Harvey Mudd College is a highly selective private coeducational undergraduate college
of engineering, mathematics, and science that could well be billed as “one of the best colleges
in America that most people have never heard of.” The college does not show up in the Final
Four or try to market itself as the Harvard of anywhere. What it does do is attract some of the
nation’s brightest students and offers them a unique, rigorous, and liberal technical education
that is as good as or better than the more famous colleges that some turn down to matriculate
here. There are three key aspects of HMC that set it apart from other top colleges and give the
school its reputation as a leader in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
(STEM) fields. Harvey Mudd College is an intensely small college; it offers majors only in engineering,
science, and mathematics, and it prides itself on having humanities and social sciences
requirements that it hopes will produce “leaders with an understanding of the impact of
their work on humanity.”
For most prospective students Harvey Mudd College seems like a big enough place
engulfed in the larger Claremont Colleges Consortium. In reality, HMC is a close-knit community,
a place where everybody knows your name, or at least everyone recognizes your face. The
entire student body of around 730 “Mudders” is smaller than the high school graduating class
of many incoming students. With ninety-six percent of the school living in the eight dorms (and
the other four percent often crashing with friends on campus), getting to know your fellow
Mudders is easy. The core math and science curriculum ensures that most freshmen are taking
a nearly identical set of classes. All of this community interaction means that the same
group of people you sit with in class in the morning will be eating with you in the dining hall at
lunch, dropping by your room to work on homework that evening, playing intramural innertube
water polo with you later that night, and going out to have a good time together on the
weekend. And it stays that way for four years. With this amount of intimacy, Mudd is a good
place to make great friends and a terrible place to make any enemies.
With no graduate students, no TAs, and a faculty dedicated to a high level of student
interaction, few Mudders fall through the cracks or blend into the woodwork. The administration
and staff take an active role in campus life. The chef in the dining hall and the building
attendants on the night shift are some of the best-liked and most well-known
personalities on campus, regularly chatting with students and offering a chance to be “chef
for a day.” Faculty/staff/student interaction is supported on all levels through “Friday
Forums” (where all are invited to discuss current campus and world issues) and the Campus
Activities Planning (CAP) Committee, a student group that sponsors trips to cultural and fun
events throughout Southern California. It is common for any student to converse freely with
the president of the college, going sailing, surfing, or hiking with a professor, or dropping in
to the office of the dean of students to talk about which campus policies need to be reformed.
This camaraderie and immediate access to the people who make the college run (from the
maintenance staff to the professors to the president) gives Harvey Mudd College a sense of
community unthinkable in the large research-oriented institutions.
Some students find HMC’s small size a bit smothering, and most students need to take
a break from the college every now and then. For these Mudders, the other four undergraduate colleges in Claremont provide a convenient outlet. Within the five undergraduate colleges
and two graduate institutions in Claremont, there are innumerable clubs, organizations,
concerts, art shows, sports teams, and coffeehouses to take your mind away from the academic
rigor of a small engineering and science school. Anyone with a car has the unlimited distractions
of Los Angeles just a quick freeway drive away. Students looking for nationally
televised football games, fraternity/sorority parties, and large government-funded research
laboratories, however, will be sorely disappointed if they come to Harvey Mudd College. What
can be found instead are afternoon pick-up football games, impromptu dorm parties, and small
well-stocked labs where talented faculty involve their undergraduate students in every aspect
of their research.
Harvey Mudd College is a distinctly small school where some of the top undergraduates
in America come together to study engineering, science, and mathematics in an academically
rigorous, but extremely fun, environment. The technical curriculum is broad with
an emphasis on the humanities and social sciences as well as core science, math, and
engineering principals. The residential campus is vibrant with a student body that is
widely talented, dynamic, and quirky in addition to being academically gifted. HMC is
bolstered by its participation in The Claremont Colleges Consortium, which gives Mudd
students access to academic resources, course offerings, athletics, and other opportunities
that could not otherwise be supported by a small technical college. The student-run
Honor Code demands integrity and honesty from every student. In addition, the general
pace and atmosphere of the college demands a healthy sense of humor in addition to a
healthy work ethic and a strong affinity for engineering, science, and math.
Harvey Mudd College
Academics
Although Mudders tend to be extremely talented and have widely varying interests and
hobbies, everyone’s course load at HMC revolves around a heap of rigorous courses in engineering,
science, and math. The core curriculum demands that every student take courses in
physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering, and a lot of math. Coincidentally,
these are the same six fields that you can choose to major in at Mudd. Students with a distaste
for one of these fields will find themselves sitting in tough classes with high expectations, a
motivated professor, a steep grading curve, and a room full of classmates who are engrossed in
the subject matter. Almost everyone will be surprised by the level of challenge in at least one
such course during the freshman or sophomore year before settling into classes of individual
interest or which are required for their chosen major.
Humanities and Social Sciences
The significant humanities and social sciences requirement (around one-third of the
total graduation requirements) makes the curriculum at Harvey Mudd College far more
interesting and challenging than the typical tech school. Mudd has been described as “a liberal
arts college of science and engineering.” Indeed, the educational approach at Mudd is
to provide young scientists and engineers with a broad, liberal education including courses
in a variety of technical and nontechnical fields. Although no one without a strong affinity
for the sciences and engineering should enroll at HMC, those who have little appreciation
for fields outside of math and science would be frustrated here.
Few Mudders can fill the requirements for their technical classes anywhere other than
HMC, but it is common for students to take advantage of the vast course offerings in the
humanities and social sciences at the other four undergraduate colleges in Claremont. The
Claremont Colleges Consortium provides Mudd students with a wide array of course offerings
including music, fine arts, and foreign languages. The strong academic programs at the other
colleges in Claremont allow Mudders to study nontechnical fields in depth and even double
major if they so desire.
One of my classmates double majored in chemistry at Mudd and literature
at Scripps College; another was the concertmaster for the Pomona College orchestra
and double majored in music. Next to them I felt like an academic slacker completing
my physics major from Mudd with an economics concentration.
Some of the best and most interesting “HSS” (humanities and social sciences) professors
in Claremont, however, teach right here at Harvey Mudd College. These professors teach
here out of the sole desire to teach Mudders, for they will never have their students major in
their fields of interest, which makes their devotion to the college unique. Every student is
required to take several of these classes on HMC’s campus. Though the humanities courses
offered at Mudd may seem limited to some, the department listens to student interests and
desires and hires new faculty based upon this feedback. Recently, a professor of Chinese
Language and Culture joined the faculty to meet an increasing demand for language classes on
campus. Other popular classes include an annual Shakespeare seminar, The Media Studio (a
course in media production), and an economics course entitled Enterprise and
Entrepreneurship. At the end of each semester the computer labs are filled through the night
with as many students writing humanities term papers as students running computer simulations
of chemical processes.
Majors
After three well-regimented semesters of the core curriculum, students complete their
career at Harvey Mudd taking classes in their major and completing the humanities
requirements. The six majors at Harvey Mudd are all academically broad in their own right.
The most popular major, engineering, shuns the specialization seen in other top engineering
programs for an emphasis on core design principals, mathematical modeling, and a
cross-disciplinary “systems” approach to the ever-broadening field of engineering. The
chemistry, physics, and biology majors are largely focused on producing top-caliber graduate
students who will go on to become career scientists, although in recent years more and
more Mudd science majors are studying and pursuing applied fields. A math and computer
science joint major and a “chemistry and biology” joint major lead students into an exciting
and evolving new area of study. A mathematical biology joint major opens the door of opportunity
to an emerging and critical area of future endeavor.
All students at Mudd must have a concentration in a humanities or social sciences field
in addition to their technical major. This concentration (which may as well be termed a
mini-minor) may be in any nontechnical field from dance to political science to religious history.
The vast array of course offerings in Claremont gives Mudd students a lot of options in
choosing their HSS course of studies, although students must take about half of their nontechnical
courses from HMC faculty members.
Projects
As students enter their senior year, they are required to undertake a year-long project to
demonstrate their knowledge and abilities to the faculty, while learning how to budget
and develop a lengthy project. For the majority of science and math majors, this involves a
theses research project where students design and formally propose projects under the guidance
of a chosen professor. Many students choose to begin research as early as their freshman
year, and often these students continue this research for their theses. The facilities are
first class, from the high tech NMR machine in the chemistry department to the laser scanning
confocal microscope in the biology department to the magnetism lab in the physics
department. (Even more, students have access to these facilities around the clock thanks to
the college’s Honor Code.) Both professors and students alike consistently win awards for
undergraduate research and publish in the top scientific journals in their fields.
Engineering and Computer Science majors, as well as those who prefer applied areas
of study to theoretical endeavors, will take part in Clinic projects as their Capstone
research experience.
The Clinic Program (pioneered by HMC more than forty years ago) brings blue-chip
corporate sponsors to campus to “hire” teams of four to six HMC engineering, math,
physics, and computer science majors for one-year projects that solve a problem or fill a
need for the company. The Clinic projects, both domestic and international, give students
at Mudd the opportunity to deal with the real-world issues of working with a client, facing
deadlines, writing reports, presenting and defending their work, and finding solutions to
problems that do not appear in a textbook. The nature of the Clinic projects varies widely
both in scope and in subject matter. Recent projects have included a device to measure
whether nuclear sites have weapons-grade or research-grade material inside, to camera
boards on the latest deployment of two miniature satellites called picosats that took photographs
of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-116) in December 2007, to designing the next
generation of surfboards. Numerous patents have come out of work done by HMC Clinic
teams over the years, and many companies return to sponsor Clinic projects year after year,
in part to recruit HMC undergrads for future employment.
The Honor Code
Every HMC student commits to a robust, student-administered Honor Code. The Honor
Code is a statement of integrity and honesty and is taken very seriously by all members
of the community. It engenders a high level of trust between faculty and students. Openbook,
un-proctored, and take-home exams are all common at Mudd, and cheating of any
kind is simply not tolerated. Students are encouraged to study and work in groups, but are
also instructed to acknowledge their classmates who help them on homework assignments.
Mudders scorn cut-throat competition; a big reason they chose to attend HMC was so they
could learn from and live with very bright peers who want to work in an atmosphere of collaboration
and camaraderie.
Course Load
Atypical course load at Mudd is five courses per semester. At least one lab per semester
and one or two HSS classes per semester is the norm. Those who choose to double
major often enroll in six classes each semester. Those who can get away with taking four
classes (through summer school, advanced placement, or sheer luck) are teased by their
friends for slacking off. At the other four undergraduate colleges in Claremont, and many
other private colleges, four classes per semester is the accepted norm.
Grades
The grading scale at HMC can be harsh, although most Mudders exaggerate the cruelty
of their grades. GPAs average around 3.3 at graduation, although many freshmen and
sophomores suffer through much lower GPAs in the core curriculum before pulling them up
during their junior and senior years. HMC does not inflate grades, but neither does the college
wish to weed anyone out. Students who do not perform well in classes are given several
notices with ample time to correct their behaviors. They can seek counsel from faculty
who are readily available and who want them to succeed, and can always lean on a classmate
or upper-class student for help.
Struggling through freshman physics was one of the best things that ever
happened to me at Mudd. Although it was a real blow to my ego at the time, it
forced me to get serious about my homework and not let things slide until an
exam came along as I had in high school. The study habits I adopted in order to
get through physics became part of my routine for every class and helped me keep
my grades up for the rest of college—although to this day I still hate physics.
Midterms and finals, almost always administered without a proctor, can be very tough.
The freedom a student has to take an exam “home” gives license to the faculty to provide some
extremely challenging problems, intended to determine what a student has mastered and perhaps
what they can deduce on their own. Class average scores of fifty to sixty percent on an
exam are common with some students who had 4.0s in high school scoring in the twenty to
thirty percent range. Fortunately, most of the faculty at HMC grades on a sliding scale and
there is an abundance of Academic Excellence seminars available for students who fall behind
in their studies or wish to go beyond the course material.
Freshmen at Mudd do not receive letter grades for their first semester classes in order
to give incoming students a chance to adjust to high academic expectations as well as the transition
to life at a residential college. An Associate Dean of the Faculty serves as ombudsman
for students, making sure exam schedules are coordinated to spare the students from having
to face exams or major assignments due on consecutive days. This Associate Dean also meets
with faculty in each department regularly and intervenes with individual students to make sure
that no one “slips through the cracks.”
Students at Mudd are expected to work hard, study hard, and do an abundance of homework
each of their four years at HMC (and few take more than four years to graduate). The
work load is heavy, but the competition between students is not. Studying in groups is standard,
peer tutoring is widely offered on both a formal and informal basis, and the faculty keep long
office hours and offer extended review sessions before exams.
Most Popular Fields of Study
The top 5 fields of study completed at Harvey Mudd College.
Getting into Harvey Mudd College can be as much fun (and as difficult) as graduating
from the place. Over the past several years, HMC’s Office of Admissions has worked hard to put
a human face on the sometimes cold and judgmental world of college admissions. The school’s
clever “Junk Mail piece” (a satirical mailing introducing Harvey Mudd College to prospective
students), adds much needed levity to the college recruiting process, poking fun at the way
most schools try to market themselves, while at the same time drawing in the type of savvy but
not humorless student that Harvey Mudd seeks to attract.
I got way more personal attention from the Admission Office at Harvey
Mudd College than any other college I applied to. I liked the fact that every letter
I received was signed in ink, not laser printed or photocopied. Any time I had
questions I was able to talk to someone directly and not just get brushed off in
favor of some pamphlet dropped in the mail. I felt that I was a welcome part of
the college before I ever saw the campus.
Harvey Mudd College is a highly selective college and the applicant pool is dominated by
students in the top ten percent of their high school class. Each year around one-fourth of the
incoming class is made up students who were National Merit finalists or who were #1 or #2 in
their high school class. As opposed to some larger schools, the HMC Office of Admissions avoids
hard-and-fast admission minimums or formulas. Instead, the staff at HMC favors reading each
application and determining if the individual applicant is the sort of student who will thrive at
Mudd. The staff does, however, insist that every incoming freshman at Mudd has had chemistry,
physics, and calculus as part of a rigorous and successful high school career.
SAT scores among applicants tend to be extremely high. Aptitude in math and science,
as measured by curriculum and grades, but also scores, is considered very carefully in the selection
process. A very heavy emphasis is also placed on communication skills. The ability to move
easily between different disciplines and ways of thinking is also valued. HMC produces excellent
problem solvers who can think, write, and express themselves, as well as perform laboratory
research and engineering calculations.
The college has been successful in adding more diversity to its student body in the last
several years; for example, the last two entering classes have included about forty percent
women students. Extracurricular activities, unique talents, interests, hobbies, and a diversity
of geographic and cultural backgrounds are all taken into consideration in the admission
process, although academic aptitude remains the essential component in each admission decision.
Interviews are encouraged, although visiting the campus and experiencing its unique
atmosphere is highly recommended for prospective students.
Financial Aid
Harvey Mudd College is, unfortunately, an expensive place to go to college. The school
is young (founded in 1955) and has an impressive endowment for its age, but does not bathe
in the financial resources that much older institutions enjoy. However, most of the students
(around eighty percent) receive financial aid of some form. As at other prestigious private
institutions, students and parents alike can accrue a sizable debt over their four years at
HMC. The consistency of Mudd graduates being placed in high-paying jobs and prestigious
graduate school programs, however, makes all of this debt much easier to stomach and faster
to pay off.
Fortunately, HMC is the type of small institution that can give students personal attention,
even in financial aid matters. It’s common for parents to call and discuss their child’s
financial aid package with the college’s Office of Financial Aid or with the college vice president
overseeing the financial aid office. Mudd will work with parents and students to adjust
financial aid awards and to establish payment plans that help ensure that any student who has
been admitted to HMC has every opportunity to attend the college.
Student Financial Aid Details
How many students use Financial Aid, and how much do they use?
Harvey Mudd College 3421st for the average student loan amount.
Secrets to getting the best California scholarships and financial aid
Social life at Harvey Mudd revolves around eight on-campus dorms in which nearly the
entire student body resides.
Each dormitory at HMC has a distinct personality and set of traditions. The social
atmosphere in any given dorm (and indeed on the entire campus) evolves somewhat with every
group of new students, but there is some continuity in the types of students found hanging out
in certain dorms at Mudd year after year. Dorm stereotypes are plentiful: West Dorm is rowdy,
East is secluded and quiet, South is eclectic, North is where the athletes live, etc. HMC is small
enough (and homogeneous enough) that students are generally comfortable regardless of
which foreign dorm they end up in for a review session, study break, or weekend party. Of
course, many students take up residence in a dorm that is not their first choice, and Mudders
tend to have friends scattered across multiple dorms; most students at Mudd reside in more
than one dorm over the course of their four years.
The dorms are all coed and include a mix of students from all classes. Freshmen are
required to live on campus with a roommate and are placed in all eight dorms. The quad dorms,
the four older dorms on campus, are named for the four points of the compass although in a
Mudd-esque twist of logic, South Dorm is north of West Dorm and west of North Dorm. The quad
dorms are each constructed in the early 1960’s vintage cinderblock style that dominates the
architecture on the campus. The atmosphere tends to be more social in the quad dorms, even
if less aesthetic than the newer dorms, where suite arrangements are typical and students are
more likely to stick with their closest friends. All of the dorms have central lounges with TVs
and DVDs (perfect for weekend movie festivals). On any Friday or Saturday evening, you are
likely to see residents of any dorm banding together for a giant picnic on large hibachi-style
barbecues in the dorm courtyard. A wireless network covers the entire campus.
The Linde Activities Center (LAC), located amidst the dorms, is also a staple of fun and
work. The center includes a weight room, a movement room for martial arts, pilates, dance,
yoga, etc., a competition court for volleyball, basketball, etc., a room for table games like
foozball, air hockey, pool, a TV room with satellite and DVDs for smaller gatherings. Two meeting
rooms and a large computer room reside upstairs.
The proctors (seniors trained in first aid, crisis management, and handing out candy)
are placed in each dorm. The roles of the proctors are to mentor those in need and maintain
a sense of community within the dorms; they aren’t rule enforcers and disciplinarians.
There is little non-student presence on campus after hours, except for one faculty member
in residence and the bike-pedaling Claremont College campus safety force. Mudd students
enjoy a tremendous amount of freedom, and necessarily, responsibility. There are a host of
official and not-so-official student government organizations on campus that set student policy,
organize events, discipline those who step over the line, and promote the general welfare.
Parties and Competitions
Parties of all sizes, from small spontaneous gatherings to well-hyped five-college extravaganzas,
take place at frequent intervals in the dorms on the HMC campus. Mudd parties
are reputed throughout The Claremont Colleges to be the biggest, most creative, and most fun
parties in Claremont. Parties must serve attractive alternative non-alcoholic drinks in addition
to any alcoholic offerings. As on most college campuses, alcohol is noticeable although
drinking and driving is not, since all of the parties are within walking distance on campus. In
truth, HMC’s rigorous academic curriculum ensures that students who do not understand
when to stop partying and start studying will not last very long on the campus.
There is a sizable portion of the student body at Mudd that does not drink at all and
there are always a myriad of nonalcoholic events at HMC including regular movies, concerts,
and off-campus trips. “Jay’s place,” an on-campus pizza parlor and pool hall, is a popular
hangout seven nights a week, occasionally offering up live music and other events. Mudders
are as good at coming up with creative and unique extracurricular activities for themselves
as they are at throwing parties. The Etc. (extremely theatrically confused) Players produce
original plays as well as old standards as often as they can get a willing cast together (three
or four times a year). Other Mudd clubs plan outdoor events like the Delta-H (which means
“change in height”) club, race the school yacht Mildred (a nineteen-foot class boat named
for Mrs. Harvey Mudd), and coordinate volunteer opportunities for Mudders looking to use
up the last remaining ounce of their valuable spare time.
The annual class competition event is a giant relay race that crisscrosses the campus
with representatives from each class performing in such events as whistling with
peanut butter in one’s mouth, computer programming under pressure, running a sevenlegged
race, and stuffing a textbook into a milk bottle. Faculty and staff serve as judges for
the events, although stretching the rules is a time-honored tradition. After the race is over
(it takes about thirty minutes), the entire campus settles in for a picnic and celebration of
all things great about being at Harvey Mudd College.
Trips
Claremont is well located for weekend and spring break road trips. Los Angeles, Las
Vegas, the Joshua Tree National Monument, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Tijuana are
all within three hours by car. San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, and resort towns in Baja
are all popular locations, well within the reach of road-tripping HMC students with a few
days break. Perhaps the most popular road trip among Mudd students, however, is to
DonutMan (a.k.a. Foster’s), home of world-famous strawberry donuts. Mudders make the
fifteen-minute drive late at night, bypassing numerous other inferior donut shops along the
way. This is the popular eating spot for Mudders who are studying late (or taking a break
from studying late).
Student Enrollment Demographics
How many students are enrolled at Harvey Mudd College?
Despite the emphasis on academics, Mudd is a very athletic campus. Many Mudders
achieve in varsity sports, although for some students it is difficult to find time to participate
in the NCAA Division III athletic program HMC shares with Claremont McKenna and
Scripps Colleges. Intramural sports are popular, with inner-tube water-polo as the clear
favorite. Intramurals help promote dorm rivalries. They rarely require a great deal of skill, and
always provide fun stress relief. There are plenty of club sports to go around like the fencing
club or cycling or badminton, and several are extremely successful: the Ultimate Frisbee team
is well regarded regionally, while the ballroom dance team and rugby teams (one each for
men and for women) enjoy national reputations. Pick-up games of volleyball, basketball, soccer,
and Frisbee are daily occurrences at Mudd, as most students are looking for any chance
to put aside their homework, soak up some sun, and release some stress. HMC is near Mt.
Baldy, one of Southern California’s highest peaks, which means that quality mountain biking,
hiking, and skiing are less than a half hour away.
Alumni
Perhaps the greatest testament to Harvey Mudd College is the success of its alumni
body. Mudd has produced a greater percentage of graduates who go on to receive Ph.D.s
(nearly forty percent) than any other undergraduate institution over the last several years.
Mudders are in such demand that those who decide to enter Ph.D. programs usually are
completely funded for their graduate studies. And many Clinic sponsors offer jobs to
Mudders before they have even graduated. A respectable percentage of HMC alumni own
their own businesses and alums litter the faculty ranks at top colleges across the country
(including five who teach at HMC). HMC alumni have diverse endeavors. Not bad for a college
with around 4,500 total alumni, fewer than many universities produce in a single year.
About forty percent of the students at Mudd
step directly into the top graduate programs in the
country. Students from all majors regularly make the
choice to go immediately to graduate school out of
Mudd, but the chemistry and biology majors are especially valuable commodities and generally
can write their own ticket into the graduate program of their choice. In the past several years,
numerous highly prized NSF fellowships, Churchill scholarships, Hertz Fellowships, Thomas
Watson Fellowships, and two Rhodes Scholarships have been handed out to Harvey Mudd
College graduates.
Due to the HMC Clinic Program and the continuing success of Mudd alums in the
work force, dozens of companies come to campus each year to recruit HMC engineering,
physics, computer science, and math majors. HMC graduates leave college with a set of
skills and experiences that are unique to the Mudd philosophy of education, and invaluable
to employers. These experiences include working in randomly selected teams of peers,
tackling open-ended problems with no clear solution, exploring the intersection of different
technical fields, and generally working hard with limited resources under tough deadlines
and related stress.
In my first year out of Mudd working for a big Silicon Valley software
firm I was amazed at how most of the guys I started with would complain about
the long hours and difficult project assignments that they felt were way over
their heads. All I could think was ‘this stuff is fun and interesting and a hell of a
lot easier to manage than my clinic project back at Mudd was.’ I was certainly
challenged in my new job but I wasn’t overwhelmed like the other new guys.
A few Harvey Mudd College graduates go on to business, law, or medical school,
although most pursue more traditional careers in engineering, science, and math. Medical
school applicants from HMC often face the disadvantage of a lower GPA than most of the
competing applicant pool who have not endured HMC’s rigorous curriculum and grading
curve. A growing number of Mudd students are pursuing volunteer service appointments
Prominent Grads
Richard Jones, Ambassador
Stan Love, Astronaut
Michael Wilson, Film Producer
Demographics – Main Campus and Surrounding Areas
Reported area around or near Claremont, CA 91711
Surrounding community
Large suburb (inside urban area but outside city, pop. over 250,000)
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