HMC
Extraordinary Achievement

For a small college, HMC receives an astoundingly large number of awards.

Excellence

In this decade, HMC students won

  • More NSF fellowships (76) than any other liberal arts college in the U.S.
  • Six Churchill scholarships—more than any other liberal arts college in the U.S.
  • Two Apker Awards, the top physics award for undergraduate research. Tied for the most of any liberal arts college in the U.S.
  • Astronaut Scholarships—the only undergraduate institution to be invited.
  • Goldwater, Rhodes, and Watson Fellowships. We compete with major universities 20 times our size.

HMC students excel nationally

Student teams consistently place within the top 15 out of 515 colleges and universities at the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition, the national exam for the best and brightest in math. In five of the last seven years, HMC has placed in the top 10.

Excellence

  • An HMC team finished first in the 2009 Southern California Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) regional programming contest. HMC won the ACM international finals in 1997, the only undergraduate institution to ever take first place.
  • Every year, HMC students write 8–12 patent disclosures based on their work in the Clinic Program, HMC’s internationally recognized program that pairs student teams with sponsoring industry, government and non-profit organizations to solve contemporary industry problems.
  • Over 400 students co-authored peer-reviewed publications over the past 10 years.
  • A team of three women won first place in the 2009 Richard Tapia Robotics Competition.
  • Each year, students collaborate with faculty on over 100 research projects, and 170 students participate in summer research.