student body.</p>

<p>Undergraduate engineering specialties:
Chemical:
1 Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. (IN)
2 Rowan University (NJ)*
3 Cooper Union (NY)
4 Bucknell University (PA)
5 University of Minnesota–Duluth *
6 Manhattan College (NY) </p>

<p>Civil:
1 Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. (IN)
2 United States Military Academy (NY)*
3 Bucknell University (PA)
4 Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo *
5 Cooper Union (NY)
5 Harvey Mudd College (CA)</p>

<p>Computer Engineering:
1 Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. (IN)
2 Harvey Mudd College (CA)
3 Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo *
4 Cooper Union (NY) </p>

<p>Mechanical:
1 Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. (IN)
2 Cooper Union (NY)
3 Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo *
3 Kettering University (MI)
5 Bucknell University (PA)
6 Harvey Mudd College (CA)</p>

<p>EECS:
1 Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. (IN)
2 Cooper Union (NY)
3 Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo *
3 Harvey Mudd College (CA)
5 United States Naval Academy (MD)*</p>

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we won't know...we can only surmise.

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<p>Hence my surmising! ;)</p>

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IMO, Rose-Human's high rankings in the individual engineering disciplines raises its standing

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<p>And yeah, that's what I was saying about the individual disciplines...</p>

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<p>It's important to remember that after a certain point SAT average means jack. It might even be a bad thing in that, getting a 1600/2400 over a 15--/23-- may mean the person wasted time just poring over vocab lists instead of doing anything meaningful with their time. </p>

<p>I speak out of experience. -_-</p>