Impact of Harvey Mudd College

Recognized Excellence

  • No. 1. Return on Investment – Payscale.com, 2024
  • No. 1. Most Accessible Professors – Princeton Review, 2025
  • No. 2. Best Liberal Arts College, Washington Monthly, 2024
  • No. 2. Best Undergraduate Engineering Program
  • No. 2. Best Value Colleges for Science Majors – Payscale.com, 2024
  • No. 2. Their Student Love These Colleges – Princeton Review, 2025
  • No. 2. Best Career Placement – Princeton Review, 2025

World-class Faculty

  • 7 recipients of the Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching – Mathematical Association of America – most recently in 2024
  • 4 Cottrell Scholars – awarded to outstanding teacher-scholars by the Research Corporation of Science Advancement – most recently 2026
  • 11 NSF Early Career Awards recognizing extraordinary faculty in early stages of their careers
  • Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award – National Center for Women and Information Technology, 2015
  • 3 recipients of the Engagement Excellence Award – National Center for Women and Information Technology, 2015
  • National Academy of Engineering’s Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, 2012
  • American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow, 2018, American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution, 2020
  • 6 American Mathematical Society Fellows, (2024, 2016, 2014, 2012)
  • Benjamin Garver Lamme Award, American Society for Engineering Education, 2015
  • Emerging Leader ABIE Award, Anita Borg Institute, 2016
  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ (Inaugural) Design Theory and Methodology Award, 2015
  • 105 tenured or tenure track; 98 percent hold PhD or highest degree in field
  • 42% percent female

Exceptional Students

  • 11 Astronaut Scholars in the last decade; Harvey Mudd is the only participating college that exclusively offers undergraduate programs.
  • 17 Churchill Scholarship Awardees, more than any other liberal arts college in the U.S.
  • 29 recipients of the highly selective Goldwater Scholarship since 2008 – including 3 for 2026-2027
  • 39 recipients of the Watson Fellowship, one or more nearly every year since 1976
  • 5 recipients of the American Physical Society’s LeRoy Apker Award for outstanding achievement in physics by an undergraduate – most recently in 2024
  • Multiple recipients of NSF Graduate Fellowships, two to five nearly every year for the past decade
  • Consistently place within the Top 15 at the annual Putnam Mathematics Competition