4 of 5 most selective LACs in Claremont

College Search & Selection
1

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

There is more to selectivity than admit rate. One must also factor in the strength and depth of the applicant pool and the quality of the students who are admitted. Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, Colgate, Haverford, Middlebury, Williams and several others are more selective than Pitzer. I definitely agree that HMC and Pomona are among the 5 most selective LACs and CMC is one of the 10 most selective LACs. But Pitzer is not as selective, despite is very low admit rate.

3

Alexandre, I agree with your comments…thought I’d expressed that in my post, but perhaps not. I was actually shocked to see Pitzer in that group as well. But, I guess the point I was trying to make was, not so much comparing one school to another, as extolling the virtues of the Claremont consortium, as a whole.

4

On the west coast the Claremont colleges don’t have too much competition for top students interested in LACs. In CA, there’s Occidental … then up the coast there’s Reed. Move inland a bit, and there’s Whitman … then Colorado College … and not much else until you hit Minnesota and Iowa. Claremont McKenna, Pomona, and Mudd are the only US News T20 LACs covering ~half the country.

According to ACT, for students with an ACT score of 33 or higher, the median distance travelled from home to college is 170 miles (http://www.act.org/newsroom/how-far-from-home-do-us-students-travel-to-attend-college/).

California is by far the most populous US state.
Approximately 342,000 students in CA took the SAT or ACT in 2013 (http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/local/act-and-sat-participation-trends-2006-to-2013/862/).

So, just the number of CA test-takers interested in attending a LAC in California may be far greater than the number of places at each consortium college … or greater even than the ~6300 places available at all the Claremont colleges put together. This is not to detract from the quality of the Claremont colleges. Their low admit rates do attest to their high appeal. However, one should put those rates in geographic and demographic perspective when comparing them to admit rates at other colleges.

5

^^^This. They are excellent schools, but geography and a lack of nearby competitors play a major role in their application numbers and overall selectivity.

6

Geography, weather, and lack of competition, as stated above, are what give many colleges in CA (not just these) the lower admissions rates that they have. (How many other solid LACs can boast photos of kids wearing shorts and flip flops int he winter?) Because of this, I don’t think you can assess the value of the education on admissions rates. The colleges in “the middle of nowhere” that are hard to get to and have extreme weather will naturally have fewer applicants. I’m from CA, and have seen the admissions rate at Pitzer plummet recently, and even I’m surprised at how far it has fallen. As the for 5Cs, the consortium really seems to add to the experience and helps boost their popularity.

7

There are also the public LACs and LAC-like schools (e.g. Sonoma State, Southern Oregon, Evergreen State), but these are much lower on the selectivity scale than the Claremonts, so they may not be on the radar of top-end students looking at LACs. This may also be true of some of the private LACs and LAC-like schools in the region.

8

I am not sure I buy that argument.

If you factor all the states on the East coast and the average student probably submits 10-12 applications, there are a lot of LACs in a condensed geographic area. Because of the condensed area and the number of schools, wouldn’t that have a lot of impact on the 170 mile range? It doesn’t necessarily mean that students from the west coast limit themselves to the state they live in or to a 170 mile radius.

My daughter (from WA) overwhelmingly applied to east coast schools and really wanted the east coast experience, but liked Pomona best. The Claremont colleges draw a lot of applicants from the mid west and east coast. I think you would have to see the data of the number of applicants and which state they are from using an example of like colleges, perhaps Pomona vs. Amherst, before seeing the whole picture.

9

D2 is a first year at Pitzer. I agree with others about being surprised about the drop in Pitzer’s admit rate. I’d taken her older sister to tour Pomona and Pitzer three years before D2’s tour, at which time Pitzer was a possible merit money match for D1. Based on that three-years-old model, I had a far rosier and totally ridiculous view of how competitive D2 would be for admissions. She fell in love with the school, and I spent the entire trip back home trying to gently tell her that I had no idea if she had a shot at being admitted.

Pitzer admissions really are odd. There are students who had the high school stats for places like Pomona or Swat, and some who didn’t (that would be D2 :wink: ). Admissions clearly is looking holistically for fit. I also suspect that some high schoolers whose first choice school among the consortium is Pomona or CMC or Mudd think–erroneously–that Pitzer will be the easier admit, and a way to wriggle their way into the consortium. But who knows? Speculation on my part. There’s also the over-the-top resort feel of the freshman dorms surrounding the pool with the mountains in the background. Seeing that during the winter is a pretty powerful recruitment tool. :slight_smile:

I do think the world of the consortium, which as stagalum points out is unique in the US. D2 has taken courses so far at Pomona, Scripps and CMC in addition to her Pitzer courses, and there are students from all of the other schools who attend her Pitzer classes. All courses are listed together on the enrollment website–it takes no additional work to cross-enroll. Students can eat at any dining facility within the consortium, and certain academic resources and ECs are shared by multiple schools. Yet each school has its own highly distinct character and architecture.

That said, any student or parent who is basing the desirability or academic competitiveness of a school by its admission rate…well, the list in the OP just shows how silly that is. This is the time of year when we see all of the “Should I choose X, Y, or Z?” posts. Long-time CC posters like to look for the most outrageous opposites–this year, I’ve been wondering about someone who is considering both Sewanee and Brandeis. :wink: Similarly, I can’t imagine a kid being attracted to Swat and CMC, or Pitzer and HMC.

10

As a mother of both a “Scrippsie” and a “Mudder” it’s probably obvious I’m a big fan of the Claremont Consortium. Glad to hear the word is getting out on this “secret” gem.

11

Tell this to the people responding to the “chance me” threads, many of whom seem to tell everyone that Pomona/CMC/HMC/Pitzer is a match.

12

Corinthian, I’ll one-up you and mention that I often see Scripps and Pitzer listed as safeties… :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Women’s colleges have literally half the applicant pool of co-ed colleges, but are often around the same size. So yes, they usually have much higher overall acceptance rates.

Acceptance rate doesn’t perfectly correlate with school quality or ranking - Lawrence University is a perfect example, being a top LAC with an 80% acceptance rate. But yes, the Claremont Colleges are very selective and wonderful LACs. It’s not really an accident; that’s part of the reason they formed a consortium. It’s the same with Bryn Mawr/Swarthmore/Haverford, or the Five Colleges: colleges tend to like to form consortia with other colleges that have the same academic quality as them, because otherwise you wouldn’t want to accept credit from your fellow consortium-mates.

I, too, was really surprised to see the drop in Pitzer’s acceptance rate - I’d always kind of envisioned it like the Hampshire of the Claremont Colleges. Not that Hampshire is not a great college, but it’s more quirky, artsy, and experimental than the other Five Colleges - just like Pitzer is (was?) to the other Claremonts. But I think a few months ago I recommended Pitzer to someone as a less selective version of something they wanted and someone pointed out to me that Pitzer’s acceptance rate was around 13% these days! I think with the advent of the Internet and more students wanting to attend one of the very selective Claremont Colleges, MANY kids were applying to Pitzer as a “backup” to Pomona or CMC - so many that it’s no longer a backup, really!

14

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.

15

Yes, admission rate says little about selectivity without the context of strength of applicant and admit pools.

16

Well considering the latest class accepted to Pomona had an average of 740 on each SAT test as well as having approx 30% of those accepted valedictorians I think it is fair to say or is quite selective.

17

I think polar vortex has something to do with it.

18

Pomona College admitted 939 students last year (class of 2018). The most represented states were: California (228), Washington (53), Texas (52), Illinois (47) and New York (42).

So approximately a quarter of admitted students at Pomona are from California.

It also has one of the highest (if not THE highest) percentage of Asian American students compared to other elite liberal arts colleges.

19

Just FYI, for the Pomona class of 2019, they admitted 790 compared to 939 last year. The top states students come from for 2019 are California (202), Illinois (51), New York (39), Texas (34), Washington (29) and Florida (28). At Admitted Students Days, they said they accepted students from 47 states (not Wyoming or the Dakotas). As @LKnomad pointed out, median SAT scores are 740 critical reading, 740 math and 740 writing. The median ACT is 33. http://www.pomona.edu/news/2015/03/20-class-of-2019.aspx

20

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg06_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1677 says 13% for Pomona.

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg06_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=850 says 25% for Harvey Mudd.