<p>I am posting to warn other parents that Harvey Mudd actively recruits minority students who do not have the educational background to survive Harvey Mudd. I don’t want to see another smart, formerly successful child left a broken wreck. I would never have suggested that my son apply to Harvey Mudd if they did not recruit him actively, because I know there are natural math geniuses out there. I also thought there would be some classes or options for the non-genius. I realized there was core, but I did not realize that everyone has to take the exact same courses at the exact same level. Just about everybody there is a math genius with an excellent education. There are also some smart kids with an excellent education. It is not a place for a smart kid with a bad education. I trusted the admissions people to tell me whether it was doable, and I think they lied. They must have known he would be going to school with kids from excellent prep schools, who had done all kinds of math programs. This is not the school for the maybe I would like engineering crowd, but I have only done whatever math I had to do to graduate high school crowd.
I am mostly upset because he was very heavily recruited and I believed the recruiters against my better judgement. They had to know he had no chance against better prepared students.</p>