Pomona vs Wesleyan?

interesteddad
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:48:16 +0000

Harvey Mudd is tech school – arguably one of the top three in the country for undergrad along with Caltech and MIT. You really have to think of it as a specialty school. There are virtually no students majoring in areas other than math, science, and engineering.

Given the stated interests in both science and studio art, I don’t think Mudd, CalTech, or MIT would make a lot of sense compared to a college or university with a more broad-based curriculum. Just as Scripps offers only the most rudimentary sciences, Mudd offers precious little in the humanities and social sciences.

All of those fields (English, languages, history, philosophy, Poli Sci, Econ, Sociology, art, music, etc.) are lumped together in a single “Humanities and Social Sciences” Department that is there basically just to provide the basic distribution requirements.

Here’s the course list for that department for Fall 2005:

http://www2.hmc.edu/www_common/humsoc/CoursesF05.doc

As you can see, there is one art course (“Beginning Black and White Photography”), one history course, two poli sci courses, etc. This tells you what you need to know about the focus of Harvey Mudd as a tech school. I imagine you would find a similar situation at CalTech.