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Harvey Mudd  /  Essays  /  Prompt 2

Harvey Mudd: Dream HSA class (100 words)

100 words or less

Many students choose Harvey Mudd because they don't want to give up their interests in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts - or HSA, as we call it at HMC. Briefly (in 100 words or less) describe what you'd like to learn about in your dream HSA class. Your class can either be one chosen from existing classes at HMC, or you are welcome to create your own.
What it’s really asking

In very few words, name one HSA class (real or invented) and the specific thing you want to learn in it. Mudd is checking that your curiosity genuinely extends past STEM and that you would use the third of your coursework that lives in HSA. You may pick an existing HMC HSA course or design your own.

Why they ask it

This prompt filters for true range. Mudd does not want students who tolerate the humanities requirement; it wants students who would have chosen it anyway. The tiny word count is also a writing test: it rewards precision and a single, well-chosen idea over a tour of your interests.

Three ways in
Build at the seam

Invent a course where a STEM love meets a humanities love (the acoustics of grief in funeral music, the math of fair voting) and let the collision do the work.

Start from a nagging question

Name a real question that has bugged you outside of class and design the dream syllabus around finally answering it.

Honor a non-STEM passion

Pick something genuinely outside science that you would never give up (a poetry form, a historical period, a craft) and show the one specific thing you want to understand about it.

✕  Weak opening

“I have always believed that the humanities are just as important as the sciences in a well-rounded education.”

✓  Strong opening

“My dream class is 'Translating the Untranslatable': how do you carry a Japanese word that means the light through leaves into a language that has no word for it?”

✦ Annotated example · Math of fairness. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
My dream HSA class is The Mathematics of Fairness.1We would start with a simple question: how do you cut a cake so nobody envies a slice?2Then we would push it: voting systems, jury selection, how to draw a district that is not gerrymandered.3I want to read Arrow's impossibility theorem next to political philosophy, and argue about whether 'fair' is even one thing or several quietly disagreeing.4I love that there is often no perfect answer, only tradeoffs we have to choose out loud, together.5That is the kind of uncomfortable, useful conversation I would happily lose sleep over.6
  1. 1Names an invented but plausible course immediately. The title fuses a humanities question (fairness) with quantitative tools, which is exactly the interdisciplinary range Mudd looks for in 100 words.
  2. 2Grounds an abstract idea in a vivid, almost childlike image. Cake-cutting is a real area of fair-division theory, so the choice signals genuine curiosity rather than a buzzword.
  3. 3Escalates from a toy problem to weighty civic stakes, showing the applicant can connect playful math to real social consequences.
  4. 4Pairs a specific theorem with philosophy, demonstrating the applicant already thinks across disciplines and can name the tension between formal proof and human values.
  5. 5Slips in the collaborative, debate-driven learning style Mudd rewards, while embracing ambiguity rather than seeking one tidy solution.
  6. 6Ends with personality and intellectual appetite in a single concrete line, landing the essay right at the word limit without padding.
Stuck? Start here
  • What subject outside STEM would you keep studying even if no requirement ever made you?
  • What question in the humanities or arts has quietly nagged at you for years?
  • Where do one of your STEM interests and one of your non-STEM interests actually touch?
Before you submit
  • Is the essay under 100 words, with no words spent defending the humanities in the abstract?
  • Do you name one specific class and one specific thing you want to learn or question to chase?
  • Does it reveal genuine range rather than a safe, STEM-adjacent default?

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