10/2    I was talking to some punk who graduated from Mudd who claimed that
        MIT was a terrible ugrad school. Also talked about rampant grade
        inflation at MIT. Is MIT known to have grade inflation? I always
        thought that it didn't.
        \_ Mudd is psycho.  they have four majors, and the addition of the
                                      \_ 7: bio, chem, cs, eng, math, phys, ss
           "soft" field of bio was recent and very controversial.
           SEALs can talk shit about Marines, but Marines are still tough.
           \_ Mudd is a school with "little man's syndrome"; to some extent
              they are more interested in being difficult than in actually
              teaching.  -tom  (former Mudd ugrad)
              \_ Didn't know you were a quitter.
              \_ Oh so they're like CalTech?
                \_ I think they strive to be harder than CalTech--there's
                   definitely a rivalry between the two schools.  In the
                   school yearbook there's a "blackout" page where they take
                   a photo of the original freshman class from 4 years ago
                   and black out everyone who didn't graduate in 4 years.
                   There's sort of a perverse pride in their level of
                   difficulty.  -tom
                   \_ The rivalry is all in Mudd's mind. Tech students
                      are barely aware of Mudd. -former Tech'er
                        \_ When I visited CalTech they made a big deal
                           about the cannon and Mudd stealing it.  -tom
                           \_ The last couple of times I visited CalTech,
                              the people in flem would talk about it, and
                              the rest would brush it off as flem doing
                              its thing. I really don't think most techers
                              care about mudd whatsoever.
                \_ A HS friend left sometime after a class in which the
                   high on a midterm was 13 (of 100).
                   \- dont you need to ask "what would the high on the
                      midterm have been if it was given to caltech/mit
                      students?
                      \_ we know if it were cal, it would be like 3.
                         \- i suspect if it were berkeley, the average
                            might have been lower but the top score would
                            have certainly been higher.
                   \_ that's farily common in P-Chem.  They have "honk if
                      you passed P-Chem" bumper stickers.  -tom