<p>Is a degree from one claremont college as good as a degree from another claremont college? For example: is a physics degree from Pitzer as good as one from Harvey Mudd?</p>
<p>I'm transferring to Pomona this fall, so I might not have as good information as someone else who's been at Claremont for a while. That said, I would think that there is a difference between the schools. The schools tend to specialize in an area and I would suspect that employers would know which school has the stronger department in a certain area. Of course, if the employer hasn't heard of Claremont at all then it wouldn't matter... but I don't think that happens often.</p>
<p>I agree with MNKeeper. Different schools have different areas of expertise due to the strength of faculties. A physics degree from Pitzer isn't as good as one from Harvey Mudd.</p>
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Is a degree from one claremont college as good as a degree from another claremont college? For example: is a physics degree from Pitzer as good as one from Harvey Mudd?
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<p>No.</p>
<p>Pitzer does not have a Physics Department. Its students take their science courses in the combined Joint Sciences Department that serves Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, and Scripps. It only offers the bare essentials with just a couple of Physics courses per semester.</p>
<p>Mudd is a tech school, so it would have the strongest science offerings followed by Pomona, which is an excellent all-purpose liberal arts college.</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna is a government/econ specialty school with huge econ and Poli Sci departments, not much in sciences, arts, etc. </p>
<p>You have to look at the academic departments of each school to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>all of the schools specialize on specific areas... so in that regard than yes</p>
<p>There is also an enormous selectivity difference between Pitzer/Scripps and Pomona/Mudd with CMC being in the middle.</p>
<p>enormous selectivity difference? you may want to check your numbers.
Plus, each school is looking for different things. You may be admitted to Harvey Mudd b/c of your science background, but be denied from CMC b/c of match.</p>
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enormous selectivity difference? you may want to check your numbers.
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<p>The selectivity difference may not be "enormous", but there definitely is one. Numbers aren't everything either. After hanging out with people from every 5C school, the difference in the difficulty and selectivity of the schools is quite blatant. The schools are in the same consortium, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are all equal (in whatever way you want to judge success).</p>
<p>The schools vary greatly in all the objective measures: % admitted, ave. SAT score, rankings with USNWR, etc.</p>
<p>Pomona 18%/1445/#7 LAC
Harvey Mudd: 30%/1485/#1 small engineering
Claremont: 22%/1370/#11 LAC
Scripps: 45%/1340/#28 LAC
Pitzer 37%/1230/#49 LAC</p>
<p>Pomona vs. Pitzer is equivalent to the student quality difference between UC Berkeley and UC Merced. And only the physics students at Caltech and possibly Princeton will be smarter than the physics students at Mudd (and that includes MIT).</p>
<p>I've checked the numbers, there is an enormous selectivity difference between Pitzer and Pomona in my view. They attract a totally different caliber of student.</p>
<p>Each Claremont College puts emphasis on the fact that although students can take classes within the Claremont Colleges, the colleges are separate entities. (I've noticed that a lot of admissions officers from Claremont get annoyed when students ask whether, when evaluating applications, admissions officers might go "well, you don't seem to fit in with Pomona, but I could see you being a student at Pitzer, so you should apply there").</p>
<p>DunninLA - Those numbers, at least those for Pitzer, are about three years old. This year - for the class of 2012 - the acceptance rate was 22% (I don't know what the rates are for the other schools, though I suspect they are lower this year as well). My D was accepted to UC Berkeley, but has chosen to go to Pitzer next year. I don't think the student quality between Pomona and Pitzer is as great as you state.</p>
<p>"Each Claremont College puts emphasis on the fact that although students can take classes within the Claremont Colleges"</p>
<p>Yet the emphasis is insidiously deceiving because there are not as much interaction among these schools' student bodies than these schools say.</p>
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Yet the emphasis is insidiously deceiving because there are not as much interaction among these schools' student bodies than these schools say.
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<p>Insidiously deceiving? A bit of hyperbolic exaggeration, would you not say?</p>
<p>sarsfield -- For many (if not most) students, an LAC of lower ranking will be a much better fit than a large public research institution. </p>
<p>You are correct that the acceptance rate has gone down quickly. The 39% is Fall 2005. The 2007 is 26%. That is an astounding increase in selectivity. I assume the testing scores have all gone up quickly, but don't know where to find that. </p>
<p>I leave it to you to determine if the difference in, particularly, student test scores correlates to a difference in student quality. The delta with Pomona/Pitzer at the 25/75 average is 215 SAT points out of 1600. The delta with Berkeley/Merced is about 300, so you're right, the difference is less.</p>
<p>LAC's with similar testing students to Pitzer (Fall 2005 Pitzer entering freshmen) are Westmont in Montecito and Santa Clara in NoCal. LAC's with similar testing students to Pomona are.... NONE. Pomona is #1, alongside national universities within +-10 points: Stanford, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth and Rice. National Universities/LACs 15 or more points <em>lower</em> than Pomona are: Penn, Chicago, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, etc.</p>
<p>Oh, and Berkeley's is 120 points lower than Pomona.</p>
<p>Whether the testing capability of the students at a school is important is a judgement I leave to you. It also appears Pitzer has increased its selectivity at a <em>much</em> faster rate than other schools, so it is quite possible these testing scores are as much as 100 points higher for 2008 entering freshmen. To go from 50% acceptance rate to 26% in only four years, and to 22% as you write for 2008 class, in only 5 years, is astounding to me.Institutional</a> Research - Acceptance Rates 2003-2007</p>
<p>What you need to keep in mind is that there's also a very different group of kids applying to Pitzer than Pomona, it's self selecting.</p>
<p>I can understand, a little bit snyway, why someone might choose Pitzer over Cal. Cal is just a huge mess right now with huge classes and it's difficult to graduate in 4 years, but you have to admit, most would still choose it in a heartbeat over Pitzer. Pomona is a much different story.</p>
<p>The Pitzer/Berkeley decision is less about Pitzer and Berkeley than it is about the stylistic categories each occupies. LAC vs. Public Flagship.</p>
<p>Money no object, most people, I think, would choose an LAC.</p>
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You are correct that the acceptance rate has gone down quickly. The 39% is Fall 2005. The 2007 is 26%. That is an astounding increase in selectivity. I assume the testing scores have all gone up quickly, but don't know where to find that.
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<p>It is important to understand that increasing the "selectivity" of students might NOT be the highest priority at the Claremont Colleges. In fact, when the preliminary admission rates for the Class of 2011 at Claremont McKenna came out as the lowest among all traditional LACs in the country, officers found the rapid change "uncomfortable" and "lamented" having halved the admission rate in five short years. However, except increasing the class size (which they did), there is not much one can when a school becomes more popular and generates more applications. Fwiw, many LACs have experienced an "explosion" in applications. </p>
<p>This said, the admission rates do tell only a partial story. Based on SAT scorers, the most selective LAC in the country is Harvey Mudd, but as a specialty LAC with a rigorous scientific program on par with Caltech and MIT, its admission rates are higher. One needs to places those elements in the right context. </p>
<p>The 5C colleges all present different attributes. While the students are not exactly interchangeable, it would be a mistake to believe that the differences in the "selectivity" student bodies are extremely noticeable; students are different and have different ... academic qualities. Pitzer or Scripps are not just a small step above a community college and Mudd and Pomona are not "Only Mensa Clubs!" </p>
<p>While it is extremely likely that the applications will continue to increase at the 5C and that sub-20% (final and verifiable) admission rates will become "normal," one could hope that the schools will strive to maintaining the differences that make the 5C better than the sum of its parts and retaining the uniqueness of one of the most successul academic consortia in the world.</p>
<p>Back in the late 70's when I attended Pomona, there was a 5 College Newspaper called the Collegian. They published a Star Trek cartoon that poked fun at the stereotypes for each of the colleges. I don't know how valid these stereotypes still are, but at the time, there was more than just an SAT score difference between the students at the colleges, but rather an overall personality difference in the self-selected types of people who chose to attend each college.</p>
<p>The Star Trek cartoon characters were as follows:</p>
<p>Spock - Harvey Mudder
Captain Kirk - CMC'er
Kirk's love interest - Scrippsie
Dr. McCoy - Pomona nerd
Alien from Kohoutek Comet - Pitzie</p>
<p>This was around the time of the first Pitzer Kohoutek festival, which is still an ongoing tradition. Best rock festival I have ever been to. :)</p>
<p>"but you have to admit, most would still choose it in a heartbeat over Pitzer."</p>
<p>If all you are looking at is the USN&WR numbers, then maybe that is true. But, plenty of students get accepted to both UCB and Pitzer, and attend Pitzer. Some kids want an LAC experience. Some parents want their children to have that experience and are willing to pay through the nose to provide it.</p>
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<p>On the subject of school comparisons. Even in classes of 10 or less you will find students from all five colleges. Take a French class at Scripps, and out of 10 students there may be a Mudder, and a few each from CMC, Pomona, Pitzer and Scripps. Some of the majors, such as philosophy and theatre, are not even specific to a particular college, but are considered "Claremont" majors. </p>
<p>Looking only at CMC, Pomona, Pitzer and Scripps (Mudd is a special case) the primary difference is not so much the education at each of the colleges as it is the student body. Each school attracts a different kind of person. </p>
<p>I</p>