Harvey Mudd is a small STEM-focused school in Claremont, California. Students at HMC can take classes at Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pomona. The acceptance rate is around 13%.
Harvey Mudd has two supplements:
What influenced you to apply to Harvey Mudd College? What about the HMC curriculum and community appeals to you? Please limit your response to 500 words.
Another why do you want to go here question, woohoo! Yes, you might be getting sick of writing these. But this is one of our favorite questions, and you can ace it by following the formula that we’ll outline below. Harvey Mudd is looking for A) students who are going to execute a specific academic plan that can only be fulfilled at Harvey Mudd and B) students who are good cultural fits for the school who will enhance the community. Here’s the formula:
Explain why you want to major in X. Harvey Mudd is a school for mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. Applying to Harvey Mudd is not like applying to a large university where you can look through the list of majors and “make something work.” You need to have to experience in their departmental offerings, and a story to back up your desire to major in Physics. You do not have to tell a big story, in fact it is better to zoom in on a singular experience or chain of events that lead to the realization that you want to study Computer Science.
Declare your major in one sentence. This should follow your origin story from above. Disclaimer: you will not be held to the major that you write about it your supplement. If you’re certain about what you want to major in, that’s awesome. But if you change your mind, that’s okay too. But for this piece of writing, you need to declare a major so that the admissions team knows that you’re entering with a plan, and that you’ve researched their offerings.
Write about two upper-level courses that you want to take, with reasons why. You should avoid picking introductory level courses because these are less likely to be specific to HMC. When working with 91̽ clients, we’ve found that it can be difficult to find reasons as to why you want to take certain STEM courses when the subject matter is high level and difficult. HMC does not expect you to understand the entirety of the course that you write about, but there should be something that links you to the class. Think about the courses that you’ve taken in high school, jobs, internships, books you’ve read, online courses, and random research rabbit holes. From there, flesh out the link between yourself and the course.
While you are doing research on your department of choice, look through the list of professors. HMC students are enthusiastic about research, and a huge draw of going to a super small school is that you’ll form relationships with your professors which might lead to research opportunities that you might not have at bigger institutions. Once you’ve found a professor whose work you’re interested in, explain why you’d be an ideal fit for their research team.
Write about an extracurricular activity that you plan to join. While it’s true that you can travel to other colleges within the consortium, for this supplement, you should write about something that “lives” on Harvey Mudd’s campus. Once you get in, you can join any club that you want. But you should only write about student clubs and organizations that are similar to the activities that you did in high school. Explain why you want to join the club, and what you’ll bring to the table.
Once you’ve gathered all of the information, it’s time to write a story. The story should prove that there is a solid link between your past and HMC’s offerings, and you can check that box by weaving details about yourself in with the “data” that you found above. You can structure it any way that you like, just make sure that you’re including all of the pertinent information. With 500 words, you have a lot of space to work with. Just make sure that you’re staying focused and not peppering in throwaway sentences to fill space.
Many students choose HMC because they don’t want to give up their interests in the Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts – or HSA as we call it at HMC. Briefly (in 100 words or less) describe what you'd like to learn about in your dream HSA class.
Before you start writing, . The HSA homepage explains why this aspect of the curriculum is important, and we couldn’t agree more. We have long stood against the school of thought that students are either humanities or STEM-focused, and not both.
The best way to answer this question is to focus on niche subject within a broader realm of a humanities, social science, or art department. “Psychology” will not work here, but there might be a subfield within that realm that has piqued your interest. In addition to describing what you’d like to learn about, explain why. If the recent racial justice protests sparked a desire to read more African American literature, you can flesh out your “why” with a brief story. You don’t have many words to work with, but you should allocate some to the learning objectives of your area of study. Bonus points if you can include some group project ideas and assigned readings.
Harvey Mudd is a small school, but many students are vying for one of the elusive spots. Start early and stay focused.
If you need help, contact us here.