<p>Houstonmom, it appears to me that MANY of the students thrive and are happy at Mudd, and Mudd has a huge percentage of grads who go onto good grad schools. There have been many threads and posts dedicated to saying just that. Other schools <em>that my son and I researched</em> that sounded very good are Olin (same level as Mudd/MIT/Caltech) and Rose-Hulman (ranked #1 by USNWR for undergrad engineering programs), which pride themselves on helping students through in just the same way Mudd does. Rice (ivy-quality) and Case are small universities featuring engineering. </p>
<p>I think that’s what people have been saying - different schools for different people. Mudd seems to be good-to-fantastic for 600 of its 800 students. My son visited Mudd, Olin, Rice, Caltech, and Rose-Hulman, and at all of them, the students seemed very happy and loved their schools, peers, profs, and opportunities. I even know a few people who are extremely happy at my local state engineering school. And the ones I named are only the ones we did sufficient research into for him to apply to. All engineering programs have high attrition rates, just like all premed programs. For the kids who really belong in engineering, they have to choose a school based on fit, which does include desire for academic intensity, desire to attend classes, desire for sports teams, humanities classes, excitement of the nearby towns, etc.</p>