I wasn’t saying the high school rigor is the same as college engineering. Only saying that having picked the most rigorous pathway available in our high school has been a fine decision even with the workload involved (which also included ECs, volunteering, and a part-time job). As your son’s roommate says, HMC students have a “we’re all in this together” mentality. I can only assume that helps them bond with each other and be supports for each other, and they can laugh (or cry) about it together.
HMC doesn’t accept AP or IB credits as substitutions for any classes, so math will be whatever it will be. According to this thread on CC, HMC does diagnostic placement tests to put the student where they should be.
Harvey Mudd Placement Exams - Colleges and Universities A-Z / Harvey Mudd College - College Confidential Forums
An attractive aspect of HMC to me is that you don’t have to declare your major from the get go. CS hasn’t been an interest so far, but at least at HMC, if that became an interest then majoring in it is possible; students aren’t locked out based on what major was written on the application (which in my kid’s case was filled out at 16 yrs old).
I hope we get to see them on ASP day because the best we could do on our self-guided tour over the summer was to peer into the main lobby area of the dorms. We visited CalPoly SLO over the summer too, and did a housing tour there and the “red bricks” dorms were seriously grim. So I can understand how the dorms could turn you off to a school!