Swarthmore vs. Harvey Mudd

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>I'm a senior in high school right now choosing between Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd. I am interested in engineering as a potential major. I am not sure if I would prefer being surrounded by liberal arts people or math/science/engineering people, so I will instead decide based on the following question:</p>

<p>Which place would be better to go to if I want to invent a teleporter?</p>

<p>Or these would help too: which place has more creative students? Which place has happier students?</p>

<p>Preemptive thanks for your help.</p>

<p>Mudd if you want to invent a teleporter, Mudd if you want happier students. Creatively, they're about equal. Have you visited?</p>

<p>I have. I enjoyed them both a lot, which makes it a very difficult decision.</p>

<p>You are facing a fairly common decision. Each year, there are students who like both Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd and must choose.</p>

<p>It's a particularly difficult choice because it requires you to make fundamental preferences that only you can make. Even your question shows that you already know this:</p>

<p>Do you want a pure science/engineering school, living with an entire school of science/engineering students?</p>

<p>Or, do you want to study science/engineering in the context of a full-range liberal arts college where your roommate may be an English major and you may spend a night arguing Foucault with another friend?</p>

<p>Nobody can answer that for you. Something I would recommend thinking about is how sure you are about a science/engineering major and how interested you are in exploring other fields.</p>

<p>^ well, there's always the four other claremont schools for social interaction/classes if you feel constricted in the heavy science/engineering environment of mudd. if you're absolutely sure that you want to do the sciences/engineering, i'd say to go to mudd. if you really want to explore and aren't sure, then i would advise swarthmore.</p>

<p>I would tend to think Harvey Mudd would be the better choice.</p>

<p>Definitely Mudd if you're going for engineering, although I hear Swarthmore does have a good engineering program for a liberal arts college.</p>

<p>Honestly, I think Mudd would be the better choice because it has the best of both worlds, a small scientific community with in a larger liberal arts community. If you get sick of pure science and math just walk 5 minutes to one of the other Claremont schools. Although Swarthmore has a good science department for liberal arts college, Mudd has programs that are on par with Caltech and MIT.</p>

<p>What happens if you finish your first semester at Harvey Mudd and decide that you can't stand the thought of taking another engineering course?</p>

<p>That's something that needs to be considered carefully before committing to any specialty college. Most 18 years olds have no idea what they want to major in and change their minds before ultimately declaring a major. Some do know.</p>

<p>Interestingly, 23.8% of Mudd graduates over the most recent ten year period went on to get PhDs in Science & Engineering - 2nd highest percentage in the country behind CalTech.</p>

<p>During the same period 13.9% of all Swarthmore grads got PhDs in Science & Engineering -- 4th in the country behind CalTech, Mudd, and MIT. But, when you consider that this is 4th in the country when only a third or so of Swat grads even majored in Science & Engineering (as opposed to essentially 100% at CalTech and Mudd, that's an astonishing number. I would not be surprised if science & engineering majors from Swarthmore go on to get PhDs in science & engineering at the highest rate of any undergrad school in the country. Certainly higher than Mudd and MIT, probably even higher than CalTech.</p>

<p>So, the benefits of a full-range environment only come with a relatively small cost in terms of the science/engineering side, at least as measured by that outcome.</p>

<p>Swarthmore</a> College :: Institutional Research :: Doctorates Awarded</p>

<p>I vote Mudd, but it's too late now :P</p>

<p>Which one did you end up choosing?</p>

<p>
[quote]
During the same period 13.9% of all Swarthmore grads got PhDs in Science & Engineering -- 4th in the country behind CalTech, Mudd, and MIT. But, when you consider that this is 4th in the country when only a third or so of Swat grads even majored in Science & Engineering (as opposed to essentially 100% at CalTech and Mudd, that's an astonishing number.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I'm curious, how many students does Swarthmore graduate in their science and engineering programs every year?</p>

<p>
[quote]
During the same period 13.9% of all Swarthmore grads got PhDs in Science & Engineering -- 4th in the country behind CalTech, Mudd, and MIT. But, when you consider that this is 4th in the country when only a third or so of Swat grads even majored in Science & Engineering (as opposed to essentially 100% at CalTech and Mudd, that's an astonishing number. I would not be surprised if science & engineering majors from Swarthmore go on to get PhDs in science & engineering at the highest rate of any undergrad school in the country. Certainly higher than Mudd and MIT, probably even higher than CalTech.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Swat’s PhD rate is basically half of Mudd’s and one-third of Caltech’s. Thus, in order for Swat science students to have the same rate as Caltech science students, all of the PhD’s awarded to Swat graduates would have had to be in science. This doesn’t even take into account the fact that not every Caltech student is a science major. </p>

<p>A more reasonable assumption is that science students are twice as likely to get a PhD as non-science students. I have no idea what the actual proportion is, but if you assume this then the science student PhD rate is around 21%. This is still below Mudd’s 23.4%. So I don’t think anything is “certain” based on the assumptions that you made. </p>

<p>The % PhD statistic is good for comparing tech school to tech school, LAC school to LAC school, or University to University. When you start comparing different types of schools, the data becomes less applicable.</p>

<p>


And even then, small discrepancies can lead to systematic errors. For instance, Mudd has a higher percentage of engineering students (compared to pure science students) than Caltech. Since engineering students tend not get a PhD as often as pure science students, Mudd's PhD production rate is artificially lowered by people who have no interest in getting a PhD. </p>

<p>It's an intriguing statistic, but unless it's normalized to the number of people interested in obtaining a PhD, it's not a useful comparison to make between schools.</p>

<p>I imagine at schools such as Mudd and Caltech, people interested in obtaining a PhD and people getting into PhD programs approaches 100%.</p>

<p>Within my department at CMU, I know in the year before me, my year, and the year after me, all of us who wanted to go to grad school were able to attend a school we were happy with.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I'm curious, how many students does Swarthmore graduate in their science and engineering programs every year?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Over the past twenty years, it's fluctuated from a low in the 75 range to a high in the 125 range. 100 is probably a reasonable average:</p>

<p>By Division:
<a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/degsmajorschart.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/degsmajorschart.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>By Department:
<a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/DegMajors.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/DegMajors.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
Swat’s PhD rate is basically half of Mudd’s and one-third of Caltech’s. Thus, in order for Swat science students to have the same rate as Caltech science students, all of the PhD’s awarded to Swat graduates would have had to be in science. This doesn’t even take into account the fact that not every Caltech student is a science major.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>No, that's just Swarthmore's 13.9% of all graduates getting science and engineering PhDs. Swarthmore's overall PhD rate (in all fields) is 21%.</p>

<p>Based on the math, something like 40% of all Swarthmore math, science, and engineering majors have gone on to get PhDs over the most recent ten year period.</p>

<p>A more relevant statistic may be the conditional probability for a PhD student to attend one of the top PhD programs in his field based on on undergraduate degree origin. </p>

<p>The following study analyzes this issue:
<a href="http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/conf/chericonf2003/chericonf2003_03.pdf"&gt;www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/conf/chericonf2003/chericonf2003_03.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>The data for Swarthmore was quite impressive coming in 6th overall and as the top LAC by a wide margin with a 44% conditional probability only surpassed by Harvard at 62%, MIT at 57%, Princeton and Yale at 52% and Berkeley at 48%.</p>

<p>Somehow, the data for Harvey Mudd (or Caltech for that matter) was not included for whatever reason.</p>

<p>"I imagine at schools such as Mudd and Caltech, people interested in obtaining a PhD and people getting into PhD programs approaches 100%.</p>

<p>Within my department at CMU, I know in the year before me, my year, and the year after me, all of us who wanted to go to grad school were able to attend a school we were happy with."</p>

<p>Well, I don't know. I want to get a PhD someday but I don't necessarily have the grades to get into the grad programs I would like to get into. Perhaps they will take a good hard look at my resume and take a chance on me...</p>

<p>But think about all the other students at Mudd who don't have great GPAs or fantastic resumes and would like to get PhDs. The yield for what you speak of is probably closer to 70%.</p>

<p>I see absolutely nothing to suggest that getting into grad school should be a concern for anyone considering Caltech, Harvey Mudd, or Swarthmore. These are the top 3 per capita producers of PhDs in the United States. Obviously, they prepare students well and get them into PhD programs. These three schools stock PhD programs like the University of Miami stocks NFL teams.</p>