Harvey Mudd College
Claremont, California | Admissions Phone: 909-621-8011
E-mail: admission@hmc.edu | Website: www.hmc.edu
ADMISSION
Admission Rate: 14%
Admission Rate - Men: 10%
Admission Rate - Women: 24%
EA Admission Rate: Not Offered
ED Admission Rate: 19%
Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): -5%
ED Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): -3%
% of Admits Attending (Yield): 39%
Transfer Admission Rate: 7%
# Offered Wait List: 509
# Accepted Wait List: 327
# Admitted Wait List: 0
SAT Reading/Writing (Middle 50%): 720-760
SAT Math (Middle 50%): 770-800
ACT Composite (Middle 50%): 34-34
Testing Policy: ACT/SAT Required
SAT Superscore: Yes
ACT Superscore: Yes
% Graduated in Top 10% of HS Class: 87%
% Graduated in Top 25% of HS Class: 98%
% Graduated in Top 50% of HS Class: 100%
ENROLLMENT
Total Undergraduate Enrollment: 889
% Part-Time: 0%
% Male: 51%
% Female: 49%
% Out-of-State: 56%
% Fraternity: Not Offered
% Sorority: Not Offered
% On-Campus (Freshman): 100%
% On-Campus (All Undergraduate): 98%
% African-American: 3%
% Asian: 19%
% Hispanic: 20%
% White: 31%
% Other: 11%
% Race or Ethnicity Unknown: 6%
% International: 10%
% Low-Income: 16%
ACADEMICS
Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 8:1
% of Classes Under 20: 57%
% of Classes Under 40: 93%
% Full-Time Faculty: 88%
% Full-Time Faculty w/ Terminal Degree: 99%
Top Programs
Biology
Chemistry
Computer Science
Engineering
Mathematical and Computational Biology
Mathematics and Statistics
Physics
Retention Rate: 97%
4-Year Graduation Rate: 85%
6-Year Graduation Rate: 92%
Curricular Flexibility: Somewhat Flexible
Academic Rating: 
FINANCIAL
Institutional Type: Private
In-State Tuition: $56,331
Out-of-State Tuition: $56,331
Room & Board: $18,127
Required Fees: $545
Books & Supplies: $800
Avg. Need-Based Aid: $45,244
Avg. % of Need Met: 100%
Avg. Merit-Based Aid: $14,678
% Receiving Merit-Based Aid: 44%
Avg. Cumulative Debt: $31,594
% of Students Borrowing: 46%
CAREER
Who Recruits
1. Palantir
2. The Aerospace Corporation
3. Oracle
4. Boeing
5. Farmers Insurance
Notable Internships
1. Google
2. Salesforce
3. PayPal
Top Industries
1. Engineering
2. Research
3. Business
4. Education
5. information Technology
Top Employers
1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Apple
4. Northrop Grumman
5. Facebook
Where Alumni Work
1. Los Angeles
2. San Francisco
3. Seattle
4. San Diego
5. New York City
Median Earnings
College Scorecard (Early Career): $88,800
EOP (Early Career): $82,400
PayScale (Mid-Career): $158,200
RANKINGS
Forbes: 23
Money: 136
U.S. News: 23, Liberal Arts Colleges
Wall Street Journal/THE: N/A
Washington Monthly: 48, National Universities
Inside the Classroom
To the average college-bound teen, Harvey Mudd may not have the name recognition that other schools of its caliber enjoy. While it may sound a bit like a Depression-era comic strip, the smallest of the colleges within the illustrious Claremont Consortium (Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pitzer are the others) is routinely rated one of the best liberal arts colleges in the entire country and one of the top STEM institutions in the world.
A little under 900 undergraduate students occupy this tiny 33-acre campus; however, it is surrounded by the aforementioned affiliated colleges, giving the experience a less claustrophobic feel. Only six majors are offered: biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. All are incredibly strong. Students also have the option to combine certain disciplines into what amounts to a double major. In preparing a small army of future engineers and scientists, Harvey Mudd has been at the forefront of preaching a balanced education. The school requires a significant amount of coursework in the humanities, backing up its stated belief that “technology divorced from humanity is worse than no technology at all.”
Class sizes are not always as small as the school itself. While 57 percent of courses have an enrollment under twenty, another 37 percent enroll between twenty and thirty-nine students. Regardless, Mudd prides itself on offering graduate-level research opportunities and experiential learning to all undergrads. The college backs up its philosophical stance with cold, hard cash, allocating three million dollars annually to facilitate student-faculty research. Students can participate during the school year or during the Summer Undergraduate Research Program that entails ten weeks of full-time laboratory work. The Clinic Program groups juniors and seniors and lets them work on a real-world problem for corporate or agency sponsors for 1,200 to 1,500 hours over the course of one year. It is not uncommon for participants to end up with their name on a patent.
The college routinely produces winners of scholarships from the National Science Foundation, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Watson Fellowship, and the Mindlin Prize for Innovative Ideas in Science. The faculty also regularly receive accolades for their teaching. The National Science Foundation recognized the Chemistry Department as the top per capita producer of chemistry PhDs in the country.
Outside the Classroom
Campus life at Mudd is, in part, defined by the fact that you are not confined to one campus. After all, Pomona, Pitzer, Scripps, and CMC all share the same 560 acres of land, not to mention a whole lot else. For athletics, Harvey Mudd, Claremont, and Scripps combine forces to compete in twenty-one NCAA Division III men’s and women’s sports. Club and intramural sports from ultimate Frisbee, equestrian, and roller hockey to water polo are available as well. Both cross-consortium and Mudd-only clubs and activities are plentiful and diverse, ranging from a poker club to a lettuce-eating competition (seriously). With Los Angeles just a half-hour drive away, Claremont is located in close proximity to all of the restaurants, museums, theaters, and even Disneyland, if you so desire. Mudd’s dorms are known for having district personalities, but one common thread is that the college is known, in general, to be a friendly and accepting place.
Career Services
HMC’s Career Services Office has four full-time professional staff members working on grad school/career advising and employer recruitment. That equates to a 222:1 student-to-advisor ratio, which is among the best of any college featured in this guide. Career Services is highly accessible to students, and it even offers walk-in hours from 1 to 4 p.m. each week day. Staff members are more than happy to offer one-on-one attention, and students take advantage as the office held 891 sessions, just over one per student, in the 2017-18 school year.
Harvey Mudd hosts a Fall Software Fair, a Fall General STEM Fair, and a Spring Fair that can be attended by all members of the consortium, which can draw as many as 160+ employers per year. The three fairs draw almost 2,000 student participants per year. Companies that recruit on campus comprise a who’s who of tech royalty: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Space X, and Uber. In fact, many of those companies, along with other major corporations, conducted interviews on HMC’s campus. Undergrads routinely land summer internships at an equally impressive array of technology companies. In examining the breakdown of where Mudd grads end up receiving job offers, there is a clear correlation with the employer relations efforts of the Career Services Office. Overall, HMC’s career services earns top grades from the College Transitions staff.
Professional Outcomes
The highest number of recent Harvey Mudd graduates is scooped up by the following companies (in order of representation): Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Northrup Grumman. Across all graduating years, significant numbers of alumni also can be found at Apple, Raytheon, Intel, Boeing, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Software and technology is, by far, the career field of choice with aerospace a distant second. HMC grads end up in high-paying jobs that are directly related to their major as the 95 percent of seniors who report landing a job related to their college major confirms. The most common job titles held immediately out of college are software engineer, industrial engineer, and electrical engineer. Graduates average an impressive $87,500 starting salary, a phenomenal number even when accounting for the preponderance of STEM majors. By some measures, that is the highest graduate starting salary of any institution in the United States.
Many Harvey Mudd grads—close to one-quarter—go directly into graduate school programs. The highest number of 2018 grads pursued advanced degrees at the following institutions: Stanford (6), Cornell (5), USC (4), UC-Santa Barbara (2), Columbia (2), and the University of Washington (2). One student from the same class attended each of Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, and Johns Hopkins. The most pursued graduate field of study at those elite schools are computer science, mathematics, physics, and engineering. A healthy 72 percent of those attending grad school are presently working toward a PhD.
Admission
A decade ago, over 30 percent of applicants to Harvey Mudd were accepted; five years ago, that number fell to 20 percent. In recent years HMC’s admit rate has hovered in the 13 to 15 percent range; it was 15 percent for applicants aspiring to join the Class of 2022. However, it is important to note that the profile of the average accepted student has not changed significantly and, unlike many other elite colleges across the United States, the number of applicants has not skyrocketed in the past few years. Early decision applicants made up 39 percent of the acceptance pool, which means applying early may be a good idea if Mudd is your top choice. The ED rate was 19 percent, which was a touch better than the 14 percent encountered during the regular application round.
An overwhelming 87 percent of accepted applicants finished in the top 10 percent of their high school class, and just about everyone placed at least in the top 25 percent. Valedictorians and salutatorians make up an impressive 23 percent of the student body. Standardized test scores need to be high to garner serious consideration. The mid-50 percent range on standardized tests for freshmen in 2018-19 was 1490-1560 on the SAT and 34-35 on the ACT. HMC is one of those rare schools that requires two SAT subject tests in addition to the SAT/ACT. One of those two tests must be the Math Level 2 exam on which accepted students typically score a 750 or better. The school lists essays and recommendations as being “very important” factors in admissions decisions. In sum, Harvey Mudd is not a school that you add to your college list on a whim. It is an institution for those with a proven track record within the realm of science and engineering. Excellent grades in AP/IB course work, along with standardized test scores well above the 95th percentile, are just about prerequisites for serious consideration.
Worth Your Money?
At almost $77,000 per year, a degree from Harvey Mudd won’t come cheap, but the majority of undergraduates do not pay the full cost. On the merit aid front, the college awards an average of $15k to 44 percent of the student body. Even better, 49 percent of attendees see 100 percent of their financial need met, which averages out to $45k in aid each year, knocking the total cost down closer to state school levels. As a result, HMC helps many students from lower- and middle-income families attend the school. While that does result in a higher-than-average postgraduate debt load, alumni enjoy such strong job prospects that paying back loans will not be overly worrisome. No matter your circumstances, if you have a chance to go to Mudd, start packing your bags.