<p>"the disadvantage of Mudd (which is the advantage of Caltech) is that you don’t have tons of opportunities to do research. and You don’t have many Graduate level courses, since Mudd is a liberal arts college. "</p>
<p>I’m going to have to heavily disagree with this. I graduated last year and entered an elite private aerospace company that hires quite a bit from MIT, Caltech, Purdue, GTech, and UMich. Those who are hired typically have MS or PhD’s in aerospace or mechanical engineering… only 5 or so “new grads” a year.</p>
<p>I was one of these new grads. I was the only one that had only a BS and got an offer. I’m from Mudd. In fact, the owner of spacecraft hydraulics and control surfaces is also from Mudd… graduated 5 years ago and also only has a BS degree.</p>
<p>We are prepared to a level that is comparable to a good MS degree. How do I know this? Because the interview for my company is about 6 hours long… of technical one-on-one with key figures in each engineering dept. You are grilled and required to demonstrate your abilities to solve problems you’ve never encountered before… pulling from a general technical tools basis.</p>
<p>I earned a “General Engineering” degree though I put my emphasis on propulsion and rocket research. I took classes in fluid dynamics (incompressible and compressible) and even though our compressible class is titled “Intro to compressible flow” it turns out that I have a much stronger basis than many of my coworkers on this particular topic even though they have a MS from schools like Purdue and Caltech. These are real people and I am talking about real experience.</p>
<p>I certainly had no trouble finding research at Mudd. I accumulated over 10 units of graded research and also spent two summers on campus doing paid research. I also happen to know that the campus is bustling with activity (just like Caltech) over the summer. I also spent two summers at Caltech doing research. One time only at JPL (as a HS junior/senior) and one time as a more serious hire (NOT a SURF or SHARP student though I lived with them on campus). The second time I spent about half my time working in a GALCIT lab (Firestone basement) instrumenting the hypervelocity impactor. Yup, the sensors, amplifiers, and data processing routine are of my design. I figured out how to reject 89% of the radio background noise on a nano-second optical gate to catch particles at 10 km/s. I continued this work as a consultant WHILE at Mudd during my junior year. Interesting a Mudd undergrad would be paid to work in Caltech graduate lab if he/she didn’t have abilities…</p>
<p>I also happen to know that the electrical/digital engineering classes at Mudd are much more substantial than other undergraduate programs. For instance, how would it be possible for a group of 5 students to work on ultra-low noise video conversion technology for Intel (on chip) if they weren’t accustomed to the nuances of VLSI or high speed PCB design? Do all undergrads from other institutions come out designing their own MIPS+ microprocessor from scratch… dye and all? I mean, surely there is a lot left to be desired (the one a few years ago only ran at 6 MHz, I’m not sure about recent ones) but you can’t do this stuff without diving head-first into the technical meat and potatoes of engineering and science… with a healthy serving of math.</p>
<p>So, in closing… the opportunities at Mudd for research and advanced coursework are there… even if Mudd is classified as a “liberal arts college”. This isn’t to say that Caltech has similar opportunities… I’m just saying that Mudd has them.</p>
<p>Both are great choices. I’m certainly convinced, however, that Caltech isn’t the only club in town anymore.</p>