Help from current student - Page 3

mom22girls · 10-11-2009, 06:22 AM

Any Mudders care to share where else they applied -- and what made Mudd your final choice?

rocketDA · 10-11-2009, 05:50 PM

"Any Mudders care to share where else they applied -- and what made Mudd your final choice?"

I guess my philosophy is this:

Why not put yourself through a great personal challenge for four years? Stretch yourself, transform yourself.

I felt that HMC would provide me with the best undergraduate science/engineering education possible. Working hard now puts you on a track to be doing what you want to do later in life. Consider it an "integral rule on investment".

My wager worked. I guess my life has become somewhat of a fairy-tale.

mom22girls · 10-11-2009, 06:51 PM

Seems I keep running into your posts rocket DA... I love them and tried to hunt back in your postings to find details on your life. But there are so many of them! Can you give a little synopsis?
My daughter is undecided on majors now (senior and hunting for colleges) but she loves physics, math and compsci. I thought HMC was a great fit for her when we visited... my two problems are that it's on the west coast (we're on the east) and MIT is so much closer to home!

OAGr · 10-12-2009, 01:08 AM

mom22girls,

It sounds like both of your problems are really just the same thing- that HMC is further away from other schools (MIT in this case). Here are a few things.

1) I know many kids who went to schools because they were local, and hated them. I'd say that generally the further people went the more they liked college, just because many of the people who went far did so because they enjoyed the school, while the people who stayed close did so just to be close. They sacrificed educations that they might have actually really enjoyed and taken something for, just for...

2) A few extra hours a semester with their families. That's all it really comes down to. Distance is really a function of travel time (not physical distance), and for me Cornell was 5 hours driving while HMC was 6 hours on a plane. So I may not come home over the 1 break/year that's long enough to come home in- I don't want to come home then anyway because I would like to take some amazing opportunities in places I haven't experienced yet. But that's OK, because...

3) Most of my family communication is done on the phone anyway. And it works great. My roommate is from Dubai and he talks to his folks all the time through skype, video chat. Communications technology is pretty amazing. Honestly, I would go to HMC if it were in China, or in the Arctic, or on the Moon, as long as I had an internet connect. For me this school is worth it. Even if there was another "good" tech school nearby, because...

4) All schools, especially ones like Mudd, are VERY different. These aren't subtle things. My life outlook at this point is dramatically different than it would be if I would have chosen any other school. I think in a good way. Lastly,

5) Variety. I kind of purposely came to the West coast to experience a new part of the world. I've been on the East for my whole life up to now, so it's nice to experience the other side with LA and San Fransisco and all. I plan to do huge things and be a worker of the world; I don't want to spend my entire life restricted to the confines of one small patch of land. While the West Coast is still roughly similar to the east coast in distance and culture, it's a start.

My point: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't pressure your daughter to choose schools based on physical location. I don't care what school she decides is best for her- if you said that she wanted to go to MIT but HMC was closer I would recommend MIT. I've just seen too many cases where people are reluctant to leave home or where their parents forced them to stay close, and in far too many of these it has ended in disaster.

Plus, it's still in America. Out of an entire globe, and hundreds of countries, she chose the one that you happen to live in. I'd call that pretty close to home, relatively.

P.S. Would you be opposed to her doing study abroad for a year? If not, think of this as a tiny version of that.

mom22girls · 10-12-2009, 09:15 AM

I definitely won't pressure her - I actually think HMC is a better fit for her than MIT, but it's up to her... thanks for your advice. I'll encourage her not to think of distance as a factor (or name recognition either!)

geek_mom · 10-12-2009, 09:10 PM

BicoastalMamma -- It is 100% falsehood to say that the professors don't care. Your son needs to talk with them. If he's on the edge (or below it), I can promise you that *they* are already trying to talk with *him*. My Mudderfrosh's profs have all been *very* accommodating when he's asked them for help during office hours. It's not unusual for him to receive email replies from them on weekends, or after midnight.

There are tutoring/group homework sessions for every core subject, a couple of times a week. If your son isn't taking advantage of these sources of help, he should give them a try. One obstacle to that is the very short notice they give by email (constant email checking seems to be pretty important at Mudd), but I'm sure the sessions are posted in other ways as well.

There are also many, many (...many...) distractions at Mudd, and frosh year is partly about learning to balance work, play, sleep, and personal responsibility. I've watched with alternating amusement and consternation as my own Mudderfrosh has tackled the balancing act for himself. It took him a while to learn to ask for help, and he's still learning how to balance his coursework with his job, laundry, sleep, the novelty of having a real social life, and the manymanymany fun things he's engaged in with other Mudders. That's a big adjustment for anyone, and it's only been six weeks! True that the workload is very heavy, but the support from faculty and other students is considerable.

My suggestion: Take a deep breath and go back to that "what to expect during freshman year" handout they gave you during orientation. Look at the things you can encourage him to do (e.g., getting help early, where early=now). And be a sympathetic ear, and let him find his way through the adjustment. The whole school is pulling for him, really. And if he made it in, they were confident that he could make it through.

Oh, and I really wouldn't worry overmuch about H1N1, as long as he's paying attention to basic hygiene.

braden · 10-13-2009, 06:35 AM

I will support geek_mom on saying the profs don't care is completely false. I'd have profs email me when I was sick a few weeks ago because they noticed I was tired in class and my homework quality had deteriorated. If they get in contact with me because my homework scores have dropped by a few points, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be making every effort to help a student who is right-out failing.

mom22girls · 10-13-2009, 07:49 AM

geekmom, would you elaborate on your comment concerning the "novelty" of having a real social life? My child has none now (h.s. senior). What's it like at Mudd?

geek_mom · 10-13-2009, 01:16 PM

mom22girls -- pm'd you.

Oldengr · 10-13-2009, 07:57 PM

#31mom22girls
My son (who is now in his second year at HMC) applied ED. He also applied to the UCs (they had a deadline before HMC released their ED acceptance) and was accepted to Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD. If he didn't get into HMC , he would have applied to MIT and Caltech.

BicoastalMamma: I agree with geek_mom and braden. The profs really do care about their students. My son scored around a 70% on one of his earlier exams and his prof emailed him and had him go into his office to make sure he fully understood the course material!

rocketDA · 10-16-2009, 01:31 AM

"My son scored around a 70% on one of his earlier exams and his prof emailed him and had him go into his office to make sure he fully understood the course material!"

70% is definitely not bad!

BicoastalMamma · 10-23-2009, 01:31 AM

They don't care at all for the minority students. They just made my child take the physics exam even though he had a note from the health center, with the flu, even though he has been sick for 4 weeks. He is sure he failed. He considers himself a total failure and is just waiting to be thrown out. I just hope they don't kill him since he has been forced to work through fevers and keep going no matter how sick he is.

BicoastalMamma · 10-23-2009, 01:33 AM

There is no support except TAs that don't care. There has been no fun. He is working nonstop, no sleep, no fun, sick as a dog.

braden · 10-24-2009, 07:38 AM

BicoastalMamma, I know a lot of people who are sick. None of them were forced to take the exam at the same time as us, all were accommodated. We're all in the same Physics 23 class, none of us are treated differently. They obviously do not force us to work sick, and when I was sick earlier in the semester and kept forcing myself to work the profs emailed me to slow down and not worry so much because I was ill. They most certainly did not force me to keep slaving through it. Your child has the same profs as everyone else, he's in the same classes, he has the same opportunities, and I find it hard to believe that even if the profs for some strange reason have not contacted him personally, there are not dozens upon dozens of options and people for him to talk to about exactly this (they drilled countless people and places to go to in those exact situations into our heads during orientation).

BicoastalMamma · 10-25-2009, 12:40 AM

I have seen some of the email my child received when he asked questions. Some were supportive. I will follow up about the exam, because my son was forced to take the exam and work every day through this entire illness except when he totally collapsed.