LoveMudd

For the accepted HMC kids, what other acceptance letters did you all get? Any from MIT, Caltech, RPI, Cooper Union, etc? How are you going to make the choice (and, hopefully, enroll in HMC)?

techninja

I've received offers from Caltech, Upenn, Olin, Cornell, and HMC.

I'm very keen on Caltech, except their dorms are a bit... hm.

PeacenikPie

RPI (gave me a full ride!), Northwestern, Tufts, Scripps, Carnegie Mellon, Amherst, George Washington, and of course Mudd.

As of now I'm down to Mudd, Tufts, and Northwestern. Tufts has given me a research scholarship and basically a grant to do whatever I want (research-wise) so ultimately that might be where I go. It's so hard though; I love Mudd a lot.

cheersfan

Accepted EA at MIT and withdrew many RA applications except Mudd. Seriously considered Mudd but going to go to MIT. Really liked Mudd and Claremont and wish you all the best.

LabRatInc

techninja: do yourself a favor and go anywhere but caltech.

I just finished my phD there. Was there 6+ years so had a chance to observe the undergrad scene. Therefore, you should take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, because I was not actually in the soup. (Then again, maybe an outside perspective is better?)

Caltech is full of bright, energetic, generally congenial students. Sure, they have a music program which is nice (I played in it for a couple years) and they have foreign language classes, as well as your typical assortment of hums at a tech school. They even have varsity sports teams and all that.

However, their purview is extremely limited because they are at all science school. That is, Caltech does not have the benefit of being part of a larger community, or other colleges immediately surrounding them to offer variety in depth. I perceived that everyone lives and breathes science most (all) the time--not a lot of variety to be found, comparitively speaking. Maybe it is just me, but I like to talk to non-science people every now and then. I perceived there to be very little, if any, balance in the social scene.

The real kicker about caltech for an undergrad education is this: the teaching, overall, was poor. Sure there are some bright spots on the faculty who really do a great job teaching. But most of the profs there are dedicated to being hotshot researchers and winning Nobel prizes. Translation: they are too busy to care about teaching an undergrad class well.

You will have a much richer college experience anywhere else.

CountingDown

S accepted EA at MIT and Chicago w/merit $, pulled several apps once those came in, got full ride from in-state flagship, withdrew Caltech app after deferral/waitlist, threw two apps at Ivies but they didn't stick (and S did not care).

He's been waiting since December for his Mudd decision so he could finally get down to agonizing.

Feynmaniac

I got in EA at MIT and ED at Mudd, and since Mudd was my first choice, my agonizing was done by January.