<p>I'm posting for a friend, but heres the situation:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've become quite interested in teaching (high school or college, possibly physics), and My HS teacher recommends going someplace that has good teachers as well as opportunities for tutoring and teaching. However, I also want to get some research experience, in case teaching turns out not to be for me.</p>
<p>I think the financial aid is pretty similar for either schools.</p>
<p>I'm aiming for a physics major and a music major or minor or concentration. I haven't thought much about an education degree.</p>
<p>I'm fine with the atmosphere of Claremont or Palo Alto. I'm ambivalent about academic intensity, but I'm curious what you guys have to say about it.</p>
<p>I'm fine with no education degree program, as long as I can experience excellent teaching from the teachers themselves, and possibly get opportunities to tutor or teach (like in the academic center). (I guess I'd be more likely to lead a problem-solving session or something at Stanford.)</p>
<p>I'm also wondering about about two things: the prevalence of academic nerdiness (ex: "Wow, that lecture on de Broglie was amazing", "I wonder what it implies for tachyons", "I challlenge you to can calculate the de Broglie wavelength of that tree"); and teaching opportunities (ex: teaching a problem solving session, tutoring; not so much teaching research, I think, which appears to be the focus of the School of Education)
<p>…Seeing as the friend in question is thinking of becoming a teacher, I sincerely doubt name recognition will be a problem. Harvey Mudd happens to be kind of famous.</p>
<p>Last time I checked, Mudd did not do music. (Sure it’s offered elsewhere on campus, butt doesn’t that then defeat the purpose of attending a LAC?) :)</p>
<p>But these are two completely different animals: small LAC vs. big, major research Uni.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for great faculty interaction and a nerdy climate, Mudd all the way. I’ve got a few friends who are in the engineering/physics/CS areas at Stanford who have become fed up with the approach the school takes - it prepares students much better for the business world than for academia.</p>
<p>Music isn’t available at Mudd, but the other 5Cs have good music departments.</p>
<p>HMC may offer a smaller faculty-to-student ratio and probably is more undergrad focused but Stanford has the better brand name. Grads of both schools are more likely going to get good jobs.</p>
<p>I have no idea how that could be true–few students are pre-professional.</p>
<p>Students at Stanford enjoy great faculty interaction–there’s nothing stopping you from getting involved in a prof’s research, going to office hours, setting up an appointment with them, inviting them to Faculty Dinner (held in every residence each quarter), asking them to do independent study with you for 1-4 units, etc. This is unsurprising, given that Stanford’s student:faculty ratio is the same as most LACs. For comparison, Stanford’s is 6:1 whereas HMC’s is 8:1.</p>
<p>Also, in terms of class size, 75% of Stanford’s courses have fewer than 15 students, whereas that number is 60% for HMC. Stanford offers a greater variety of courses as well: over 1,500 in which undergraduates are enrolled, and thousands more graduate-level courses which undergraduates are free to enroll in. HMC has about 200 courses.</p>
<p>If you compare science/engineering at Stanford to Harvey Mudd, I’d say they’re equal in academic intensity.</p>
<ul>
<li>Academic Intensity: Mudd more intense by a small degree</li>
<li>Music involvement: no clue. However, I’ll bet the distance between Physics classes and Music classes at Stanford and a Physics class at Mudd, then a Music Class at P/C/P/S will be about the same. They’re all within a 10 minute walk under perfect skies :)</li>
<li>Faculty Interaction: Mudd by a whisker</li>
<li>Nerdiness: Mudd by a mile</li>
<li>Teaching internships: no clue. This sounds like the area you should explore with some vigor… it will be your differentiator.</li>
</ul>
<p>They have two other music professors, as well, so it’s wrong to say there is no music at Harvey Mudd. Students from the other Claremont colleges actually go to Harvey Mudd specifically for the music courses. And, of course, a Harvey Mudd student can take music classes at the Scripps & Pomona, as well.</p>
<p>Of course, but and that defeats the purpose of a LAC, IMO. If one wants the resources of a mid-sized Uni, one might as well attend a mid-sized Uni.</p>
<p>btw: the very first music course listed in Mudd’s catalog is taught at Scripps. Others music courses are taught jointly across the colleges. A few are Mudd-only, but not sure that the OP meant computer synthesizers…</p>
<p>How can you compare five small co-located colleges with an aggregate enrollment of about 6,500, with a “mid-sized University” as you say, like Stanford, that has over 18,000 students on a campus ten times the size, plus a Medical complex?</p>
<p>When you include introductory seminars, which are not administered by the registrar (which compiles the statistics for the CDS) but the VPUE, Stanford’s % classes under 15 is 75%. Stanford’s literature always talks about introsems, so it makes sense that they include them. (I know this because I used to work in the office that administers introsems.)</p>
<p>It’s possible that HMC has additional seminar-style classes that it’s not listing under its CDS, but I doubt it, since in Stanford’s case it’s created a separate set of classes that are necessarily small in a large university setting, whereas HMC’s mission is that have those small classes.</p>
<p>Stanford all the way…
Stanford students are really happy with their college for a good reason. More EC opp, more diversity, more rooms to operate, more name recognition, if that even matters to you. Stanford physics is 2nd to none, world class.You have more options there, and Harvey Mudd will absolutely rape ur GPA if ur not pro in math and physics. Mudd is pretty much Caltech’s little sister, say good bye to 4.0 if u go there. Nevertheless, it has a more dominant, math and science culture, if thats what ur looking for, ya, Mudd is for you, but Stanford has far way more option and every other things attached to it</p>
<p>I already said how. Introductory seminars are not administered by the registrar (which compiles the information for the CDS). They are administered by the VPUE. It’s not hard to understand. The 75% figure is not something I personally calculated (though when I do the calculations, it comes out right), but the office in the VPUE calculated it (and I discovered, while working there, that the figure is different because it includes the seminars), and it is corroborated by Stanford literature.</p>