Which is more prestigious for undergraduate students, Harvey Mudd or Northwestern?

The biggest practical tradeoff is specialized prestige versus broad name recognition. Harvey Mudd carries exceptional weight in STEM circles, especially in engineering, math, computer science, and among employers who know elite undergraduate technical colleges well. Northwestern, though, has the more widely recognized name across the country and across more fields, simply because it is a much larger, comprehensive university with strong visibility in business, journalism, medicine, law, and the arts as well as STEM.

For employer and graduate school perception, the answer depends a lot on who is doing the evaluating. In technical recruiting, Harvey Mudd can be seen as every bit as prestigious, and sometimes even more impressive, because of its rigor, small size, and very strong placement into top engineering and tech roles. Among people outside STEM, Northwestern is more likely to be instantly recognized and read as a highly prestigious school.

Other colleges and graduate programs will absolutely know Harvey Mudd, especially in academic and scientific settings. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, has an unusually strong academic reputation for an undergraduate-focused institution, and is respected for producing students with serious quantitative training. But its brand is still more niche. Northwestern has the advantage of mainstream prestige: more people have heard of it, and that matters in casual perception.

So if you mean prestige in the broad public sense, Northwestern usually carries more. If you mean prestige in undergraduate STEM and among people who really know technical education, Harvey Mudd is on the same tier and can even stand out more. For sheer all-around name power, I would give the edge to Northwestern.