Can someone describe the campus vibe/personality of the selective LACs on the east and west coast? I’m particularly interested in Pomona, Swarthmore, and Amherst. Which ones are the most intellectual/geeky? Do some have overbearing drinking/drug cultures?
Pomona felt like a country club. People were nice-ish, there were many skaters (annoying to me), and the buildings were pretty. In particular I loved Pomona’s fitness center/gym. It was also difficult to tell where the campus began and when it ended. The 5Cs feel like a huge campus, overflowing into the village. I could only tell I wasn’t at Pomona when I recognized the distinct Scripps architecture/the modern Pitzer buildings. CMC you can recognize by the jocks with the big arms leaving the buildings and calling each other ‘fags’. CMC would be absolutely awful for someone like me. I’m sure others, cultured in that kind of environment, would find it fitting. To each their own.
You may or may not like SoCal weather. I don’t really like it, except during the night. I do, however, love NorCal. Cal and Stanford are the places to be.
The wittiest description of Pomona I’ve read on CC: “smooth as butter, just not as tasty”. I think the OP was from the East coast and thought Pomona was too happy.
The grads I know happen to love it. I’ve heard, but not verified for myself, that Pomona spends an average $80k/student.
Another take on the Claremont Consortium are the Scooby Doo relationships: Shaggy = Pitzer, Daphne = Scripps, Thelma = Harvey Judd, CMC = Fred, and Scooby Doo = Pomona, of course.
kdavis9923, I considered all three of those schools, and I’m very happy I ended up at Pomona 
If you’re looking for an intellectual/geeky vibe in the sense of noses-in-books all the time, you honestly can’t beat Swarthmore. That said, I consider myself a very nerdy person and I couldn’t be happier with the people and environment here. Pomona has its own brand of nerdiness that is a bit more relaxed than Swarthmore’s, which means that we aren’t as stressed as they are. (There used to be an exchange program between Pomona and Swarthmore, but it failed because everyone at Swarthmore wanted to come here and no one here wanted to go to Swarthmore; interpret that as you will.) If you want to get a sense of it, look at our obsession with the number 47 (http://magazine.pomona.edu/pomoniana/2015/02/13/the-mystery-of-47/), read this humorous post (http://fosslien.com/pomona/), or consider the fact that we chose this bird (http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/files/2013/01/dancetoattract5.jpg) as our mascot.
As far as drug culture goes, it’s very easy to avoid it entirely at Pomona, especially if you choose sub free housing. There’s so so so much going on every evening that you won’t have to give parties a second thought if they’re not your type of thing. On the other hand, if you do want to drink/smoke, you’ll be able to find a crowd with which to do that. That’s one advantage to having such a diverse student body.
I can’t really speak much to drug culture at Amherst or Swarthmore, but I get the sense that it’s more pervasive there (especially at Amherst) than it is at Pomona. Climate is partially responsible for that, since drinking is something people turn to when it’s cold/wet outside, but Pomona is almost never like that. However, you’d probably be able to find a sub free crowd pretty easily at either of those schools, too; all 3 are infinitely better than most fratty state schools.
“Another take on the Claremont Consortium are the Scooby Doo relationships: Shaggy = Pitzer, Daphne = Scripps, Thelma = Harvey Judd, CMC = Fred, and Scooby Doo = Pomona, of course.”
Lol, someone swiped that from the 5 college consortium in Massachusetts. Fred = Amherst, Daphne = Mt Holyoak, Velma = Smith, Shaggy = Hampshire, Scooby Doo = U Mass.
Of course, it’s just an urban legend. http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/scoobydoo.asp