Preface: These are my personal experiences. How the HMC workload affects someone is very much dependent on that person's habits. Factors like time management, how good you are at a particular subject, whether or not you're willing to ask for help, and more all play a role. It IS possible to get plenty of sleep and not get that stressed out about things here (but it's pretty rare). Also, I realize that complaining about academic work is silly compared to all the other worrisome things out in the world, but this is really what people talk about at mudd.

So, unfortunately, Harvey Mudd isn't all fun and games. This is a college that expects a lot out of you and you're going to have to work hard. Though it's probably not a completely adequate description of the pains and struggles of HMC, here's a brief overview of some obstacles I've faced here:

-I've gotten tired of work. No, not just tired... I've gotten to the point where I would beg for all the work to stop. There are times when I would have non-stop work for weeks in a row (this doesn't last all year, but it happens every once in a while). Even though I'm interested in math, science, and engineering, there's a point where I just want to leave all that and do anything non-academic. At Mudd, it's not uncommon for academics to consume you. I think it's probably built into the nature of our school.

-I've been completely defeated by assignments. This is something I've really never had to deal with in high school. Also, it was largely non-issue freshman year. However, starting sophomore year, I've had some assignments which have really gotten to me and "broken" me. What does this mean? Well, basically, it usually means having homework assignments with only about 6ish problems...but lasting me 6+ hours. It means doing a problem, finding a mistake, redoing the problem, finding another mistake, redoing it again, etc. ... and then moving on to the next problem and repeating the process (also, it means writing code that doesn't work, but also doesn't give errors, and then sitting around trying to figure out where you went wrong)

-I get disappointed with my grades sometimes. Maybe you already have a feeling of this already but here's the deal: most of the people who come here are at the top of their graduating classes and are used to getting A's with little to no effort. At Mudd, you really have to work HARD to get good grades. And a "good grade" is not necessarily an A, it might be a B. Also, it's pretty common to study hard for tests and get unsatisfying grades on them :(

-Because of an overload on work, I've lost (lots of) sleep. Sleep deprivation occurs often enough at Mudd that students abbreviate it as "sleep dep". It really sucks. The worst that I've ever had to go through was going without more than an hour of sleep at once for about 3 days... during finals week. I was falling asleep during my last midterm. Yeah... that was bad. Maybe I'll talk about it more later.

-Stress and sleep dep plays a strong negative role on your emotions. When I'm stressed out and worried about the massive amount of work that I have to do, it's much easier for me to get angry and annoyed at other people. I become less social and sometimes depressed. Not a great feeling.

So why do I put up with it? Well, even though the work can sometimes take a beating on me, I still really like the things I'm studying. Though not ALL of the material is interesting and some of it is just plain boring to me, I really do have very strong interests in engineering, math, and science. Some of the stuff I'm learning is really really cool and the "aha!" moments of engineering, math, and science are awesome. It's a weird mix of pleasure and pain haha.

In deciding whether or not Mudd is right for you, a big piece of advice I'd give to you is to evaluate yourself and think about how passionate you are with respect to the technical fields (of math, science, and engineering). I think, with little or no interest in the technical fields, you will probably not make it here. With a decent amount of passion, you can make it but it won't be a pleasant experience at all. With a strong passion, you'll make it through and you'll be as happy as you can be at a place like this.