Sayings Around Mudd

There's a few sayings that are used around Mudd. They're pithy, get across an idea, and while perhaps exaggerated there's a bit of truth.

So, let's look at a few:

There are 3 things you can pursue at Mudd. Good sleep, good grades, and good social life. Pick 2. I think we stole this one from Caltech. Not sure. There's also an addendum that states, "if you're in a sport, that's the 4th choice, but you still only get to choose two." Basically, the idea is that there's a lot to do at Mudd, and you're going to be out of time. In some respects, it's true. I know a few people who really do sacrifice sleep for social life and good grades. I can feel good grades chew out my social life as I prioritize sleep. Then again, most of the time it's more like 2.5 choices. Also, you can switch your priorities around and get a nice blend. Bonus points if good grades just come naturally to you, you crazy smart person, so you can get all three. Speaking of grades, that brings us to the next item.

Take your High School GPA. Subtract 2. That's you new Harvey Mudd GPA. OK, this is NOT true. While HMC is very good at battling grade inflation, we don't destroy everyone and put them into the low B range. I happen to be sitting around 3.0, and I believe a value came out before that we average around 3.3 out of 4.0. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, how ever will I compare with those 4.0 GPAs spewing out of some other college? On one hand, you can't. Some people don't realize HMC's rigor, and will promptly ignore you. On the other hand, it's an advantage. There have been testimony to the fact that many groups actually prefer the HMC GPAs because now they can accurately tell how you did. If you get a bazillion 4.0s, how do you know who's better or worse? Coming out of HMC, they know how strong a 3.0 or a 3.5 should be. Also, these people are not just small startups. We're talking about Sun Labs, UCB, Raytheon, Google. Big groups. Just to put things in perspective, less than 10 students in the 50 years have graduated with 4.0 GPAs.

The odds are good but the goods are odd. One of my favorites. This is mostly from the female side of things. We have about a 2:1 male to female ratio, so as a girl you have very good odds about hooking up if you want to. The problem is the applicant pool is not necessarily full of Tom Cruises. That isn't to say we're all crazy or acne pocketed bottle glasses nerds who get monitor tan. The vast majority of us can operate just fine in normal society, just don't ask us about Star Wars or quantum theory. On the flip side, the guys might seem like they're getting the short end of the stick. However, remember that not everyone you're competing against is that socially able. And, as a bonus, Scripps (an all girl school) is just across the street.

Still no date friday night. Ironically, this is on our HMC T-shirts sometimes. It's placed right after the delta-epsilon proof. This is perhaps the biggest lie ever. As far as social life goes, HMC is pretty vibrant. You should at least be acquainted with everyone in your class, and if you hang around cool places like East dorm, you'll meet plenty of people from other classes as well. On top of that, there are regular social events, parties, and yes people do date. There is actually this weird idea in the 5Cs that we are a party school. Seriously. Yet, we have a lower drinking rate than the other colleges, and a lower rate than the national average. The reason we're known for partying is because we throw awesome parties. One of East's is Funball. We rent a bouncy castle, play awesome dance music, and instead of buying booze we buy loads of candy. Oh, and a funball pit and a cotton candy machine. Other notables would be Wild Wild West, the Suds Party (formerly known as Foam Party), Tax Night, Trick or Drink, Trick or Cheese, and many others. There's this special one that North throws that I can't remember the name of. Club two-something-something. But yeah, we can rock it out all night long if we want.

So, now you know a couple of random sayings and the facts behind them. Cya around.

Searching in the Real World

There's this mythical place where you get paid to do homework and your problems sets actually determine the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. WHOA!

Turns out I need to get into this world soon. I'm a graduating senior (or, at least I hope I've graduating), so that means grad school and jobs. It also means I get to feel really weird about myself.

Allow me to put things in perspective. I have a 3.06 GPA. Cumulative. Floated with some As in humanities classes. Did I forget to mention Harvey Mudd battles grade inflation? Then again, I get to brag about helping build a chip. Twice. Except the first one doesn't work.

Turns out most graduate programs have a minimum requirement of their applicants. Even more interesting is that the cutoff is usually a 3.0 undergrad GPA.

As an extra bonus, I'm interested in chip design and robotics and nanotechnology. Bonus points if you mash all three together. This means I kinda need a graduate degree to progress in the field. I guess I could try being like my dad who worked his way up the ranks and is now the senior systems engineer at his company even though he only has a BS. But, the economy also decided to tank. So, hiding in grad school for a bit isn't such a bad thing.

Then again, what if I don't get into grad school? Don't worry, I'm applying for full time jobs elsewhere! This means spamming my resume and brushing up on my interviewing skills. Oh, and deciding if I'm really interested in moving to Oregon or Texas to nab that job. No offers yet. Here's hoping.

In other fun news, I recently discovered I was building the wrong processing element for the chip for Clinic. Oops. Luckily, everyone else appears to have the correct PE, and it's the simplest of the PEs. Unfortunately the code I currently have doesn't pass the test vectors, so I'm also debugging it now. Oh, and I became head of the microarchitecture, which means I need a full chip in Verilog code by Tuesday. Oh, and I'm heading up the Verilog testing so I need to fix Cadence so it will output Verilog so we can test the schematics. Oh, and there's this MicroPs project I'm working on where we're going to make a MIDI transceiver for a keyboard and generate music. Oh, and there's the debugging of the chip we built last year. Oh, and there's these two other humanities classes I'm in. Oh, and I'm going home for a bit on the weekend.

It's gonna be a busy weekend.

It sounded good on paper....

Today's episode will be covering things you think at first are good ideas, but in reality may not be.

Let's start with a simple one. Pure democracy. Everyone has a single vote, majority wins. Yay power to the people and all that. The only problem is this relies on an informed governed/voter population. Unfortunately, the USA is really really bad at this. We rely too much on the echo chamber of the media for our 30 second sound bites to tell us how awesome this one idea is. So, maybe having smarter people in power would be nice. Problem is, this same population has to vote them in. Oops. Solution, inform your public. Yay mandatory schooling! Just make sure you make people learn. But, that's for another rant.

Here's one closer to Mudd. Clinic. Pretty awesome on paper. You're working with a liaison and as an undergrad you're getting real world experience. Awesome! However, you're trying to solve real world problems while in school. Oh, you mean you forgot you still had to do Hum papers or that lab for the other class? Oops. Bonus points if your liaisons don't actually know what the problem really is. One Clinic team (which will not be named here) has a really cool project. However, we're past the half-way mark and they still don't have a good grasp of the problem. It's a problem that relies heavily on sample data, but they don't seem to have any accurate data. Plus, many times they ask for information, the liaison says "figure it out," they come back and present their solution, and the liaison goes "yeah, that's what we were thinking." As much as I'm a fan for finding things out myself and giving people freedom for creativity, sometimes the optimal solution is already known. Please share. So, be warned that Clinic is a huge undertaking. Probably worth it, I'll let you know at the end of mine, but a giant time suck. Plus, you've got to do it in conjunction with other classes. Unless you were awesome, planned ahead, and don't have many classes during Clinic.

Now, another of my gripes. Diversity. Yay multiple views and experiences. The question then becomes, are we doing things for the sake of diversity? It's become a huge question in the College Application Process if a college is accepting and rejecting people based on nationality or gender. After all, we love having numbers with huge non-white and female incoming classes. Makes the news, good stuff for publicity. However, are you lowering the quality of the incoming class? Cheapening the brand of a degree? This also hurts the minority who have to second guess if they're there because they deserve it or because it was a "diversity" choice. Blargh. FYI, I'm a minority. Unfortunately, Asians have this weird idea that we aren't underprivileged, so we don't give out many Asian scholarships. Also, we're one of the largest minorities in the West Coast schools, so we typically don't get preferential treatment. As the saying goes, UCI is the University of Chinese Immigrants and UCLA is University of Caucasian Lost in Asia. =]

Back to recent events, Halloween was pretty awesome. I hope Kyle posts about his Dr. Horrible costume, because it was made of win. If you don't know what Dr. Horrible is yet, go here. But yeah, I didn't dress up. Thought about it, then decided to be a sleep deprived engineer. Turns out it worked well. =] Other favorites were a Music Pirate, a Hamlet/Westley/Random dude in black with a sword, the entire Evil League of Evil including Bad Horse (another Dr. Horrible reference), a random lady costume as an excuse to wear her corset, and Martin dressed up a Room Draw. Yeah, that thing we're not supposed to talk about. East had Trick or Cheese. Each suite buys Cheese, sometimes crackers too, and you go around sampling cheese. This is the counter to Trick or Drink in West. There was also a group who took tin foil, wrapped themselves up, and went to Chipotle. Chipotle gives free burritos to people who come dressed as a burrito, and since they wrap their burritos in tin foil, well...

Anyways, time to get back to my lab. I'm implementing processor interrupts today. yay!

Lies, more lies, and statistics

Here's some statistics I nagged the Admissions Department to give me. Thanks Raissa!

This post is gonna have lots of numbers and explanations and thoughts. Remember, statistics are trying to condense information into simple numeric values. However, many people have learned the art of exploiting statistics, so you should always be wary of the accuracy and authenticity of this statistics. I honestly believe that the two most important classes you can take are a civics class (understand how our government works please, don't just vote based on your parents) and a statistics class (seriously, where did the newspaper gets these numbers?).

Anyways, Mudd numbers!

Graduation Rate: 80% for class of 2008, oscillates between 77-84%
The 4 year graduation rate is defined as graduating in 8 consecutive semesters. This means it doesn't include anyone who took a semester off. I believe there have been posted numbers of around 86% for graduating in 5 years, but I'm not sure what their definition is of that. It might include 4 graded semesters but 1 year taken off, it might be the 9 semester kids, I don't know.

Freshman to Sophomore Retention Rate: 95% for 2007 to 2008
That's right, 95% of the students who entered in 2007 came back for a sophomore year in 2008. Note that this number needs to reduce to somewhere around 80% in 3 years. In reality, Mudd tends to lose the majority of its students somewhere during Sophomore year. By Junior year people are pretty set, unless they got into a major they don't actually like, and Seniors dropping out is pretty rare. Changing to an off-campus major is more likely, but then again that's also rare.

Breakdown of graduating majors (Class of 2008):
Major      Total %
  
Biology     4 2.37%
Chemistry and Biology   4 2.37%
Chemistry    6 3.55%
Computer Science   20 11.83%
Computer Science and Mathematics 7 4.14%
Engineering    73 43.20%
Individual Program of Studies   0.00%
Mathematical Biology   1 0.59%
Mathematics    23 13.61%
Physics     26 15.38%

Off Campus    5 2.96%

Um.... yeah. Engineers rule. We apparently also like the majors enough (or are too lazy) to make our own major. Also, note that there aren't that many Chemists or Biologists. That doesn't mean the departments are bad, we for some reason just don't have a lot of them. Weird. CS probably stole all of them.

Continued Schooling: 34% for 2008
This is typically around 40%. This includes going to professional school as well as graduate programs like a Masters or PhD. PhDs in Physics are especially high, and kinda required if you want to do something Physics-y with that degree, like be a professor.

Average Debt: $17,957 for 2008
Median Average Starting Income: $65K - $70K for 2008
These two combined are weird. I know for a fact I have way more that 18K in debt. Well, to be fair, they're probably only counting student loans, in which case that's closer to my number, but parental loans tend to be big. So, this statistic out of all of them is probably the most misleading. That isn't to say I have to pay all 40K a year, I do get some nice scholarships and such, but my parents definitely are fronting huge loans to get me through this. Don't forget us Engineers tend to skew the income number, a bunch of CS kids last year got eaten by this 80K paying company, and this number probably ignores students who aren't making anything. I mean, grad student stipend is only around 18K.

Females: 40% incoming class of 2008, 37% graduating class of 2008, 36% current total body
Please note that the last few incoming classes have been getting more and more females in them, so it's not like we're losing females faster than we lost males. Well, we might be, but you can't claim these statistics show that. Note that the incoming class of 2007 had a whopping 42% female class, better than any other major tech school. But, as the saying goes, "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." =] To be fair, the majority of the students can pass off as normal humans in society. Just don't ask them about relativity or anything, and you might never know.

"Top 10% of class:
95% of incoming students who gave a HS ranking are in the top 10 % of their class (mind you 157 out of the 202 gave a rank). Out of the whole class regardless if they gave a rank or not 74% of the students are in the top 10%."

"Top 5% of class:
60% of incoming students who gave a HS ranking are in the top 5 % of their class (mind you 157 out of the 202 gave a rank). Out of the whole class regardless if they gave a rank or not 46% of the students are in the top 5%."
This is for this last incoming class. This is also quoted from the e-mail I got back. Yay for transparency.

National Merit Finalists: 61 out of 202 = 30% of the incoming class
I am not one of these. That's right, I was too lazy (or too stupid) to study for that PSAT test. Come to think of it, did I even study for the SAT....?

Out of State: 35% of the incoming class
This is based on permanent address not citizenship or visa status. I am also not one of these.

International Students:
"This is based on citizenship and visa status not permanent address. So non-US citizens and non-permanent residents, would be 5% of the incoming class. We also have a fair amount of Americans abroad, basically US citizens and permanent residents who are graduating HS outside of the US. That number is 3% of the incoming class."
Go diversity. Oh, did I forget to mention one my Clinic Team members is a French Foreign Exchange Student?

Live on campus all years while attending: 99.6%
Um.... yeah. Everyone is on campus. Seriously. Walk down the hall and bug those upperclassmen, they like feeling important. They also want an excuse not to do their own homework. Also, note you are guaranteed housing all your years on campus. And if the dorms run out, they'll help subsidize a place off campus.

Average Mudd Graduating GPA: 3.2?
OK, the Admissions office doesn't track this, but if I recall correctly there was this other article that posted this number or something close to it. We do indeed battle grade inflation.

And now, for something interesting that got written back to me:
"Usually guide books ask for the most recent year but the thing is they are usually 1-2 years behind by the time they publish. For example the Yale Insider's Guide just asked me for numbers for their 2009 edition. I've given them the statistics for the class of 2012 (folks starting fall 08) and that goes to press and is distributed by early to mid 2009. By the time it's being sold we already have stats for the class of 2013 (folks staring fall 09)."

Cool stuff.

Leave a comment if you want me to go dig up other stuff.

Fall Break

Yeah yea, I know this is late. Not that most people care about my punctuality on this blog anyways.

So, I'm still in the middle of Fall Break. Technically, Fall Break begins after your last class of last week, which for me was Thursday afternoon. It extends until your first class Wednesday.

Luckily, we're not in High School where each teacher seems to think that any kind of break is a good time for the students to work on extra projects. Nope. Most professor have a tendency to go easier and let the students unwind a little during break. Winter break is extra awesome since our semesters actually line up and so there really are no classes that span the break. Unlike High School where Winter Break was the perfect time to work on that History Day Project.

Anyways, you might be asking what kind of stuff we do around here for Fall Break. Well, there's the official events endorsed by the official student organizations, such as today is a Disneyland trip. Since I'm currently writing this, and I don't own a laptop, I'm NOT at Disneyland. Hey, I grew up in Southern California and each year for Band we went to Disneyland. It's lost its appeal. I'll go visit again in a few years.

Then there's those other grassroots things. For example, the East Dorm Purity Test. It's a 500 question survey. For everything that you've done, you make a tally mark. At the end of the test, you count how many "yes" marks you have, divide by 5, and subtract that number from 100. Don't round to the nearest integer. So, higher score is better, or worse, depending on your viewpoint.

There's also my own person event, Extended Crack. If you recall, I organize Crack in the AC. Crack being an addictive item, in this case games, and AC referring to the ACademic computing labs. That's right, AC stands for ACademics. We just happen to localize in the computer labs so we can play games. Extended Crack is a special event every Fall Break where we start at noon and play until people leave. This is not to be confused with 24Hr Crack where players try to game for 24 Hours (noon to noon) with breaks for bathroom and food. Anyways, it was pretty awesome. Our lack of public TF2 accounts restricted TF2 a little, but we had some pretty fun times.

There are also smaller things, such as some people decided to have a slumber party in the dorm lounge. Or, a massive trip down to the Village for dinner. Fun stuff.

And of course, there's that bit of homework that you should do to get out of the way but you keep putting off so you can go mess around. Like Clinic.

*sniff*

It's been a busy week.

Lots of Clinic, lots of MicroPs, a presentation and a paper, and research is still being an enigma.

To top it all off, a cold has been going around the campus. And it looks like due to low sleep levels and off-timed allergy meds, I may have caught it. It hasn't moved into my chest yet, so I might have a chance yet. If it does, I might need antibiotics. =[

So yeah, nothing interesting today. Move along.

Instead, enjoy!



FYI, be careful of sketchy people online.

AND MAGIC!!!!

Photo Blog: Intel Site Visit

Well, we just had our Site Visit to the Intel Campus up near Portland, Oregon.

To get there, we had to catch a 6:15am flight, which meant we left HMC at around 4:45am.









































We made a wrong turn, and wasted some time, but got to the airport on time for loading.




During the flight, we got to spend some quality time with Professor David Money Harris and go over stuff we were still a little hazy on and some new ideas we were working on. Here is Braly going over some ideas for a floorplan for the chip. Sorry, spacing was tight. That's Julien's head in the background.







Being in the morning, we had a nice sunrise as we took off. =]














More quality time, this time going over the delay calculations. I wasn't sure I did them right, but after a brief talk with Prof. Harris, I was glad I estimated as close as I could get. Made me happy. However, Lolly and Julien weren't quite as comfortable, so they got some time to review the calculations while Michael and I tried to take a quick nap.



























We couldn't take pictures in the buildings, so no pictures of the presentation nor the really cool lab. I also forgot to take a picture of the nice lunch we had. It was thai food and Braly approved of the quality, so it must have been the good stuff.

But we did get to take a nice picture with the whole team and our liaisons. Left to right: Prof. Harris, Julien, Michael, Sanu, Ram, and Lolly.

It is now about 4pm, so after a cool lab tour and more ideas on how to make our chip, such as about five ways to have a backup clock for the chip, we started driving back to the airport. These two knocked out before I did. =]

Due to some traffic, we got to the terminal at around 6:10pm for a 6:35pm flight. So, Professor Harris drove up the rental, we popped out, grabbed our stuff and started to run. Down a flight of stairs, shooting across the street from the parking structure, into the terminal. A quick glance around to find the Southwest terminals, print our boarding passes, dashing to security, and as we scurried to the gate

we realized the flight had been delayed. Probably one of the few times you're ever glad it was delayed.

The weird thing was I was in the back, so I kept thinking how epic this looked, the classic mad dash to the airplane with the Professor in the lead, and I wanted to take a picture. Problem was, I was running at full speed too.

Luckily, this meant a quick dinner. I also joked with Julien, who is a french exchange student, that now he'd had a Quizno's sandwich for breakfast, thai food for lunch, and a burrito for dinner. Michael joyfully added, "welcome to America." Interestingly, Julien has quite the appetite and once we got back to Mudd planned on making a trip to Jay's Place for more food.

Out we leave the terminal.

Oh, and by the way, Lolly really hates pictures of her, so by now she was threatening physical violence on my person if I kept taking pictures.

Chilling waiting for the shuttle back to the parking lot where we stashed the Clinic van.

Back at Mudd, safe and sound, much wiser than we left, and a heck of a lot more tired. It's 11pm in this picture.

And that's that. A full day spent traveling and talking with people way more knowledgeable than us. We did get quite a bit out of it, such as some fun times together and learning about how Intel tests its chips. Oh, and we got to see the teraflop chip Intel built a few years ago. Crazy awesome stuff.

Now I just have to finish the MicroPs lab, a presentation on Haydn, VLSI research, Clinic Verilog code hacking, Cell library components......