[5] The college was funded by the friends and family of Harvey Seeley Mudd, one of the initial investors in the Cyprus Mines Corporation.

[7] Under the presidency of Maria Klawe as of 2006, Harvey Mudd became a leading advocate for women in STEM in higher education.

[5] In April 2017, all classes were cancelled for two days in response to tensions on campus over workload, race issues, and mistrust of faculty.

[11] The original buildings of the campus, designed by Edward Durell Stone and completed in 1959,[12] feature "knobbly concrete squares that students of Harvey Mudd affectionately call "warts" and use as hooks for skateboards.

When the fourth dorm, Marks Hall, was built, there was one corner of the quad available (the northwest) and one directional name, "South", remaining.

The college had initially purchased an apartment building adjacent to the newer dorms to house additional students, but it was demolished to make room for Sontag.

Since any HMC student, regardless of class year, can live in any of the dormitories, several of the dorms have accumulated long-standing traditions and so-called "personalities".

Of the 237 freshmen who enrolled, the middle 50% of SAT scores reported were 760–790 in mathematics and 720–770 in reading and writing, while the ACT Composite range was 34–36.

[28] In August 2007, at the beginning of the application process for the class of 2012, HMC began accepting ACT results,[29] a year after Wake Forest abandoned its former SAT-only policy.

[44] The California Institute of Technology (Caltech), another university with strength in the natural sciences and engineering, is located 26 miles (42 km) away from Harvey Mudd College.

For example, in 1986, students from Mudd stole a memorial cannon from Fleming House at Caltech (originally from the National Guard) by dressing as maintenance people and carting it off on a flatbed truck for "cleaning".