Hey everyone! I was wondering if anyone could tell me what each college is known for, specifically regarding political science, international relations, and history.
Well Harvey Mudd is known for mainly science/math. Pomona would be good for all 3 of those majors. CMC is known for International Relations/Econ/Business. Pitzer is liberal arts, psychology, history etc. Scripps is liberal arts as well with a good writing program. I would check each colleges major pages individually and see which courses interest you. Also check their stats and see which ones you could realistically get into.
@SienaRose Thank you!!
The Wikipedia page for Claremont Colleges will has good information. The website for each school is another excellent source.
@happy1 That’s true, I looked at that page. I was just hoping to hear from students of the Claremont Colleges firsthand.
Pomona: Most extensive curriculum – math, sciences, social sciences, literature, foreign languages, humanities. By the way, Pomona is the most inclusive of the colleges. That’s not because of any attitude, but mostly because of the location of their campus (southern most of the 5C’s) and because students don’t need to go to the other colleges for classes.
CMC: Economics, Political Science, IR, History, Literature, Humanities, Math, Science (through Keck Joint Science center), Econ-Engineering 3-2 program. If you want Poly Sci, IR, or history, CMC is likely your top choice.
Harvey Mudd: Engineering, Science, and Math. But students must take ⅓ of classes in non-Stem disciplines, and most of those are at Scripps, Pitzer, or CMC.
Pitzer: Strength is social sciences, such as psychology, history, humanities, political science, science (through Keck joint science center).
Scripps: All women; humanities is its strength, but has broad course offering and can major at something off campus.
All in all, the 5C’s are great for diversity of course offerings. Each allow (and encourage) taking courses at the other colleges. Each is highly selective to insanely selective. For your majors, I would focus on CMC, then Pomona. For CMC, you’ll have a better chance in ED, but either way it’s extremely competitive. Same goes for Pomona. If you haven’t visited, you should. If you’re not close by and cost is a factor, they have programs where they’ll pay your way.
I’m only a junior, but I would love to visit. Probably unrealistic, as I am from the east coast. Right now, I’m trying to shorten my list of schools down to around 20 for junior year (I have maybe 27 on it now) which includes Pomona, Pitzer, and CMC. If they make the short list, visiting will be a priority. Did/do you attend a Claremont college? @84stag
@mak902 FYI, the athletic teams at the 5C’s are combined so that Pomona/Pitzer are the Sagehens. The combined teams of CMC, HMC and Scripps are known as the Stags and the Athenas.
http://www.sagehens.com/landing/index
https://www.cmsathletics.org/landing/index
So I think @84stag 's user name contains a clue.
@Corinthian You win the prize!
Tagging here, do Pomona or any of the other colleges have good music program? (I know Mudd does not). Thank you.
Years ago, I came across a parody of the admissions applications for the 5Cs. While they exaggerate and distort the distinctiveness of each of the 5Cs to an extreme degree, I wonder if there might be some veins of truthfulness to the parody. Pretty hilarious. Here it is: http://www.thegoldenantlers.com/the-great-application-competition/
I’m applying to Pomona and I felt very called out lol. Especially the one that was like “Describe the flannel you were wearing when you realized you wanted to be an anthropologist.”
@makemesmart Pomona does have a strong Music department I can’t speak to the other college’s though but I would recommend looking at their websites and going over the major and course offerings and see what speaks to you.
There is lots of overlap in most areas, but how exactly the schools dovetail will vary by topic/activity.
Here are a few examples:
CMC, Mudd, and Scripps share athletic teams, as do Pomona and Pitzer.
Pomona has its own music ensembles; the other four schools share a Joint Music Program. (Scripps and Mudd have music faculty/courses; CMC and Pitzer do not, although their students can take Pomona/Scripps/Mudd music classes.)
Many clubs and activities are consortium-wide.
Student Health and mental health counseling services are shared.
Course registration is on a consortium-wide schedule - i.e. seniors at all five schools register first at the same time, then juniors, and so on. The overall schedule template, the finals schedule, and so on, are structured to keep everything compatible across campuses. Many classes are completely open for all consortium students to register, without anyone having preference by campus. Some classes preference their home campus by requiring a “perm” (the standardized instructor permission process, which is used variously for preference-gating, hand-picking participants, sorting for designated-major preference, and/or managing de facto but non-transparent waitlists) for students outside the home campus. A few classes are designated for their home campus only. The only department that almost entirely keeps consortium students out is CMC Econ.
Lower-division languages are shared - it isn’t considered a “consortium” registration for, say, a Scripps student to take a Pomona section of French III - students freely take whichever sections they like. However, for foreign language majors, there are restrictions as to how many “off-campus” upper-division classes they can count toward the major. In this context, Scripps and CMC share a program (i.e. a CMC French Lit class is not an off-campus class for a Scripps student, but a Pomona French Lit class is. Confused yet?).
Keck Science is a joint department shared by Scripps, Pitzer, and CMC. But CMC now is withdrawing and establishing their own science program, in a move popularly referred to as Kexit. (Sp?)
Students can declare majors that are based on another campus if their own campus doesn’t have an equivalent. For example, a Scripps student can major in Computer Science through either Harvey Mudd or Pomona. But a Pomona student can’t choose the Harvey Mudd CS major over Pomona’s. Not all majors are open - non-Mudd students can’t do an engineering major through Mudd, for example, although a few engineering electives are open to cross-registration - but many/most are. When issues of registration priority exist, off-campus majors are treated the same priority-wise as their counterparts from the major’s home campus.
Does that kind of answer the question, @spoole16180 ? It’s confusing when you try to explain it all at once, but it’s not really that confusing on a day-to-day basis - on the whole, I would say that school-specific processes like the housing lotteries are often more confusing than the consortium aspects!
@aquapt yes! thank you so much!