Harvey Mudd College: Acceptance Rate, Cost, Size and Rankings

Private colleges guide · By CalChannel Editorial Team · Updated September 29, 2026

The Harvey Mudd acceptance rate was 12% for Fall 2025: Harvey Mudd College admitted 643 of 5,217 first-year applicants, according to its Common Data Set. Score submitters had a middle 50% SAT of 1500 to 1560. The 2026-27 cost of attendance is $104,512, but Mudd meets 100% of demonstrated need, and the average need-based grant was $58,910.

Harvey Mudd is one of the smallest colleges in California and one of the hardest to get into. It’s also one of the most expensive on paper, which is why “why is Harvey Mudd so expensive” is a common question right after “what’s the acceptance rate.”

Both questions have better answers than the headline numbers suggest. Here’s who gets in, what families actually pay, and what you get for it.

What Is Harvey Mudd College?

Harvey Mudd College is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, founded in 1955 and built around science, engineering and mathematics. It offers majors in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics and physics, plus joint majors such as computer science and mathematics or chemistry and biology.

What makes Mudd different from a technical institute is its Common Core: every student, regardless of major, completes a shared curriculum in math, the sciences, computing and engineering, alongside substantial coursework in the humanities, social sciences and the arts. The idea is to train scientists and engineers who also understand the social impact of their work.

Where Is Harvey Mudd College?

Harvey Mudd College is at 301 Platt Blvd. in Claremont, California, about 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. Its compact 38-acre campus is part of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate colleges (Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, Pitzer and Harvey Mudd) and two graduate institutions that sit next to one another.

That setup is Mudd’s quiet advantage. Students get the attention of a school with fewer than 1,000 undergraduates, but they can cross-register for courses, eat in dining halls and join clubs across all the Claremont Colleges.

What Is the Harvey Mudd Acceptance Rate?

The Harvey Mudd acceptance rate was about 12% for Fall 2025: Harvey Mudd College admitted 643 of 5,217 first-year applicants, and 236 enrolled, according to its Common Data Set 2025-26. Applications keep growing, while the number of admitted students has stayed between roughly 470 and 650 a year.

Here’s what the number hides: the applicant pool is heavily self-selected. Among enrolled students who submitted scores for Fall 2025, the middle 50% SAT range was 1500 to 1560 and the ACT range was 35 to 36, and 98% of SAT submitters scored 1400 or higher. Most applicants are strong in math and science, so the real competition is sharper than 12% suggests.

Residency changes the odds too. For Fall 2025, Mudd admitted about 12% of California applicants (283 of 2,291), about 18% of applicants from other states (291 of 1,631) and about 5% of international applicants (69 of 1,295).

Early Decision at Harvey Mudd

Early Decision gives a measurable edge. For Fall 2025, Harvey Mudd admitted 109 of 594 Early Decision applicants, about 18%, compared with about 12% overall. Early Decision is binding, so it only makes sense if Mudd is your clear first choice and you’ve checked the cost with the net price calculator.

What Is the Harvey Mudd FAST Program?

FAST (Future Achievers in Science and Technology) is a free, overnight fly-in program for high-achieving high school seniors interested in STEM. It is not an admissions program, and Harvey Mudd states that FAST results have no effect on your first-year application. Participants do receive a fee waiver for the application.

That’s why the “Harvey Mudd FAST acceptance rate” is hard to pin down: the college doesn’t publish one. It does say each FAST session hosts around 40 to 50 students and that many qualified applicants are turned away because of space and budget limits. For students entering in fall 2027, the sessions ran September 13 to 15 and October 25 to 27, 2026, and applications closed August 9, 2026.

How Much Does Harvey Mudd Cost, and Why Is It So Expensive?

Harvey Mudd tuition for 2026-27 is $76,879, and the full cost of attendance is $104,512 for students living on campus, including $13,293 for housing and $11,489 for a full meal plan. Students living off campus have a budget of $90,912, and those living with family $83,793.

So why is Harvey Mudd so expensive? Three reasons. It’s tiny, so fixed costs are spread across fewer than 1,000 students. It’s lab- and project-heavy, with an 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio and a capstone Clinic program that puts student teams on real industry projects. And unlike public universities, it receives no state subsidy, so tuition carries most of the cost of instruction.

But the sticker price isn’t what most families pay. Harvey Mudd meets 100% of demonstrated financial need, and according to its Common Data Set 2025-26, the average need-based grant was $58,910 for full-time undergraduates and $64,941 for first-year students. Federal data put the average net price at $43,966 in 2023-24 for students receiving grant aid. Graduates who borrowed left with an average of $30,350 in debt.

“Harvey Mudd is a case where the sticker price and the real price can be tens of thousands of dollars apart. A school that meets full need looks at your family’s finances and builds the package to close the gap, mostly with grants. That makes the net price calculator and the CSS Profile more important than the $104,512 headline. The families who get surprised are usually the ones who never ran the numbers.”

CalChannel Editorial Team

There’s also the return side. Harvey Mudd reports a median starting salary of $102,500 for the Class of 2026, with 59.5% of graduates in full-time jobs and 22.5% heading to graduate or professional school. PayScale ranked Mudd first in the nation for return on investment in 2024.

How Big Is Harvey Mudd?

Harvey Mudd had 913 undergraduate students in Fall 2025 and no graduate programs, with a student body that is 51% female and 49% male. The student-to-faculty ratio is 8:1, and the college has about 110 instructional faculty.

Harvey Mudd Class Size

Classes are small by design. In the 2023-24 Common Data Set, 149 of 248 undergraduate class sections, or 60%, had fewer than 20 students, and 69 sections had fewer than 10. Introductory Core courses can be larger, but upper-level major courses, labs and Clinic teams of 4 to 5 students keep most of your time in small groups.

Students also persist. About 95% of first-year students return for their second year, and 93% of the 2019 entering class graduated within six years.

Harvey Mudd Rankings

Harvey Mudd tied for No. 10 among national liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News 2026 Best Colleges, its first time in the top 10, and ranked No. 2 for undergraduate engineering among schools that don’t grant doctorates. Its computer science program ranked No. 25 overall, the highest of any undergraduate-only college on that list.

What Is Harvey Mudd Known For?

Harvey Mudd is best known for three things: its Common Core curriculum, its Clinic Program and graduates who move into top engineering, tech and research roles.

The Clinic Program is the one people outside Claremont hear about. Running for more than 60 years, it puts teams of 4 to 5 juniors and seniors on real technical problems for sponsoring companies and organizations. Clinic has worked with 626 sponsors on 2,032 projects, including Amazon, Google, NASA, Microsoft and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Is Harvey Mudd a good engineering school? By the numbers, yes: No. 2 among non-doctoral engineering programs, a general engineering major built on the Core, and Clinic experience that works like a year of professional practice before graduation. If you’re comparing it with a research university, see our guide to Caltech, the other small, highly selective STEM school in the Los Angeles area, or browse our private colleges guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line on Harvey Mudd

Harvey Mudd College is a 913-student STEM college with a 12% acceptance rate for Fall 2025, an 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio, top-10 liberal arts status and the No. 2 undergraduate engineering program among non-doctoral schools. Admission is highly selective, and Early Decision offers a modest edge for students sure Mudd is their first choice.

On cost, don’t stop at $104,512. Mudd meets full demonstrated need, and its average need-based grant is close to $59,000. Run the net price calculator, file the CSS Profile and FAFSA on time, and compare the result with offers from other top STEM schools. You can also compare private options elsewhere in Southern California, such as Loyola Marymount University.