Pomona v Yale v Brown in a STEM field

nostalgicwisdom
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 05:20:27 +0000

I saw the comments regarding CS at Pomona and Mudd, and wanted to comment as a recent graduate (with friends who are in the department presently).

The majors at each school is specifically structured so that students get the bulk of their experiences at the home school with some amount of collaboration with the other school. The core CS courses of the Pomona major and Mudd major are different, and that represents about 70% of the major. Both schools have 3 electives which can be from either school, and a junior/senior colloquium they jointly sponsor for all majors. Mudd requires a capstone project called Clinic, while Pomona makes it optional (students can do either Clinic at Mudd or a research-based thesis with a Pomona professor if they want). Pomona is a much more flexible school all in all than Mudd is, even with it comes to liberal art requirements.

Most Pomona majors will go well beyond the requirements for the major, so they pile on a lot of CS electives. Mudd and Pomona have specifically formed an arrangement in which every single elective they offer will have a set number of classes for the other school. So in terms of access, yes, Pomona students get the full repertoire of Mudd CS electives and vice versa. They use a pre-assignment form where students list the electives they want to take, and match accordingly; if there are spots remaining, students can sign up accordingly in registration (CS majors at either school get priority assigned by seniority, and the registration database/process is the same). To illustrate what I mean, say Mudd has an elective course, CS 75, with 30 seats. They have pre-reserved 5 seats for Pomona students. 20 Mudd CS majors list they want to take it, as do 6 Pomona students; 26 students are pre-approved (since there is room for Mudd to take the extra Pomona student), but 4 spots still remain. Those 4 spots will be open to CS students from both schools equally during registration- priority is NOT given to Mudd CS majors over Pomona CS majors despite it being a Mudd elective. For another example, there is CS 82 which is highly popular, with 30 seats also. 5 seats are reserved for Pomona students. 100 Mudd CS majors want to take it, and 50 CS majors at Pomona want to take it. There is a lottery (assigned by seniority) with the 100 Mudd students deciding for their 25 spots and the 50 Pomona students deciding for their 5 spots. Now, these are just scenarios, and I don’t know the exact number of seats reserved. But it helps with understanding how it works and how the schools collaborate.

In terms of quality of teaching and education, both are great. Most Pomona CS majors have taken numerous Mudd CS courses as well. They don’t feel less prepared or that the education is a knockout over what they get at Pomona. Mudd is more industry focused while Pomona is more grad school focused, so it helps get a sense of both perspectives. There’s a research emphasis at both with plenty of opportunities (students often do research with a prof. at another school- note Mudd’s CS research page “Each summer the faculty organize a number of research projects which are open to students. Applications from both HMCers and off-campus students are considered.”). Mudd’s advantage is that they have considerably more faculty members and more resources devoted to the CS program (40% of their students major in it), but Pomona students get plenty of access to that.

I think the best way to think about it is that there’s this large university called “Claremont University”. Within it, Mudd is the engineering and CS college which offers a B.S. in Computer Science. Pomona is the arts, letters, and sciences college which offers a B.A. in Computer Science. The departments stand independently with their own emphasis, professors, and major structure, but allow students to take courses with each other for electives. Students can establish research mentors at either since each faculty member has their unique field of study. Employer events in tech are centered at Mudd since it’s the engineering and CS school, but open to the whole university- the B.A. Pomona students will go to the fairs and also be reviewed. Is there a difference in how Mudd and Pomona is considered? I don’t know. But from the successes I’ve seen with my Pomona friends in CS getting internships and jobs offers by all sorts of prominent tech companies (SpaceX, Twitter, Cisco, Intuit, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.), it doesn’t feel like it. I can’t think of anyone who isn’t working for a prominent company. Makes me wish I did a CS major so I could potentially have a 100K+ starting salary!

The point is: the schools have both independence and collaboration with CS. It’s definitely not 0% interaction or near that. If you look at the department pages of both schools, they make it a point to emphasize the sister departments of the other colleges. I forgot to mention that Pomona is the one which hosts the 5C Hackathon, and students from both win pretty equally! They are only 20 minutes maximum by walking, which is how long it could take to walk from a Yale quad to Yale Science Hill.

Not going to comment on the specifics of this particular comparison, but Pomona’s STEM is incredibly strong (ranked #12 for STEM PhD production per capita among all colleges & universities, a top producer of Goldwater/Churchill/NSF Graduate Award/Beckman Scholar Recipients, both absolutely and even more so relative to size). According to IR, Pomona has a higher percent of STEM majors than any Ivy, despite lacking engineering. CS is currently our 2nd most popular major, neck and neck with economics. One would think it less popular if it were a bad major. Having access to Mudd is a supplement for more courses and faculty members, not a substitute for “weak” opportunities (with one exception- engineering, which isn’t available at Pomona. It’s pretty easy to get into Mudd engineering courses). I was a STEM major (molecular biology), and I loved my experience at Pomona. Best wishes with the choice ahead.