<p>And let's not forget the possibility of current alumni receiving nobels before they die. Average age at which one receives a nobel is probably 40 to 50 (at the lowest), so subtract alumnis who graduated in the last 20 years.</p>
<p>edit to add: and I see that Joe already pointed this out. Oh well...</p>
<p>QED comment = joke.</p>
<p>apples? i love 'em. so did newton.</p>
<p>my remarks are not blind. i'm living at caltech and doing research for them as well.</p>
<p>when comparing the death factor and nobel prize age (40-50) factor, that does nothing when cross-comparing schools because any school can pull that card.</p>
<p>let's keep in mind that the oldest alum from hmc is 68 or 69 years old.... that means that most of mudd's potential winners are statistically below the age margin.</p>
<p>caltech boasts a bunch of nobel prizes to draw students away from schools like harvey mudd. i hear the argument way too frequently. i think using it as a success indicator is a crock of shiz for the following reasons:</p>
<p>hmc is very new and has very few alums, many of which are engineers
the nobel prize is a bit hyped in our society as the pinnacle of success
grad program excellence does not necessarily mean undergrad program success</p>
<p>I don't know what HMC has to do with the discussion but Caltech doesn't push its Nobels to attract people away from LACs. HMC is an excellent school and Techers often recommend HMC as an alternative even in preference to larger name brand Universitiies. </p>
<p>Caltech celebrates its Nobels to focus on Tech's unique achievements. In fact, the way Caltech counts Nobelists is very sober and limited (only alums and profs who received their Nobels while in residence or before arriving at Caltech). Contrast this with schools that often include people who spent a year or two as postdocs or visitors at any point in their careers. Mighty Chicago devalues their Nobel tradition by counting this way. If Caltech did that Einstein and many others would be considered Caltech nobelists.</p>
<p>As for the claim about the grad program only, that is the point of doing the per capita calculation. Even if we look ONLY at undergrads produced before the 1990s we're talking 7 Nobels for about 7000-9000 students.</p>
<p>Better yet, just look at undergrads getting the Econ Nobel as an example -- clearly selected because it is NOT Caltech's specialty. Yet the ratio is roughly 1 per 8000. In contrast U of Chicago only has 4 or 5 undergrad Nobelists (I think) divided by some 60-80,000 alumni for the period from 1900-1990. Virtually every other school (except possibly Swarthmore) surely does much worse than Chicago and Caltech on a per capita basis. And using all undergrad alumni as the denominator hurts Tech since fewer than 100 undergrads went on to receive a PhD in Econ or PoliSci before the 1990s.</p>
<p>The Nobel Prize isn't everything, but a lot of schools obviously care a great deal. Judged by the fraction of its alums -- both grad and undergrad who get it -- Caltech is not simply amazing, it is off the charts. Whether looking only at undergrad or only grad alumni the ratios are about 1 in 1500 or better. </p>
<p>There are a lot of reasons to attend other schools and the great schools offer many things Tech does not. Since Caltech isn't big on producing Presidents or Supreme Court Justices, it's worth stressing what Tech is really, really good at.</p>
<p>"my remarks are not blind. i'm living at caltech and doing research for them as well."</p>
<p>As do many, many students from many, many schools. How did your experience "living at Caltech" influence your thinking towards the belief that Caltech had <strong><em>70,000</em></strong> undergraduate alumni?! You edited your post later after the figure was ridiculed, but really, that's off by a factor of 5 or 6! How can you claim not to be blind? You clearly don't have a clue.</p>
<p>P.S. Why aren't you doing your research at Harvey Mudd?</p>
<p>RocketDA seems to have gotten worked up over the fact that Caltech's 32 Nobel prizes slightly edge out Harvey Mudd's 0, and we have the audacity to sometimes say the number "32"... but I don't think you should worry, RocketDA. HMC is not the "enemy" because your focus and spirit are quite similar to Caltech's, and we think highly of you here. Anyway, why should the Nobel figure bother you? As you said, HMC is more of an engineering school, and you probably think pure science isn't worth a darn anyway. The sole point is that Caltech has proven itself to be far and away the best at pure science. (I mean, strictly speaking we also have educated a founder of Xerox, Intel, Compaq, and Hotmail, among other things; and the creators of Mathematica and MATLAB... but that's just on the side.)</p>
<p>It's really Harvard, etc. whom this observation is intended to tweak. Of the elite American universities, Caltech is by far the most effective, pound for pound, at producing and attracting world-class scientists. Despite other institutions' bigger names (in the "random man on the street sense"), we still dominate in sheer strength in this regard, which I think merits pointing out.</p>
<p>Separately, however, since rocketDA insists on calling Caltech's accomplishments "a crock", why don't you do me a favor and look at HMC's</a> notable alumni list and compare to Caltech's -- even just in engineering.</p>
<p>I see several medium-high level staff at JPL, a few astronauts, a few corporate executives (a Chief Marketing Officer of Intel -- alas, not quite as high as Gordon Moore, the Chairman of the same firm and Caltech alum). To be blunt, people of the level of HMC's notable alumni list don't even come close to making the Caltech notable alumni list, because there is such an overwhelmning number of Caltech graduates who would fit the bill. We've produced at least two directors of JPL (yes, the whole thing) that I can name off the top of my head, including the current one, but they don't even make the Wikipedia list. When we have to list Linus Pauling and Kip Thorne, that kind of puts things in perspective.</p>
<p>I don't mean to beat up on Harvey Mudd, but the more belligerent of you need to get your act together. The fact that you've been around for a relatively short time doesn't entitle you to the presumption of greatness. (Though we should note that it isn't even that short a time. By the time The California Institute of Technology had been around for 51 years -- HMC's present age -- it already had 14 Nobels to its name, 4 of them students, 2 of them who had received a BS from the Institute. How many Nobel faculty at HMC so far? How about alumni?) </p>
<p>Also, the fact that you don't have any graduate schools doesn't entitle you to the presumption of greatness. So what if many of our Nobelists are Ph.D. alumni? They were here at the Institute and our graduate students add immeasurably to the intellectual life of the campus. The fact that you don't have any graduate schools doesn't entitle you to ignore ours for comparison purposes. Much as you would like to.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is a good school, no doubt, but *it has not produced even one person of the caliber of Caltech's best graduates<a href="even%20in%20the%20BS%20program%20alone">/i</a>. If you're going to try to call what we do a "crock" then you'd better be ready to face that music. Or you can try to argue with the italicized statement above. (But please, bring facts and names, not misspelled bad words.) C'mon. I dare you. ;-)</p>
<p>Note the inaccuracy some overzealous alum has inserted on that Wikipedia page! "Harvey Mudd College leads the nation in percentage of graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. well over 40% in recent years. Over 65% go on to earn at least a Master's degree.[citation needed]"</p>
<p>No kidding, citation needed. Good luck finding one.</p>
<p>(Note that the second bit of "trivia" on that page is <em>very</em> carefully phrased to carve out a little niche of notability for HMC, but it's probably at least true, unlike the first.)</p>
<p>It's wikipedia... someone should just fix that. I didn't even put fix in quotes.</p>
<p>i'm just saying that i am tired of hearing people using the nobel prize argument to determine the academic excellence of an undergraduate program.</p>
<p>mudd does have a nobel prize winner... but he was in a group that received the nobel peace prize or something.</p>
<p><em>sarcasm</em> you're right. caltech is far superior to any other institution in the country.</p>
<p>We'll see what happens at MCM, Putnam, and IPC this year.</p>
<p>You sound like you're bitter towards Caltech, rocketDA =(</p>
<p>Cheer up! Here's a cookie for you.</p>
<p>"As do many, many students from many, many schools. How did your experience "living at Caltech" influence your thinking towards the belief that Caltech had <strong><em>70,000</em></strong> undergraduate alumni?! You edited your post later after the figure was ridiculed, but really, that's off by a factor of 5 or 6! How can you claim not to be blind? You clearly don't have a clue."</p>
<p>First off, you're wrong about my editing of my post. I edited the post at multiple times... with the last one at 5:15pm. At that point, no one had ridiculed my math yet. I had changed it because i was a factor of 4 off for accounting for each class size rather than the whole school. The figure I used was 80% of the current class size from 1906-2006. I presumed that the class sizes were smaller earilier on...averaging around 80% of what they are now.</p>
<p>The figure I used was not living alums... it was an approximation for the number of students in the last 100 years.</p>
<p>Why am I not doing research at HMC? Because I wanted to have a change of scenery. I got two jobs... one at SRI and one at CalTech/JPL. Looks like the CalTech/JPL gig will be a long term thing.</p>
<p>Listen, stop attacking me. You do not know my story. I was obsessed with CalTech my whole life until my junior year in H.S.. I talked to several students and during an internship at JPL, I realized that CalTech really gets its glory from the grad school.</p>
<p>BTW, that PhD/masters figure is not necessarily B.S. We get a huge boost from our chemistry department as in recent years, 80% of the students have gone on to PhD's. (yes, 80%)
<a href="http://www.chem.hmc.edu/www_common/chemistry/prospective/intro06.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.chem.hmc.edu/www_common/chemistry/prospective/intro06.htm</a></p>
<p>I'm not worked up at all... but it seems that you are.</p>
<p>"You sound like you're bitter towards Caltech, rocketDA =("
I'm bitter because I'm tired of the Caltech elitist mentality. Most people are not this way but some people think that they are the $hit and it gets annoying after awhile.</p>
<p>First, your Harvey Mudd Nobel claim is true</a> but laughable:
[quote]
Robert Kelley '67 and his wife, Kathleen, are part of the 2,200-member Secretariat of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that was recognized in October as co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. The organization members, who share the honor with agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, were noted "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A Nobel prize won as part of a group of 2,200? Well, make your own judgments. (Linus Pauling won his own peace prize... actually, he won a chemistry one before that. That's 4,400 times as many Nobels as all HMC Nobels combined! ;-)</p>
<p>Second -- elitism is the farthest thing from the majority of Caltech students. Only someone with a gigantic chip on his shoulder (I won't speculate about why) would think of Caltech as an elitist place. We were just discussing one thing that makes Caltech a good place, without mentioning any other school at all, when you ran in complaining about how unfair we were being to HMC... and you claim you're not worked up?</p>
<p>Finally, HMC has never beat Caltech at the Putnam. So sorry :-(.</p>
<p>Your failure to rebut the claim that HMC does not even have one alumnus comparable to the top tier of Caltech alumni finishes this debate. Thanks for the discussion.</p>
<p>"The figure I used was not living alums... it was an approximation for the number of students in the last 100 years."</p>
<p>Right. And you were off by a factor of 5 or so, just like I said.</p>
<p>Note also that 2006 - 1920 =/= 100. Mudd Math? ;-)</p>
<p>"BTW, that PhD/masters figure is not necessarily B.S. We get a huge boost from our chemistry department as in recent years, 80% of the students have gone on to PhD's. (yes, 80%)"</p>
<p>Oh, I don't doubt that 40+% overall could be correct. But the point is, the number for Caltech that I've seen quoted is about 50%, and always the highest on any ranked list. I'm quibbling about the uncited assertion that HMC ranks #1 by this measure, when it's fairly well-known that they don't.</p>
<p>"I'm not worked up at all... but it seems that you are."</p>
<p>And yet none of us are trolling the Mudd board, while you seem to find yourself around these parts quite frequently!</p>
<p>i'm only on this thread because there was a mention of hmc. </p>
<p>you have to admit that mudd does pretty well in the putnam and mcm competitions for its size. the 2001 mcm competition is a great testimony to this.</p>
<p>1) Putnam doesn't depend upon size, last I heard, if you have more than 5 math majors at least! And according to Ben you've never beaten Caltech anyway--I'm inclined to believe him unless you've got an independent source showing otherwise.</p>
<p>2) I've never heard of the "mcm competition." Good job to you if you did well, though!</p>
<p>3) I've never been to the HMC board, so you'll have to tell me--if a thread over there mentions Caltech, do Techers come out of the woodwork? (I imagine that would actually be kind of cruel, so I hope not.)</p>
<p>I'm a little short on time, but here's to answering Joe's comments 1) and 3):</p>
<p>Comment 1: Ben is wrong. I respect you Ben, and you usually have very insightful comments, but this time you're just downright wrong. Mudd has beaten Caltech on at least a few occasions. In the Dec. 2002 competition, Mudd was ranked 6th, Caltech 7th as far as individual teams go (go to 3/03 in <a href="http://www.math.hmc.edu/whatsnew.html)%5B/url%5D">http://www.math.hmc.edu/whatsnew.html)</a>. Furthermore, in the December 2000 competition, Mudd had more top 100 and top 500 finishers than did Caltech (look for 3/01 in that same source). Furthermore, we had more top 500 finishers in Dec. 1999 contest (look for 3/00). That's just the instances I noticed from skimming the news.</p>
<p>3) Yes Joe, we have had some Techers come out onto the Mudd board and portray Caltech as appreciably superior to Mudd, and (I don't know if this is intentional) put us down. However, I'll be fair: rocket, I think you do make some valid points, but you could use some less aggressive language.</p>