Wow, a very inaccurate view of the Mudd research experience. Some students do go to other labs in the summers their last couple of years, but there are an abundance of high quality research opportunities on campus during the year and for summers for those who don’t want to do that. My Mudder is a PhD student now, and finds she knows more about the lab equipment in her grad school lab than the older grad students and lab employees do. (Her Mudd prof helps beta test new equipment in that area, and she had a lot of responsibility in his lab). Mudd students do extremely well in PhD program admissions. I don’t know where you get your info, but it is wrong. I know a kid at Lincoln Labs — but he didn’t go to get “the struggle”. He went because he wasn’t sure if he wanted a PhD yet.
I thought the Caltech connection was more with Pomona College students in Physics and other sciences, not Mudd, but I could be wrong.
Again, its in the struggle and not the lab itself. Its the struggle that makes a good scientist. Also, it may be the exact person you work with. Professors at LACs are there because they love to teach. They will not get tenure without very strong teaching ability. in fact, what students get at schools with less good teachers, is again, the STRUGGLE to learn on their own. There is a lot to be gained in the struggle. Its really worth thinking about that, I believe. U Mass has a pretty top notch set of faculty in polymer science, by the way, so its also not that useful to characterize an entire school, in the sciences, its all about who you work with at that school. Harvey Mudd has plenty of good faculty and some fields are better than others, but its a very tiny school, is another negative I see, besides the lack of grad student interactions, that would be a negative at any LAC, in the sciences. The more students get out of the bubble that is Claremont, the better, for a scientist. It pays off well to struggle with a busy professor at an REU location over the summer. Not only will you be exposed to graduate students, a new environment outside the bubble, and possibly meet a person that you will collaborate for a good deal of your scientific career. Teachers are needed though, and LACs have a place. Some people swear by them. I do not believe they are best for most budding scientists.
Any student at any Claremont college can choose to work over a summer through SURF at Caltech and some do that, I know one from Mudd from a few years back.
. They need to contact Caltech to arrange it. Likewise any student from GaTech can also
go to Caltech on their SURF program, its not limited to Claremont, but its convenient for Claremont consortium students do work over at Caltech.
http://sfp.caltech.edu/programs/surf
This is one way to improve your science education, go to a school with different labs, and more graduate students.
You will learn a lot doing that. There are many summer programs beyond REUs, that are federally funded. You can go directly to the college of your choice, and arrange to work there. Try it !
Plenty of kids at Mudd are doing challenging research that prepares them well for grad school. The “struggle” of not having much access to your PI at another school doesn’t seem particularly desirable to me. Strong mentoring, individual instruction on lab methods and equipment, and encouragement to research an area a student is interested in are all strengths of Mudd. I don’t know where your sour grapes come from, but you seem to have a really warped view of this. I’ve never heard that Mudders fail in PhD programs compared to students from other schools, which is what you seem to be implying.
I’d actually like to know what the basis is for your Mudd “knowledge”.
While SURFs at Caltech are for the most part open to students from other colleges, I would think aside from the summer months, Mudd (and Pomona etc) students would be better off doing research with a professor within the 5Cs. The Mudd labs and research looked quite good when we toured.
College is hard enough without adding a 30-60 minute (depending on traffic) to your day.
Don’t forget that there is also the Keck Graduate Institute not “counted” in the 5Cs. We have a physics professor friend who does research there. Mudd doesn’t have any problem getting its students into PhD programs. (Sorry, we never looked into Pomona.)
SURFs and REUs are a useful way to branch out into a field of interest that isn’t covered at your university. I don’t actually know about REUs, but SURFs are a self-contained 10-week program that requires proposals, interim reports, and final papers and presentations. It seems good (but not necessary) to have both the experience of a long-term project on campus and a shorter focused summer project somewhere.
I found stats that in 2016 there were about 450 students doing Caltech and JPL SURFs. About 310 of those were Caltech students and about 140 were from other campuses. These numbers do not include the similar Amgen, WAVE, and GROWTH programs or JPL’s other summer undergrad internship programs.
I know so many people at graduate school from Pomona, and not one of them has ever told me they felt unprepared. If anything, they felt above and beyond many of their peers, who may not have gotten the feedback and individual attention regarding their growth and understanding within the field at major research U. Almost everyone has told me that graduate school is easier than Pomona. Mudd is infamously challenging- definitely not a place where you are coddled, tough grades, extremely challenging core curriculum of science unlike most other places. I get the feeling that you’re relying on more the stereotypical presentation of the liberal arts college than any actual experience about Pomona and Mudd.
As an actual student who took courses and participated in research at both schools, the “struggle”- the reality that scientific research often fizzles out into non-significant results, or an error later found in the methodology, or an unexpected result from the hypothesis as raised by established literature- these aspects were highlighted. Most of us were mature enough to know how to take-away and shift direction if an experiment or sub-project didn’t go the right way. It was not kumbaya/handholding/uncharacteristic optimism/projects designed to always succeed. We were not graded on “getting it right”. For our academic experiences, the problem sets and assignments were extremely challenging. Not memorization of facts or some high school textbook based course, but in one course- establishing the most feasible approach among numerous analytical techniques, analyzing primary literature within a new subtopic we had little experience of, and being given a novel scientific scenario in which something didn’t pan out as expected, and thinking about why that might be and how to move on. My best friend went to Berkeley and was also a STEM major. We compared our assignments. The critical thinking aspect emphasized and the feedback given back at Pomona was noticeably more prominent- he himself remarked that.
My favorite STEM teacher at Pomona is on the block for a tenure review. She is considered the best in the department for teaching and has won the most prestigious distinction in undergrad teaching at Pomona. But she hasn’t been able to put out as many publications as others in the department. She feels she’ll not be granted tenure given the department’s expectation for research, and she has been working very hard to get some out. There is a heavy research expectation placed on the professors. You can’t just be a good teacher. You have to do research, because Pomona’s expectation is that most of the STEM undergraduates will go to graduate school and need meaningful experiences.
You talk as if the science students at the Claremont Colleges are purposefully isolated away from other institutions. This is not true. All of the colleges host colloquia featuring researchers from other universities, and many classes require attendance and an assignment regarding their work. People go out to academic conferences all the time with the work they did over the summer or in the school year. Most students interested in graduate school will have an off-campus research experience. My major, molecular biology, sponsors a unique study abroad program with the University College of London where students are required to take on an research project with a faculty mentor there (http://pomona-sa.terradotta.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=16664). About half of the majors go to it. The only reason I raised the reality about the robust research program available is because you seemed to imply that those opportunities weren’t available at Pomona/Mudd, which isn’t true. Also, many of the professors do collaborate with other universities in their research. The professor I worked for at Mudd took us to UCLA (his postdoc location) to present our findings and gain feedback from the grad students/post docs/PI there. The professor I worked for at Pomona collaborated with the Beckman Research Institute in the City of Hope. Pomona has some of its own partnerships where students are sent to other research institutes for a summer opportunity, such as this: “The Astronomy Program has a unique partnership with the Carnegie Observatories, based in Pasadena, which places about four Claremont students in research jobs each summer and which makes use of the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.” You mentioned teaching- more than 55% of Pomona students become tutors for a department, either advising mentor sessions or helping to run labs with the professor.
Those fellowship statistics are impressive because they are awarded to some of the strongest students in STEM across the United States. You need distinctive research experiences, strong letters of recommendation, a near perfect GPA, and an excellent personal statement for future graduate study in the sciences to get one. They’re not wishy-washy about diversity gimmicks to pick students who aren’t qualified. I tallied the number of Goldwater winners from 2007-2017. Pomona had 22, Mudd 17. UMass Amherst had 17, UCLA had 9, Berkeley had 15, Carnegie Mellon had 20, and Caltech had 22. Isn’t it kind of impressive that a school with hardly 400 students in that class, less than half of whom major in STEM, received as much or more distinction than the research university powerhouses? Or in Mudd’s case, with just 250? For Churchill, which I consider the top science undergrad distinction (read the profile and work of the students who’ve gotten it), tiny tiny Mudd ranks 8th among all colleges for most winners of all time- 16. Pomona wasn’t even allowed to begin nominating until 2004, and since then they’ve produced 5 winners, tying with Caltech and CMU as the 5th largest producer of Churchills within the last ten years. Amherst and Mudd are tied for 8th with 4 winners each within the decade. The NSF graduate fellowship is competitive with only 2000 awards given out from 13000 applicants. Pomona had 16 winners in 2016 and Mudd had 11. Harvard had 23 and Stanford 32, but adjusted for size, Pomona and Mudd had more recipients per capita. Only MIT and Caltech topped Pomona/Mudd on a size adjusted basis, and not by much. The point is- both of these schools have produced extremely capable students in the sciences with the experience and education they offer. Outside, experienced professionals in the sciences have seen and testified to their aptitude. Both heavily send students to the best graduate schools in the country. They do not provide a weaker experience, just a different (and IMO stronger) one.
Most students at both ranked in the top 10% percent of their high school class. They had offers from schools with far more resources and opportunities. I could have gone to Plan II Honors at UT Austin. UCB, UCLA, and USC are the most frequently turned down schools by enrolling Pomona students, according to surveys I conducted for Class of 2019-2021. We visited different institutions and considered the difference, but we ultimately picked our colleges for a reason. I’m not suggesting everyone should do this, but one should get a firm hold on the reality of the experience at the schools rather than drawing from uncharacteristic generalizations. Mudd and Pomona are not your run-of-the-mill arts college.
@nostalgicwisdom Thank you so much for your thorough, well-reasoned, and well supported discussion of the strength of STEM at HMC and Pomona College. Here is an article “Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: A Better Education?” by Nobel Laureate T. Cech on this same topic: http://www.thecollegesolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cech_article2.pdf You’ll see a thorough exploration of the issue of STEM quality at research universities vs. at SLACs. You’ll see how well the SLACs do compared to the research universities and plausible reasons for this.
@Coloradomama Yes, there are other college consortia across the USA such as the Olin/Babson/Wellesley, the Swarthmore/BrynMawr/Haverford and the Amherst/U Mass/Mount Holyoke/Hampshire/Smith you mentioned. But one should keep in mind that some of them don’t share synchronized school calendars so that class schedules at the member schools might conflict during each week and during the semester.
Also, some consortia have strict limits as to how many classes one can take per semester from a member campus. Finally, the physical proximity or lack thereof, has a profound impact on the utilization of classes/resources at member schools.
The President of Olin admitted to me over lunch on campus that very few Olin students take classes at Wellesley because the 7 minute shuttle ride proved a significant barrier in real life, though it sounds insignificant.
I heard the same from the director of admissions at Haverford; although Bryn Mawr was only 1 mile away, few students made the trek because of the inconvenience. Research into human behavior in ecosystems suggest that as physical proximity of a resource declines linearly in physical distance, the likelihood of a protagonist traveling to a destination/resource declines exponentially. This is the office water cooler phenomenon. At the 5C’s, the small campuses are adjacent to each other! And one can take up to 40% of their classes at a member college. And the class schedules are synchronized.
So the likelihood of a student making use of consortium resources that require a bus ride will be much much less than if those resources required only a short walk. And the warm and sunny weather at the 5C’s makes that walk pleasant year-round…especially when the East Coast is suffering from freezing rain.
I’ll weigh in on the strength of the 5C consortium vs other consortia. My kid is a Pomona junior who spent Fall semester at Swarthmore through a domestic exchange program. She had high praise for Swat and enjoyed her semester there, excellent teachers, great student body and great accessibility to Philadelphia. As you know Swat students can take classes at Bryn Mawr and Haverford and also UPenn. But she definitely noticed the difference between the 5C consortium and Swat. It’s not just a question of the relative ease of taking classes at another school, which others have elaborated on. It’s also the effect of the immediate physical proximity of the other student bodies. At the Claremont consortium every day you encounter students from the other colleges – not just in classes but in the 7 shared dining halls (ex: my D makes sure every week to eat at Pitzer for Pitzer Pad Thai night!), the library, clubs, etc. My D has lots of friends from the other schools whom she sees regularly-- but she also keeps meeting new people. By contrast, Swat felt more like her high school where after a few weeks she felt like she knew every face on campus. That’s just one of the things that makes the Claremont consortium unique. Even if you never take a class at one of the other campuses, you will still inevitably meet and mingle with students from the other colleges.
Interesting that this thread has kind of evolved from some “less than satisfying” aspects of Pomona into a Pomona and 5C booster thread. I do think there are things to criticize at Pomona but the arguments of @Coloradomama seem more based on philosophical objections to the LAC model than on actual knowledge of Pomona and Mudd.
@Corinthian Yes, to build on your daughter’s experience mingling with students from the 5Cs on campus, I am aware of the fact that the Hive (design thinking space on campus) offers a design-thinking class that purposefully mixes the students from the 5Cs in small teams. I witnessed one of the classes there and spoke to one such team which consisted of 5 students, one from each of the 5Cs. It was so rewarding to see these structured opportunities for collaborating across the 5Cs to supplement the informal opportunities. My child also frequents the 7 different eateries on campus, paying close attention to theme nights at Pitzer, Scripps and HMC.
I’ll throw in my 2 cents. One of my children is a Mudder and the other is a Sagehen. I also am a STEM professor at a research university.
My Mudder has done research with a Mudd’s lab for 2 academic years, including Summer, for topics that I would approve for my PhD student (and my PhD student has to publish in international journals as prerequisite for dissertation defense). The research process that my Mudder has experienced is equivalent to that of typical PhD dissertation work. The only difference is that a few lab members are working on a topic together, as opposed to individual work of a PhD student. The topics they have worked with are extension of the dissertation of the head professor of the lab, who graduated from a top university in their fields. HMC is not a typical LAC, as it is not lacking in the pre-professional direction. And there are Pomona students working in their labs as well.
My Sagehen, also a STEM majored, got Summer research appointment in the first year, working directly with professor to write a journal paper on the research topic that they worked together during Spring. From what I saw, PMC’s approach towards research is rather academical compared to HMC’s industrial. But the level of research topic was equally advanced, as both were aimed at journal publication.
One case at each college may be inadequate for generalization. And I don’t mean to generalize either. I just want to present some facts that our family experienced. I also have a friend teaching graduate programs at one of the big two universities in LA, who has provided me comparative information about research opportunity over there. From what I was told, I feel that HMC and PMC are not lacking at all.
Thanks @profpapa Sagehen who is a sophomore is doing SURP this summer at Pomona with the head of her department. She is very excited for this opportunity. She is already doing research with another prof during the academic year.
Pomona just posted an article on a CS senior: https://www.pomona.edu/news/2018/03/22-chinasa-okolo-%E2%80%9918-coding-more-inclusive-computer-science
The article describes how she found research experiences at Pomona and also UGA, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon as a QuestBridge first-generation student. Tons and tons of research. 3 summer opportunities elsewhere, 2 on-campus years with a neuroscience professor at Pomona, senior research project to develop algorithms for more accurate facial-recognition of persons of color with a professor who designed the software. And how she came in with math, then thought about med school, then switched her interest to bio research, and finally did her switch to computer science.
Her successes have led her to offers from Princeton and Cornell’s CS PhD programs. Awesome! I think students are able to find both rich on-campus experiences which lead to off-campus experiences for further opportunities and eventually offers to distinguished graduate programs.
My daughter majors in a Humanities field, and she feels that the emphasis on research opportunities and summer projects is heavily weighted to STEM. Also, the career center emphasizes STEM areas as well. So if there is a weakness, it may be the huge current emphasis on the science and computer side of things. She had to go to Stanford for summer research opportunities, although she did meet the Stanford prof when he was a guest speaker at Pomona.
appreciate this perspective. My child was ready to apply ED last year, when I understood (via an inside connection) that there were several issues re; professors, their ability to conduct research and involve students was limited. As the parent of a STEM kid, this diminished the “value” despite many of the positives. There is no doubt one walks away from Pomona with an outstanding education, but it’s also disheartening to see that all responses to this post focus on east coast LAC’s by comparison - my child has opted to attend Carleton - #1 LAC in STEM, #1 in Alum Giving, #1 in Undergraduate teaching, strong DIII sports…having lived on both coasts and in the midwest, it is a little sad that this gem falls under 'flyover" country…
Carleton is a good school and may be a little easier to get into. It doesn’t have the research, internship academics or weather that Pomona has.
Carleton deserves as much respect, and is definitely top of the line for STEM. However, you are engaging in the same sort of behavior: bashing a school you have little actual familiarity with (no, a supposed “insider connection” doesn’t mean you’re acquainted). The “issues” you describe are not what the vast majority of Pomona students would ever attribute to their experience. It is extremely easy to get involved with professors here and do research. What EOTW was referring to was the unprecedented STEM interest at the time (my class, '16, graduated with a record 50% STEM degrees), which led to fears from students that opportunities would get competitive. But it has since been controlled as admissions has sought greater academic diversity and cohort programs in the humanities/social sciences have been established. I believe only 27% of admitted 2022 indicated a first-choice STEM major. Some departments still see challenges- CS especially (but that’s a problem at many schools, including Carleton). Math, bio, chem, geo, neuro, psychology, physics- I’ve never heard of any problems with getting involved with profs/research and taking courses (nor have I had them, as someone directly involved with math, bio, physics, chem, and psychology).
I took a look at Carleton’s 2017 summer research symposium booklet and saw ~105 presentations. Pomona’s summer research booklet had more than 200- involving 237 students. Pomona is ~400 students smaller than Carleton. Just one example.
According to a survey site:
Carleton
95% of students say professors are passionate about the topics they teach
92% of students say professors are engaging and easy to understand.
95% of students say professors care about their students’ success.
95% of students agree professors are approachable and helpful when needed.
Pomona
97% of students say professors are passionate about the topics they teach
93% of students say professors are engaging and easy to understand.
97% of students say professors care about their students’ success.
97% of students agree professors are approachable and helpful when needed.
There is no meaningful difference in the quality of teaching or professor accessibility at the two schools.
@nostalgicwisdom How do you really know who @goinaway knows at Pomona College? This is an anonymous blog and anyone can voice an opinion. I tend to agree with @goingaway’s assessment for STEM education. I prefer it to Pomona because of the level of chemistry teaching in particular is known to be higher at Carlton in my circles. and yes we are allowed to voice our opinions on blogs without you saying we are not savvy enough. I know chemists who evaluate various LACs and Carlton comes out on top every time for STEM, and a few other subjects. Pomona may be the strongest in English though and history.
One reason Carlton is ranked ahead of Pomona in chemistry is the very strong faculty at Carlton, many from Berkeley. Pomona has strong faculty but not as strong in chemistry. Thats pretty well known across the chemistry community. Look at the education levels at Carlton, its just really amazing, and a tight chemistry community there now for years.