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The brochure labeled itself junk mail
The junk mail brochure
Students who score well on the PSATs get a flood of mail from colleges. This brochure was funny, joking that readers probably get a lot of junk mail from colleges and offering to tell them about this one. Inside, the SAT scores were very high, the average starting salaries were high, and the placements into graduate schools were strong.
Why he applied
Ho Nam had never heard of Harvey Mudd or the Claremont Colleges, and he wondered what the heck the place was. Another statistic had stuck with him from high school: engineering was the number one major among Fortune 500 CEOs in the 1980s, about a third of them. He applied, and went on to major in engineering without thinking he would ever be an investor.
Engineers and humanities
Harvey Mudd was founded in the 1950s, in the nuclear era, on the idea that engineers had to think about the harm as well as the good their inventions could do. A third of the classes were in the humanities. He did well in engineering, but he graduated with the Radley Prize, awarded to the top humanities student, which he didn't know existed until then.
Why are engineers common among top executives?
Studies of CEO backgrounds by executive search firms such as Spencer Stuart have repeatedly found engineering among the most common undergraduate degrees. Engineering trains people to break down complex systems and manage technical trade-offs. Large industrial companies once promoted heavily from their technical ranks. The share of CEOs with engineering degrees has varied across decades.
How do the Claremont Colleges work together?
The Claremont Colleges are a consortium of five undergraduate colleges: Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer. The consortium was organized in 1925, with Oxford as its model. Students at one college can take classes at the others and share libraries and services. Harvey Mudd, founded in 1955, is the engineering and science member.
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