Can someone confirm the Claremont Consortium’s policies on majoring at schools within the consortium? During a Scripps information session, the AO said that you could major at any of the other schools, but the website is a bit confusing and leads me to think that maybe only certain majors are approved. My daughter is undecided and is very interested in Scripps but a couple of majors at CMC and Pitzer are potentially very interesting.
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You probably want to talk to both the college attended (Scripps) and the college where the major is at (CMC or Pitzer) to see what the policies are. The college where the major is at can matter if course registration priority goes to its own students first and the courses are very popular ones that tend to fill up, as well as whether students from the other colleges are allowed to take that major.
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Look at the Consortium catalog, available online, and you’ll see one practical problem immediately. For a majority of classes, students from other colleges have to apply individually for permission to attend. Popular classes fill quickly - before freshmen, or even sophomores from the college offering the class can register, and they have priority over students from other colleges. Just now, our D, a freshman at Pomona, was one of only two students accepted over the limit to a class with a waiting list of 20, and it required quite a bit of personal effort. And many classes are opened only to students from that college.
In other words, completing a major in a different college, even if theoretically possible, would require a huge extra effort, luck, and almost certainly acceptance of inconvenient schedules (like Statistics at Pitzer at 7:20 am on Monday, or 4 classes on the same day).
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This is great information, and the kind I’m unlikely to get from an AO or official tour. Thank you.
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Thank you for your kind words.
An important disclaimer: we’ve been told that a vast majority of the typical registration dramas end well, and the Consortium has been wonderful so far. But the idea of pursuing a major in another college goes far beyond a typical scenario.
And we personally know a person from D’s former HS who transferred out of Scripps after two years, claiming she wasn’t able to get the classes she wanted for her accounting major and couldn’t justify the cost.
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It depends.
My daughter attended Scripps and did her primary major (Environmental Analysis) at Pomona. There were zero barriers; all she had to do was choose an advisor, meet with them, and submit the paperwork. Everybody was extremely supportive and encouraging. (In fact, she initially signed up with a Pitzer EA advisor, and later decided the Pomona version of the major was a better fit, and switched with no difficulty whatsoever.) She did a combined thesis for her dual major, and had three thesis advisors, from Pomona, Scripps, and Pitzer. All were terrific.
However, there are departments that are less accessible. It’s virtually impossible for non-CMC students to take CMC econ classes, for example. (And anyway, Scripps has its own econ major - you can’t elect an off-campus major when there’s an on-campus equivalent.) And things have been tightening up in computer science because of demand for class space exceeding supply. Scripps has developed its own Data Science minor and has been encouraging students to go that route if possible, although they are still approving some off-campus CS majors also.
For the most part, as you say, things work very very well, with cross-registration, consortium majors (that are administered jointly by more than one school) and off-campus majors (that are administered at a school other than the student’s home campus) go very smoothly. But there are exceptions, so it pays to do your research ahead of time. What areas are of interest to your daughter?
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This is very good to know, and frankly, coming from a person whose kid went through all 4 years, it is more believable than my 3 cents, based on merely 2 semesters of registration… Unless COVID has made it less student-friendly.
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Well, I can definitely see why an accounting major wouldn’t work out well. The only such major within the consortium is within the CMC Econ department, which as I mentioned is mostly closed to cross-registration. I would never suggest that anyone attend Scripps to pursue accounting; sounds like the student you mentioned must have developed a new interest and realized that she needed to pursue it elsewhere. I’d also advise students with a strong interest in CS to proceed with caution. Also, it can be tough for first-year students to get into popular classes until their registration priority improves, irrespective of campus. (Hard to find colleges where this isn’t the case, unfortunately!) On the whole, though, most consortium majors and off-campus majors are very accessible.
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There are some colleges where departments give priority to frosh/soph students for introductory level courses, so that they can (potentially) prepare for majors in those departments, rather than being shut out by juniors and seniors filling them up for out-of-major electives.
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Yes, I saw classes at the 5C’s that were reserved for lower-division students; and sometimes there were spots or sections added, later in the registration process. Getting into intro level classes usually seemed to work out. It’s first-years who are hoping they can skip into an upper-division course that’s of interest, who are more likely to be disappointed.
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I assume you’re familiar with Keck Science?
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Yes, but she’s most likely (like 95 percent) not interested in STEM, so we haven’t looked too closely at it.
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5 posts were split to a new thread: Claremont Consortium