4 of 5 most selective LACs in Claremont / Swat being 5th

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
1

Might as well post this on other 4 sites also.
I recently posted the following on another site…copied here for CC.

What I find remarkable is the following fact:

Of almost 3,000 Liberal Arts Colleges in the US, four of the five most selective LACs in the country, are part of the Claremont College consortium in Calfornia. This, according to numbers just released for the Class of 2019.

The most selective LAC is actually a tie between Claremont McKenna College and Pomona College. Here are the results, from what I’ve been able to gather:

  1. Claremont McKenna, 9.76%.
  2. Pomona, 9.76%.
  3. Swarthmore, 12% (only non-C in top five).
  4. HarveyMudd College, 12.7%.
  5. (Surprise!) Pitzer College, 12.9%.

It is noteworthy that the only Claremont College not in the top 5 is Scripps, the all-women’s college. Scripps, however, still came in at a respectable 28% acceptance rate, which I believe is the same as Wellesley, generally regarded as the top college for women (although Barnard’s rate of 19.5% trumps both…LOL!).

Women’s colleges, generally speaking, are not seeing the same % increases that top coed LACs have been experiencing in the last several years.

As much as I love Claremont, however, I am not so presumptuous as to imply that these are THE five best LACs in the country, although they are right up there.…Pitzer better than Williams or Amherst? No Way. But, IMO, CMC and Pomona stand on a par with any college, including (GASP!) The Ivies, for a first-rate undergraduate education. Harvey Mudd likewise, vis- a- vis MIT / Caltech, for the budding scientist.

What this does speak to, is the growing recognition/awareness of the benefits of getting an undergraduate education in Claremont, the only true consortium in the country, modeled after the Oxford system.

Many, especially on the East Coast, are not familiar with The Claremonts. I would strongly encourage anyone interested in a Liberal Arts education to look into them.

2

I might postulate that other than Claremont, there aren’t many selective LACs in California. So those who live in CA who want that kind of school, and want to stay “close” have only those to choose from. Those in the east have lots of choices (Amherst, Swat, Middlebury, Williams, Haverford, Wesleyan, Vassar the excellent womens’ colleges… + a whole lot one tiny step down in selectivity.

3

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/scripps-college/1767958-4-of-5-most-selective-lacs-in-claremont.html

4

I caution you when equating acceptance rate with selectivity. A low acceptance means only that there are a lot more people applying than there are available spots. California has the highest population in the country. Naturally, there are a lot of Californians applying to these schools. In fact, Middlebury, 3,000 miles away in Vermont, gets more applicants from California than any other state. Not to take anything away from the Claremont Colleges, but let’s not jump to conclusions based on the number of applications they receive.

5

Several good points have been made about the meaning of selectivity and acceptance rates. It bears repeating, though, that all of the schools being discussed are excellent so try to understand the data should not be seen as a criticism.

Here is a bit of data on the origins of students at Claremont McKenna and Swarthmore. Counting first-year students in 2010, Claremont McKenna had 127 (46.7%) from California. For comparison’s sake, there were 7 from New York. http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=112260

Swarthmore had 46 (13.3%) from Pennsylvania. There were 39 from California and 45 from New York. So, Swarthmore had essentially equal numbers from Pennsylvania, New York and California, while Claremont McKenna had almost as many students from California alone. http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=216287

There are also are some interesting patterns in wait lists. For the class of 2017, Claremont McKenna was one of the rare colleges that offered more spots on the wait list than acceptances. There may be a perfectly benign explanation, but it seems odd that the school would put so many on the wait list and then indicate that it was not going to the wait list (yield management?). See http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/college-admits-2013/?_r=0

6

I think demographics / location are driving a lot of the math for the California schools. They are great schools, but besides the limited number of LAC’s on the West Coast, California is also a prime target of the Big 3 international populations (China, India and Korea represent 50% of the applications received in the US). It’s California! I love the northeast, but they aren’t California.