What % of Mudders end up with a PhD

kidsls · July 5, 2010, 5:45pm

I’ve got a 2 part question on students graduating out of Harvey Mudd.

What % of students end up with a PhD after graduating from Harvey Mudd.
Reason: I’ve seen a lot of posts about kids having to slog through their 4 years at Harvey Mudd. It will be a great indicator of not getting burnt out in their 4 years college at Mudd.

2) How does Harvey Mudd prepare kids for their post graduate programs.
One of the concerns is the GPA at highly competitive schools is low and this could have a negative impact on their gradutae admissions. A nephew of mine went to UC Berkeley, doing a major in Math, he was not able to get into any graduate school of his choice. My assumption is the GPA was not stellar.

Thanks very much

pihlaja · July 5, 2010, 9:24pm

This link may answer your question #1.

Alumni Survey Results

We would like to thank you for participating in the HMC Impact Project Alumni Survey. Harvey Mudd College and its alumni have a significant impact on a variety of fields and on the world, and through the Impact Project Survey, we now have more information to help the college tell the HMC success story to the world.

Since the survey launched, more than 1200 alumni have participated in the effort. This means that to date nearly 23 percent of the total alumni body has responded to the survey. Through this effort, we have a better picture of our alumni population. Here are some of the initial data trends:
Initial Data Trends (by percentage of respondents)

<pre><code>* 63.4% of respondents have received an advanced degree

55.5% have engaged in research since HMC
48.6% are published in their field
18.6% of respondents hold a patent
29.37% of respondents are educators or have worked in education
21% have started their own company or been in a leadership group of a new venture
30% of respondents have had a leadership role in a community, government, charitable, philanthropic or social service organization
</code></pre>

Miles_Perrara · July 5, 2010, 10:09pm

Harvey Mudd is second only to Caltech in overall PhD productivity:

[REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]REED”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)

and is similarly ranked for specific fields, to answer question 1.

The standard answer to question 2 is that Mudd students can be found at all of the top graduate schools. Mudd is a highly competitive school with relatively low grade inflation, so a student still has to get adequate grades. Simply attending an excellent undergraduate school doesn’t guarantee grad school.

maruhan2 · July 6, 2010, 10:46am

I believe the PhD productivity ranking right now is

<h1>1: Caltech</h1>

<h1>2: Harvey Mudd</h1>

Harvey Mudd has had hit #1 before

Seiken · July 7, 2010, 8:46am

<ol>
<li>Its about 24/25% if I remember the statistic accurately (% of people with PhD 10 years out or something). Caltech is something like 33% though, which is quite a jump between 1st and 2nd. Though, thats basically going from 1 out of 3 people to 1 out of 4.</li>
<li>We are extremely well prepared, which you see with regard to graduate placement even though we have grade deflation. My friend who has about a 3.0 GPA is going to U of Maryland next year, which is a very well ranked school for physics (like 12th overall?). Placement in the top 5 programs is pretty competitive for any school, but every Mudder who wants to go to grad school has gotten in somewhere, and usually quite good. In the past there have been students who did not get accepted anywhere (they were applying to string theory), but then professors were able to call up connections and get them into a top 20 program anyways.</li>
</ol>

ProxyGC · July 11, 2010, 9:59pm

Go look at the career services web page. A little less than a third of the class of 2010 is headed to grad school, and all who said they planned to go, got in somewhere, though this summary is not yet on the site. For the class of 2009, the statistic was higher, in the 40% or so range, and this is posted. Not all are headed for PhD programs (some are going for Master’s degrees), but a large majority are. Because of the job market in 2009, some grads saw job offers disappear, and opted for grad school instead. Though this year’s job market can’t be much better, at a small school like Mudd, heavy recruitment by just one company or industry can swing that statistic.

mathboy98 · July 19, 2010, 1:29pm

Seiken, how to explain this - One of the concerns is the GPA at highly competitive schools is low and this could have a negative impact on their gradutae admissions. A nephew of mine went to UC Berkeley, doing a major in Math, he was not able to get into any graduate school of his choice. My assumption is the GPA was not stellar.?

It’s certainly the case that having a good GPA tends to be a little more valued in theoretical fields like math and physics, for grad school admissions. Do you have good evidence that they actually correct for this issue? I guess the professors calling people up is a good thing.

Seiken · July 19, 2010, 3:32pm

Ya, there have been quite a few friends of mine who are going to fairly strong graduate programs despite lackluster GPAs. However, I had a 3.96 GPA in physics and got rejected by a large number of top schools; I also had basically perfect GRE scores. The thing about graduate school admissions that I have learned is that the letter of recommendation kind of trumps all at top schools, and mine were nothing to write home about. They werent bad, just not spectacular. I am actually pretty lucky that I get to go to what was my top choice school next year (UCSB = ranked 3rd in condensed matter physics + Kavli Inst. of Theoretical physics + beach).

Professors at top schools like Mudd went to top schools themselves, so their opinions are taken quite seriously.

Anyways, I would say that in order to be in good standing for top grad schools, you want at least a 3.6 GPA (in your major). Getting higher than that helps, but not as much as you think. Beyond that, you want solid GRE scores and then solid letters of rec. from your thesis advisor and at least one other professor.

mathboy98 · July 19, 2010, 10:50pm

^ Good, I wanted to “coax” that answer out of you by asking, just to make the story complete, because the concern I brought up is probably what many have, and while I imagined what you said to be true, I can’t officially speak for admissions results related to Mudd.

GeekMom63 · July 20, 2010, 8:24am

This is what has worried me about Mudd. With all those stellar classmates, how is one to stand out and get great recs? The teacher can’t say, as in high school, “on of the top 5 students I’ve seen in my career” or “understood so much more than his classmates”.

Suin · July 20, 2010, 10:39am

The school is quite small and by the time you get to senior year, you’re generally taking classes in your specialty which is taught exclusively by the same 2-3 professors. Provided you’ve done some research in your specialty, which would be with the same 2-3 profs, and taken several upper division classes, you should know several profs quite well.

College is different from high school, you don’t need to be “better” than your peers, at least not really the ones from your own college. You simply need to be capable of doing the work at a high level and thriving in a graduate research environment, which is what your professors judge when they write your recommendations. High school has such a large population of students it’s quite easy to stand out, at a place like Harvey Mudd being average is quite an accomplishment and worthy of a good rec. I have to say that after going through the environment at Mudd where everyone is encouraged to work together and help each other, I find the “I have to be better than everyone else to get a good rec” mentality quite disturbing and counterproductive. Basically, they are evaluating your abilities in your recs, not comparing you to other people.

GeekMom63 · July 20, 2010, 1:01pm

It’s good to know that college-to-grad-school recs are aimed at capability, not superiority - thanks.

Non-competitiveness is one of the reasons my son is in love with Mudd. Other than in my earlier post, which was expressing a concern not an attitude (son is not only non-competitive but anti-competitive), do you see a lot of that mentality?

Suin · July 20, 2010, 2:57pm

I don’t recall noticing any outright competitiveness, there are certainly varying levels of dedication to perfection among students but I never saw anyone refuse to help another for any reason. The classes are so difficult that everyone is essentially competing together against the class (or professor). There may be a few hyper-competitive individuals who can’t get over high school, but it’s certainly not the norm, as most people are severely humbled within the first few weeks of class. The core being so broad but also fairly deep practically ensures that no one is good at every class, which necessitates working together and collaborating to do well.

Seiken · July 20, 2010, 6:29pm

You get a good letter of recommendation by working hard to get the task in front of you done. Intelligence is great and all, but grad schools would rather prefer a knowledgable person with strong motivation than a ‘lazy genius.’ With textbooks and Mathematica these days, thats what gets work done more these days than being 10% smarter than the other guy.

mathboy98 · July 22, 2010, 12:03pm

GeekMom63 -

A general thing I believe is true about grad admissions is that strong letters of rec speak better than letters of rec talking of capability. However, as Seiken hints, strong letters come from enthusiasm and ability to really go all the way in a certain area, not necessarily being the one who aces the exams by a certain margin every time. When you get really overspecialized, as another poster has written in the special case of Mudd, even in general, it’s true that there are fewer people by far into the things you’re doing. In the world of research, it’s about doing work that important people out there care about reading, and so if you find yourself really getting into an area of study and having dialogue with your professors, you should be well off. Acing classes can help too, of course, to secure the professors’ confidence.

Summary: there are 2 factors which should lessen your worry, which are -

a) Letters are meant to be descriptive, not discriminating - what does this person bring to the table, and hopefully that something is quite a lot. If the professor hardly has talked to you, however, that’s a big minus point, and likely if all you’ve done is taken a class with him/her and never had some conversations, the professor is just going to remember you by class performance … and unless there’s stuff that stood out, it’s harder.

b) At an overspecialized level, it takes energy to overspecialize and actually get the work done for success, which involves smarts, but also raw hunger to learn, diligence to chip away at a slow process, etc, etc - so “more factors than 1” is what to take away.

tiyusufaly · July 23, 2010, 3:26pm

While I think there is a lot of validity to what mathboy98 says, I also think GeekMom63’s concern is a valid one. In an ideal world letters of recommendation could just be descriptive and not rank or compare and schools would not worry about ranking or comparing applicants. However, I have heard from multiple sources that unfortunately for us, the most informative letters of recommendation are ones that compare and rank different applicants directly. Why else do most all letters have a request to rank students in “top 1%, top 10%”, etc…? If you want further proof, take a look at this article from Howard Georgi, director of physics admissions at Harvard: [Views</a> From An Affirmative Activist](<a href=“http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2000/JANUARY2000/Georgi.html]Views”>http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2000/JANUARY2000/Georgi.html) where he says:

“The way I think about this process, there are four components of the application: test scores, undergraduate record, essay, and letters of recommendation. By far the most important of these, in most cases, are the letters. If we get letters from people we know, or from people who have recommended other students whom we have accepted, these are just invaluable. The most useful letters are those that are explicitly comparative. “X has better mathematical skills than Y who has also applied from our institution, but Y is better in the lab. In fact, Y is better in the lab than Z who is now a graduate student at Harvard.” That sort of thing. We also hope to get letters describing some of the research the applicant has done as an undergraduate. This is really useful.”

And unfortunately for Harvey Mudd students, it is near impossible to be considered a top 1%. Ergo, letters of recommendation are weaker. This is a risk that I think all prospective students at HMC have to think about before they commit to going there. Now as for those few kids every year who are top 1% in HMC, for whatever reason, then good for them, they usually have their pick of the most prestigious programs. But for everybody else, even students who sometimes graduated summa cum laude, with honors, etc…, there is a chance that things will not swing your way. This has been especially true these past two years (2009 especially), what with grad school admissions being extra competitive.

That said, I do concede that everyone who has wanted to go to graduate school has had success finding some very good, non-prestigious place to go. And as I have said repeatedly, there are a lot of excellent non-prestigious schools out there, and depending on your research area they could be just as good or better. But I guess if prestige or glamour REALLY matters to you, keep this in mind.

mathboy98 · July 23, 2010, 5:15pm

In an ideal world letters of recommendation could just be descriptive and not rank or compare and schools would not worry about ranking or comparing applicants. However, I have heard from multiple sources that unfortunately for us, the most informative letters of recommendation are ones that compare and rank different applicants directly.

And as I have said repeatedly, there are a lot of excellent non-prestigious schools out there, and depending on your research area they could be just as good or better. But I guess if prestige or glamour REALLY matters to you, keep this in mind.

Tiyusufaly - I have a comment to make, and my claim is that it’s not terribly likely going to HMC will hurt with respect to the factors you are stating.

The truth is, yes, I have heard it from people who have done admissions for fields at my school (engineering, math, etc) that letters which directly compare applicants do help. If an applicant took a course, how good was the applicant with respect to the other students? However, when you get into the fact that individual capacity for specialized work is a huge factor, you get out of ranking, and get into comparing. Yes, of course there is comparison - this is an admissions process! Top schools are competitive.

But also know that the reason they can’t just admit all the students where there’s great stuff said about them descriptively is that they have limited spots. Many schools pledge to offer full funding for PhDs. Thus, they are very likely to find most means of discrimination possible - to the point where I think going to a lesser ranked school can hurt! Going to HMC or MIT or Caltech or such a great school brings you a high baseline credibility for grad (not professional = law + med school) admissions. It shows you’re really doing serious academics. If you’re not from those, admissions officers for the most prestigious grad admissions may as well say be the best student your school has seen in 5+ years, or you shouldn’t even bother trying to apply - a school like Harvard is included. If you’re from a great school whose professors’ opinions are well-regarded, it is a blessing for admissions into top schools.

Because, let’s face it, even if you went to a lesser ranked school, this is not undergrad admissions - they are significantly less likely to admit someone with lesser background, just because “they achieved the best they could in context of what they did … and their essays shone” – it’s 100% about specialized academics here, and someone telling them that this guy/gal wants to and can spend 5-6 years working on overspecialized academics instead of doing something else, and do a good job, is what admissions folk really want to hear, and if it’s coming from a professor from a top math/science school, that’s flatly going to be better. Chances are, someone from HMC saying a good word for you will get you into a good program. Getting into the most prestigious programs is really, really hard, and almost every great applicant needs a little luck.

Hence, I agree ultimately that an applicant should do grad school because (s)he really wants the experience, and not be fixated on single schools. While there are some shining stars who cannot be touched, I think there’s enough variation in how successful very good applicants have been with respect to grad admissions that one should not put one’s pride into getting the prestigious name - you already went through and survived HMC, now go and do something real in the world and focus on doing it well, not on hoarding another prestigious name in that big belly of yours :)

What % of Mudders end up with a PhD

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