<p>Yeah, the word “engineering” popped up 83 times (so that’s about 40% of the class right there), but as you’ve pointed out many “applied” sciences (which Harvey Mudd doesn’t offer but are similar to engineering at Caltech–for example, a student doing “control and dynamical systems” or many flavors of “applied physics”–which is often just EE–at Caltech would’ve been doing Engineering if they’d been studying the same things at Harvey Mudd) are also E&AS. </p>
<p>If you’d <em>really</em> like to compare field-to-field, you might note that on the Reed list Caltech leads in the “Sciences & Engineering” category (which though oddly titled is distinct on the chart from Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Physical Science, and as such would appear to be largely just Engineering) as well as overall.</p>
<p>From the colleges’ own Career Services pages, 44% of Harvey Mudd Students go on to grad school. The number is 55% at Caltech. This disparity is well beyond the 5% difference in “engineers” even if we only count Caltech students with the word “engineering” in their major. Average starting salary (which should favor all of those engineers Harvey Mudd has that Caltech supposedly doesn’t), by the way, is $57K (HMC) vs. $60K (Caltech).</p>
<p>My point here is not to pick on anyone and certainly not Harvey Mudd. But let’s keep the facts straight.</p>