Thursday, February 14, 2008

An introduction, of sorts

I'm Skye, and I'm a Mudder. ("Mudder" is slang used at the Claremont Colleges for "a student who attends Harvey Mudd College.") In case you have stumbled across this blog without any knowledge of what this "Harvey Mudd College" is, I have a brief summary:
Harvey Mudd College is a small liberal arts college with a strong emphasis on science and technology. However, science isn't all we Mudders do; in order to graduate, each of us have to have a concentration (similar to a minor) in a Humanities or Social Sciences subject in addition to a science major. (Some students take an off-campus major, in which case they must have an on-campus concentration.) If I go into much more detail than that, this post will be at least 20 pages long, so I have a link to the HMC website on this blog. ("HMC" is another one of those terms that means "Mudd.")

Who am I? I'm a freshman at Mudd. I currently live in a Scripps College dorm; however, I spend most of my time in East Dorm at Mudd, where I want to live next year. I'm planning to major in engineering and concentrate in music. I'm one of the few jazz bass guitarists who's also a classically trained flute player. I took flute lessons for several years at the University of Memphis, which is about half an hour away from my house, which is about 1,800 miles away from Mudd. My training on bass guitar comes from a hodgepodge of sources--myself, my uncle, books, teachers, and the Internet.
I came to Mudd for a whole host of reasons: the professors are approachable, the professors are good teachers, the students are friendly, the students do more with their lives than just math and science, the administration is responsive to the needs of students, and the Mudd community is very close-knit and accepting of its members. I went to Mudd and not a school more focused on science because I didn't want to have to give up music and literature in order to become an engineer. I went to Mudd and not a liberal arts college because I wanted to become an engineer.

There is one problem with the above description of myself--it fits into a neat narrative, and I don't. I skateboard across campus--partly because it's a downhill ride from the dorms to the academic end of campus, and partly because it's fun. I have a bike that's currently broken in at least 3 different ways. I really like my engineering class and my psychology class, and I'm beginning to suspect that I like them for the same reason--"Oh, that's how that works! Neat!" I like to read, I like to write, and I like to take things apart and put them back together.

I am one of the many Mudders on campus, and one of five whose blogs are being linked back to the Mudd Admissions website so that those curious about Mudd can hear what it's like to live at Mudd. And since there are five of us, it's likely you'll hear very different things about what Mudd is like. Just remember that they're all true, even when they contradict each other. Every person's life at Mudd is different. Every person at Mudd is different. Everything I write here can only be representative of the way I see things. If you think what I'm saying is strange, you can check out the other Mudder's blogs to see what they have to say. (Or you can look at their blogs anyway, because they're fun to read.)

So, in conclusion:
1) My name is Skye.
2) I am a Mudder.
3) This is my blog.

Any questions?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

So deep. So deep.

Skye said...

Thanks!

Unknown said...

my daughter just visited HMC over spring break. we live in Houston. We are trying to get an idea of just how hard it is to get into Mudd. Do you mind sharing your gpa/class rank?? she is in the top 10% of a class of 800 public school. thanks

Skye said...

Mudd cares about a lot more than class rank and GPA when it's considering admissions. (That's not just rhetoric--in the freshman class this year, there are people who had C averages in high school and people who were their high school's valedictorians.)

You may want to talk to the Office of Admissions. Their contact information is here .

Melanie said...

Hi. Nice blog. Thanks. Just wondering how you happened to be in a Scripps College dorm your first year. Is that usual or was it by choice?

Skye said...

I was living in a Mudd dorm my first semester and became unhappy with my dorm, so I went on the waitlist for different housing. Someone from Scripps wanted to move to Mudd and offered to swap places with me. (She wanted to move into the room of a friend of hers who is studying abroad this semester. 5C housing rules say that you can live on any campus you want, but if you live at a different school, you have to find someone at that school who will live at your school.) So I'm living on Scripps this semester. I'll be back at Mudd next year.

KMarsh said...

rainey, I'll confirm what Skye said earlier about more being considered; one of our proctors last year was admitted at the age of 16 after dropping out of high school because she couldn't take people telling her what to do all the time. That said, most Mudders did quite well in high school. To directly answer your question, I was 11th in a public high school class of 263 with a weighted cumulative GPA of 4.12 by the end and SAT scores of 760 writing and 690 math.

Skye said...

I didn't say because I don't remember. (Did I mention that? Let me scroll up...nope, forgot.)

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