I may be overthinking this.. - Page 2

rocketDA · 10-13-2009, 03:39 AM

CU is an absolutely fantastic school for space sciences. I would highly recommend it if your child is interested in this field... and I'm a hardcore HMC supporter/alum.

I work with several people from CU and they are great. There are some really talented folks there....

Just my 2 cents. SwRI brings a lot to that area.

colorado_mom · 10-13-2009, 06:47 PM

rocketDA - Thanks for that CU feedback. It's funny... my space nut daughter always thought she'd end up at CU. But she far preferred the small campus atmosphere at CO School of Mines. Happily she was able to enroll in a 1-credit Space class this semester.

When we visited Mudd, we definitely like combo of techie-intense Mudd in consortium with the other Claremont colleges. But it's not yet clear if my son would have time left after studies to take advantage of it.

rocketDA · 10-16-2009, 01:50 AM

Now, CO_mom, I still think that there is no substitute for a Mudd undergrad engineering education... but CU is one place that comes pretty close.

I think if your son/daughter is willing to make the up-front investment of getting a very strong foundation in all that is science/engineering, Mudd is the way to go. The gratification (for aerospace) isn't as direct as CU, per se, but our abilities are quickly realized by grad schools in aerospace companies.

Let's put it this way: I graduated in the middle of my class from Mudd. I was probably the most passionate/directed space science (propulsion) person at the school. I got picked up by a small private aerospace research and development company that cannot be named here. It is a very well funded, ambitious program that makes an effort not to appear on the radar of the press and internet. Everything we do is humanity-driven and non-military.

Of the 6-7 young people hired this last year, I was the only one with only a bachelors in engineering straight out of college...."General Engineering" in fact. Three others had a masters from Purdue in aerospace, one PhD from Michigan, one masters from CU (i think), one masters from Caltech. The other guy who got hired with only a bachelors had a year of experience at GE aircraft engine. The point is that I'm going through the same program as them and am treated the same as them. We're effectively on a level playing field.

So how can this be? Because Mudd is a special place that (sometimes painfully) transforms your brain. It reorganizes the neural connections to approach problems from special trajectories that are guided by a solid foundation in math/physics/chemistry/etc.

Is the $200k worth it?
If you are like me and your most valuable personal asset is your brain then perhaps it is worth it. The integral rule of investment says that putting work in early will pay off much more than the same work later on. A Mudd education is a jump-start on a path that puts you in a 5-sigma advantage with respect to society. Continuing to make smart choices after puts you in position to do whatever you want, really.
For me, it was worth it!

So again, CU is an absolutely great school. It is more directed to space-sciences than Mudd but I feel that Mudd may have a better long-term mental investment. We're really splitting hairs here, though.

colorado_mom · 10-17-2009, 01:37 PM

rocketDA - Thanks for your insights. At this point we will just let my son apply Harvey Mudd and other schools and continue to investigate. After we see the acceptance/scholarship info, then we'll have to consider the value-add of the more expensive options.

Muddslinger · 10-18-2009, 04:35 AM

Don't forget to look at the non-academic side of life. My biggest regret in touring colleges, Mudd included, is that I didn't look into the types of people that attend the schools and what the popular on-campus activities. Perhaps it was just the suite of frosh and seniors that I lived with last year, but Mudd's approval ratings in the social category were, um, disconcertingly low. That said, many people absolutely love their classmates so the average approval of non-academic life is pretty high.

So make sure you consider both sides of the coin. As an example of what can happen if you don't, the chem major in my suite was accepted to all 9 graduate programs that he applied for, including a number of very prestigious programs. Unfortunately, after Mudd's workload for four years he was too burned-out and frankly demoralized to accept any of them, so he had to defer one of his decisions and re-apply next year.

To end on a nicer note, I'm another hardcore fan of Mudd academics. I am 100% certain that Mudd has the absolute best combination of Outstanding (note the capital O) faculty, course selections and content, undergraduate research and academic recognition.

I mentioned Boulder earlier because several of my high school friends go there and I went to school in Colorado. Boulder is the best college town I've ever visited.

geek_mom · 10-18-2009, 03:11 PM

Hey Muddslinger, you've made this comment a few times before -- that the social aspects of Mudd leave you cold. It's a fair statement based on a full year of personal experience, and you present it even-handedly -- bravo. I don't take issue with you over it, but I'm curious as to what makes your experience so different from my (frosh) Mudder's experience so far.

There's no question that he's working like a dog on the academic side, but he also seems to have found a few comfortable circles of friends and a dizzying array of fun things to do outside the workload. From what I see on Facebook, it looks like he seldom eats alone. He plays intramural sports, RPGs, and video games with his pals. He has fun with other Mudders in pursuit of a wide range of shared interests -- I won't go into great detail, but there are so many choices, from volunteer work to Div3 sports to juggling to music performance to ballroom dancing, and even a club dedicated to eating bacon. There are movies in the dorm lounge every week, and regular parties both wet and dry. The proctors and sponsors set up group outings into Claremont Village for pizza, frozen yogurt, &c, and every week there seems to be a range of organized/subsidized outings Mudders can choose from if they want to go into town for a concert, show, or sporting event.

All this seems to be pretty fulfilling (possibly overwhelming at times) to my Mudder, but not so much to you. I know that he's well matched in terms of roommate and suitemates (and they're all frosh), and it sounds like you might not have been. Could that be the difference? Do you think your dorm itself wasn't a good fit? Or do you feel that your personality doesn't mesh with *any* of the subgroups at Mudd -- and if so, looking back, do you now see any signs of this that you didn't notice or shrugged off during the application process? Or did you go in thinking that it didn't really appeal to you socially, but the academics were worth it? Or do people just have to give up all semblance of social life in order to make the sky-high GPA you managed in the freshman core? (If that's the case, then is the sky-high GPA worth the trade-off in social life?) Is it trite to sum it all up as, "Grades, fun, sleep: Pick any two"?

Did room draw help you find a better suite match this year? For any reason, does this year seem more promising to you than last year? And if it never gets any better in the whole four or five years... do you think the academic benefits alone are worth it?

Again, I'm not criticizing or challenging your comments -- quite the opposite, I think you've been consistently honest and fair about your experience. I just wonder what makes the difference between my son's reaction and yours, and I think your reflections may be very helpful to prospective Mudders trying to evaluate "fit" for themselves.

Edited to add: Best wishes to you this year, and I hope you're enjoying some downtime over the Fall break.

BicoastalMamma · 10-23-2009, 02:09 AM

If you are not a complete genius with excellent high school preparation, don't go to Mudd. Mudd takes smart students and destroys them. If you get sick, you will be terribly behind and fail everything.

BicoastalMamma · 10-23-2009, 03:15 AM

It is hard to go to graduate school if you are thrown out of college before you finish freshman year. If you can't already teach calculus and college physics, and find it easy, forget Mudd. They do flunk you out and you can't just switch to a different major like you can at a big university.

Muddslinger · 10-25-2009, 08:30 AM

I've thought about this problem quite a bit. There's definitely a lot to do here, it's just a matter of me finding people to do it with. My roommate is great. If he weren't my roommate, then I don't have any idea who could replace him! I just can't seem to find a group of people that I fit in with at all. There are so many different groups, and I've tried socializing with several of them at lunch and dinner but I've never left feeling like "wow, I should talk to these people more often." Usually I count the seconds until it's socially acceptable to leave.

The age distribution could have something to do with it, because the only people in my suite that I talked to were my roommates and the seniors. I lived in Atwood, which has a reputation for being pretty quiet and isolated since the outer dorms don't have reputations as specific as the inner dorms. I also don't feel like my personality meshes well with most Mudders, and the people that I do mesh with have sufficiently different interests that it's difficult for me to relate. All things considered, I have the best roommate possible. Even we don't mesh well on activities and interests, but being roommates kept us in contact long enough for us to become friends.

There is one thing that tipped me off. I was sitting in class (still during high school) wondering what kind of people might be at Mudd. I sat there and thought "Well, everyone will be like the handful of other people here sitting in calc III with me." Then I realized that I didn't really care for all but one or two of the 10 people, and that all of my friends were majoring in art, English, Japanese, etc. But I convinced myself that there would be a lot of people at Mudd (relative to 10 at least) so I would inevitably find at least a small group of people. Oops! My parents half-joke that this sort of situation runs in my family. My mom and dad talk about how they really didn't have that many friends in college, and my little brother has similar problems in middle school. Maybe I can blame all of this on poor genetics!

So I've all but completely made up my mind to stay, so I really, really hope this is all worth it, but there's no way to know until after I've graduated. Even then, it'll be hard to distinguish whether I could have done any better or worse given a different college education.

What I do know is that after all of this, a 40 hour/week job will be a joke

unitofobscurity · 10-25-2009, 02:13 PM

"There is one thing that tipped me off. I was sitting in class (still during high school) wondering what kind of people might be at Mudd. I sat there and thought "Well, everyone will be like the handful of other people here sitting in calc III with me." Then I realized that I didn't really care for all but one or two of the 10 people, and that all of my friends were majoring in art, English, Japanese, etc."

Muddslinger, this is the first time I've heard someone else say this, so thank you! I'm in my senior year, and it's the first time that I've taken mostly math/science courses. A few weeks in, I realized that I actually actively disliked a lot of the kids in all of my classes, and that the people I'm close friends with were all off somewhere else doing History or languages or something. More and more now, I'm realizing that it's going to have to be a big factor in the admissions process, although I'm still hoping that all the math/science people at my school are somehow a nonrepresentative sample.

//tangent

colorado_mom · 10-25-2009, 02:34 PM

Muddlslinger - Thanks for your thoughtful, honest posts.

If you or others could add more about Claremont consortium, that would be helpful. My son loves math/science, but many of his IB friends are more into liberal arts and music. How common is it to have friends at Mudd but the other colleges too? It seems that the shared classes and clubs would be a big advantage... but I'd love to hear more student perspectives.

geek_mom · 10-25-2009, 05:34 PM

Thank you, Muddslinger, for your thoughtful elaboration. Your observation about your calc 3 classmates is interesting. The outer vs inner dorm thing is interesting too -- my son spent the night in an outer dorm during pre-frosh, but ended up spending most of his free time at one of the inner dorms because he felt more welcome there. But his personality and interests are very compatible with at least some of the geeky stereotypes.

I think your experience points up the need for visits and overnight stays, the chance for a prospective student to just hang out with Mudders for a while and see how it feels to be among them. And yes, maybe it doesn't work so well to be suitemates with seniors. If the suite provided most of your social network last year, I wonder if you missed out on some of the bonding that happens when frosh are thrown together and all have one thing in common -- being a little nervous about where they're going to fit in.

I'm glad your roommate is a friend. So sorry to hear that you haven't found "your people" yet. It sounds like you're doing the right thing, getting out and spending time with different groups of students. I hope this will pay off and you'll find a comfortable circle of friends in the coming years. Maybe once you're done with the core and into upper-division classes, you'll have more time to venture out further, perhaps off campus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muddslinger

What I do know is that after all of this, a 40 hour/week job will be a joke

Ha, well said!

rocketDA · 10-25-2009, 07:54 PM

"What I do know is that after all of this, a 40 hour/week job will be a joke"

I work 50 hours a week and it is still a joke compared to Mudd. I feel like I have so much freedom...

Miru · 11-12-2009, 10:40 PM

Muddslinger's comment about his Calc III class is definitely a valid concern. I loved the people in my calc III class, and I love the people here, so I suppose its not a half bad measure...

On the other hand, don't give up on Mudd just because none of your current friends are math/sciencey. Of my friends from home, only one can relate at all to going through engineering school (she's at CU-Boulder), and only one other is getting a B.S. (Chemistry) - the rest are majoring in some sort of liberal artsy thing. When I was a senior in H.S. I thought that I was going to miss the diversity of passions a lot more than I actually do now that I'm here - when I visited I was convinced that I was going to spend all of my lunches speaking German at the Oldenborg Center on Pomona, and that I would make at least half of my friends down there. As it turns out I don't have a single Pomona friend, since I ended up loving the nerds up here on Mudd after all (nothing's wrong with Pomona, but its a lot easier to hang out with people on campus...and if you've found your niche on campus then there's no reason to leave). I do have friends at Scripps though, which is admittedly kind of nice. I guess I'd just recommend joining some sort of intercampus club, especially if you're worried about being friends only with Mudders.

colorado_mom · 11-14-2009, 12:20 AM

Miru - Thanks for the interesting posts. My son will go to CU Boulder Engineering Day tomorrow... but so far it seems that Mudd that has most captured his interest. Many of his pals from his IB classes and music activities are non-geeky, so it is good to hear that you are liking Mudd.

In general is there a lot of interaction among the Claremont campuses? To me it looks like a great setup, especially to get a bigger set of students for bands, clubs, etc. But I've begun to wonder if there a lot of geek vs prep attitudes?. Are there many intercampus friendships?