Any applicant looking for need-based aid should be running NPCs for each school. What one school considers “full” financial aid can be dramatically different from the offer at other schools. Being need-blind in admissions does not mean that the school automatically offers great aid.
CMC is a nationally recognized LAC but let’s not run fast and loose with the statistics.
Last year’s freshman class at Amherst had 60 Californians, more than the total number of New Englanders in all 4 classes at CMC (50).
The population of CA is over twice that of NE, so all things being equal there should be more Californians at both schools than New Englanders, but CMC’c ratio of Californians to New Englanders is roughly 8:1, while Amherst’s ratio of New Englanders to Californians is roughly 1.5:1
https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/SSR%2520Class%2520of%25202018_0.pdf
https://www.cmc.edu/sites/default/files/ir/enrollment/F14-Web-Stats.pdf
At CMC, no loans are part of a financial aid package, or at least that was the case when I retired five years ago. Being need-blind has no necessary connection with financial aid packaging - you’re right - but there is still a handful that are both need-blind and full aid for all admitted students.
I haven’t checked test score comparisons, so @prezbucky may be right. Most CMC applicants provide SAT scores alone or both SAT and ACT; smaller number provide only ACT.
On the USNews lists, Notre Dame is tied for #16 among national universities, CMC tied for #8 among national liberal arts colleges. I haven’t spent the $30 to get to the underlying stats.
@CollegeBuff I think the average ACT at both ND and CMC is 32-33. They are very competitive applicants, mostly. Captain Obvious signing off 
@prezbucky No, ND middle 50% is 32 - 34 while CMC is 29 - 33. 90% of ND kids scored above 30 compared to 74% for CMC.
The point is that acceptance rates don’t tell the whole story.
Agree
My original point on this was that acceptance rate tells you is the percentage of applicants who are admitted. It tells you nothing about the quality of applicants. Selectivity is generally a combination of acceptance rate and quality of applicants. Acceptance rate is necessarily dependent upon the number of applicants. Since CMC is a small school in an enormous Metropolitan region (one, as has been noted above, that sent more students to Amherst than any other region and More to Middlebury than any other region last year) it’s acceptance rate makes it appear more selective than it is. That is not to say, however, that CMC is not a highly selective school. It is, but as others have noted, its acceptance rate should be taken with a grain of salt.
I tried to explain this in my original post by pointing out that there are schools with lower acceptance rates (such as Cooper Union, Alice Lloyd, or College of the Ozarks). For whatever reason, each of those schools receives an inordinate number of applicants. It does not mean, however that those schools are more selective.
To illustrate the last point. College of the Ozarks, 12% acceptance rate, 22 average ACT. St. Michael’s College (Vermont), 75% acceptance rate, 26 average ACT.
I don’t understand the point that California is a big state with a large population. Wouldn’t you have to compare the same geographic size area on the east coast as a comparison? The state is equal to maybe five eastern states in size so wouldn’t you have to look at the population from several states to make that statement? This is a private school so in-state tuition doesn’t apply. Is the population really that different when judging on the area and not the state?
I’m reading the title of this post and the original question by the OP and marvel at how far off topic it’s ventured.
@querty568 - I was actually poking fun at post #5 from @collegebuff and the whole notion that somehow CMC thinks it is in a “class by itself” in terms of “true selectivity” (whatever that means), because the SAT stats, do not “echo” the acceptance rate - CMC (ranked #37) has lower SAT scores than both Carlton (ranked #27) and Tufts (ranked #19).
Bates’ SAT scores are not particularly relevant because they have practiced “SAT optional admissions” since 1984, so SAT scores do not play a major role in their selectivity decisions.
In the business world (where the OP presumably wants to work), the notion that acceptance rate is important because it is a proxy for “selectivity”, which is a then proxy for “educational quality”, is generally viewed as kind of silly.
Since industry consumes the output of colleges, they tend to develop their own means of determining “educational quality”, based on their own specific needs.
Also, given recent history, it is probably not a good idea for people associated with CMC to come across as being so obsessed with “selectivity”.
After all, it was only a few years ago that it was discovered that CMC had been misreporting student selectivity data to the various college ranking agencies.
Based on CMC’s initial report, major national newspapers (such as the New York Times) reported the incident as “exaggerating SAT figures”, but a subsequent report released by CMC showed that the misreporting was much more extensive.
In the consumer arena, USNews chose not to do anything, because they have a policy of not changing rankings, and apparently they do not have a policy against inaccurate data reporting.
This kind of activity is frowned upon in most business circles though, so CMC was kicked out of the Forbes ranking for two years and removed from the Kiplingers ranking for one year.
From Forbes:
I guess you could say that, at least in business circles, this would put CMC “in a class by itself” when it comes to reporting selectivity data.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/18/claremont-mckenna-admits-extent-deception-admissions-statistics
http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2013/07/24/why-forbes-removed-4-schools-from-its-americas-best-colleges-rankings/
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2012/01/31/claremont-mckenna-misrepresents-test-score-data
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/education/claremont-mckenna-college-says-it-exaggerated-sat-figures.html
In a follow up meeting called to discuss the incident, CMC’s president made mention of CMC’s unique mission - which just happens to reference selectivity before education…
In order to make this thread more useful to the OP, it would probably be a good idea to flip CMC’s apparent priorities and discuss educational programs rather than perceptions of selectivity.
“Meeting full need” for all students can have very different net prices at different colleges that claim to do that.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1675058-meet-full-need-schools-can-vary-significantly-in-their-net-prices.html
I would say if the OP has visited CMC, she should trust her own thinking. All of this sidebar about selectivity is pretty irrelevant; in the end, you’re attending college with the people who show up in September, and there is no more to it. OTOH, be advised that CMC is itself a bit of an outlier. It specializes in a handful of fields in the social sciences of which economics is one. It would likely not survive on its own as a “full-service” LAC. That is where the rest of the Claremont Consortium comes in: if you want to take art courses you’ll likely have to take them cross-campus at another member of the consortium. The same will be true for science classes. The one drawback with the Claremont colleges is that you’re essentially attending a 6000 student university with none of the intellectual synergy of a real university the same size. But, for your purposes that’s probably more than enough.
I think there’s a prevalent misconception that CMC is only economics, international relations, and government. True those departments are very strong, and many of the students do major in them. And, true, art & music would be off-campus majors. http://www.cmc.edu/academic/programs. But CMC itself offers literature, foreign languages, classics, philosophy, psychology, history, religious studies, american studies, math, film studies, asian studies, and all the sciences (yes, through a shared program with Scripps & Pitzer.) And then there are 5-C majors, like Theater Studies.
Departments at CMC:
Government
History
Literature
Mathematical Sciences
Military Science and Leadership
Modern Languages and Literatures
Philosophy
Psychology
Religious Studies
The Robert Day School of Economics and Finance
W.M. Keck Science Department
As for @circuitrider’s comment about missing out on the intellectual synergy of a real university - that I don’t understand. That sounds more like an issue with liberal arts colleges themselves, which do tend to be more limited in their offerings than a large research university.
You’re correct. A comparable educational community like Dartmouth, consisting of over 6000 students and 700 scholars, brings in about twice as much outside research funding as the Claremont Colleges as a whole. For some people it may not be very important. But, it’s worth noting.