<p>Are the students really competitive at HMC, in terms of grades and whatnot?</p>
<p>Generally speaking,
We tend to be only competitive with ourselves. Some people care about grades and others don’t. It is a rare event when people don’t support each other.</p>
<p>Mudd students tend toward cooperative, not competitive. The workload forces them to work together. Yet they will also be extremely proud of every high grade they earn.</p>
<p>Profs don’t like to put curves on classes because they fear it will increase competition. We are always encouraged to work together, and many people do. However, it is still very hard to get high grades.</p>
<p>On rare occasions the difficulty of obtaining high grades can lead to sort of jealousy-induced bullying. Ive only heard of it once, but there is one person I know who has been mocked/picked on for having a 4.0 GPA by a certain group that might think they are being funny/cute/playful. However at some point they do seem to go over the line, but Im only a secondary source on this. </p>
<p>To my knowledge Ive never heard of actual sabotage, and I think this group wouldnt mind working with this person at all as it would benefit them greatly. However the GPA they could never obtain gives birth to some snide comments. </p>
<p>Im not sure how relevant this is, but I think Id like to throw that out there. </p>
<p>On a side note, cooperation is indeed the way to go at Mudd - I managed straights As and A-s last semester (squeels!). I say this now because I know this semester I wont be so lucky.</p>
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<p>I have a friend who has a 4.0 and my friends and I do tease him about it. Maybe we are talking about the same person and I am in that group? From what I’ve seen, my friend doesn’t take it as a big deal because it’s all in fun. Sometimes he needs the teasing because it loosens him up a bit and makes him have more of a social life. It’s pretty similar to the “get a life” letters that Mudd sends out with good intentions; I don’t think many people make fun of him out of jealousy. On the whole, Mudd is a very accepting place where students want their peers to succeed.</p>
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<p>Damn, dude, that’s pretty impressive.</p>
<p>No, this is a girl I am talking about. She plays it off as if it doesnt bother her so I dont really know if they even know if they are hurting her, but it has made her cry on occasion. I think whats honestly happened is getting a 4.0 at Mudd has become so difficult that its actually viewed as unhealthy. This girl studies all night and day, and the other kids might think they are helping her by talking her into loosening up. To be honest I agree with them in principal; this past spring she had one nervous breakdown after the other. I just dont agree with the way they go about it I suppose.</p>
<p>4.0 isn’t going to last…well if it does they get to be one of the very few who have pulled it off.</p>
<p>I really don’t know how much it is worth though…</p>
<p>It appears that there have been more 4.0’s than usual this decade. I know there was one in 2000, and I heard from multiple sources that there was one in last year’s graduating class of '08. Furthermore, the class of 2009 has at least one kid who still has a 4.0, as does the class of 2010.</p>
<p>This could be interpreted as several different things: 1) HMC has gotten easier; 2) HMC has not gotten easier but has gotten significantly better at helping students succeed (via programs like AE, etc…); 3) HMC has attracted increasingly higher caliber students - at least in terms of the metric of ability to get good grades (which I personally believe does not necessarily correlate to different types of intelligence - creative ability to do research, for example).</p>
<p>I think it is a combination of factors 2 and 3.</p>
<p>lol, I didn’t pull off a 4.0 in high school, no damn way I’m going to pull it off in college.</p>