Is Carnegie Mellon or Harvey Mudd harder to get into for a STEM applicant?

For a computer science applicant, Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science is typically the tougher admission target; for engineering more broadly, Carnegie Mellon and Harvey Mudd are both exceptionally difficult, with no reliable across-the-board winner. CMU’s CS school attracts an unusually concentrated pool of applicants with advanced math, programming, research, and competition experience. Harvey Mudd’s small entering class also makes every available place highly contested.

The key difference is how the schools admit students. At Carnegie Mellon, applicants apply to a particular college or school, and CS is notably more selective than many of CMU’s other undergraduate programs. An applicant targeting CMU engineering is evaluated within the College of Engineering rather than against the CS pool, so the comparison with Harvey Mudd is closer.

Harvey Mudd admits students to the college rather than directly into a locked major. Its committee looks for students who can thrive in a demanding common STEM core while contributing to a collaborative, residential community. That means strong technical preparation matters, but so do evidence of intellectual range, communication, and fit with a small liberal-arts-oriented engineering and science environment.

Tailor the application emphasis accordingly: depth in computing or engineering for CMU’s relevant school, and broad STEM curiosity plus community-mindedness for Harvey Mudd.