<p>I'm posting this question here as well as in Harvey Mudd forum, as it's a Claremont question . . .</p>
<p>My s is considering Harvey Mudd, but before we trek halfway across the country to visit it, I was hoping to get some insight from current students about the impact of HM being part of the Claremont consortium.</p>
<p>My s is very high-achieving in math and science, but is looking for a good liberal arts experience--as distinct from being immersed in a nothing-but-science-matters atmosphere. So he's not interested in engineering schools like MIT, and is strongly considering good LACs like Grinnell. The advantage to HM is that it has the high-level science and math of an engineering school but it's also part of the Claremont system. So (at least on paper) lots of access to classes--and classmates--who aren't exclusively tecchies. (And, yes the unfavorable male/female ratio at engineering schools matters to him too.)</p>
<p>But is this really how it is? I understand the various Claremont schools share the same campus, but do they really interact? Or do they, in practice, operate (academically, socially, whatever) as separate little worlds? </p>
<p>Thanks for any advice you can offer.</p>
<p>my S is a sophomore at Pomona. i would say that the answer to your question is "a bit of both." the students do interact and it is very easy to cross-register. parties are really 5-C (all five colleges) and students come and go easily. on the other hand, i think that each of the five colleges have a strong identity and that students consider themselves as students of Pomona or HM or scripps or whatever, not as a "claremont student." each college has an active administration that exists for its own students. so each student gets lots of personal attention from its own faculty and administration. so it really does function as five independent colleges. you would be wrong to think that it's really like going to a medium sized college with a 5000 student enrollment... i think the consortium works and that students are happy with it, but definitely, you should make the trek and check it out for yourself. ask lots of questions and leave some extra time to visit some of the surroundings... personally, i like old town pasadena (about 20 min from campus) for the shops, restaurants, museums and entertainment (my S likes the "icehouse" comedy club)... i hope this helps. good luck in your search.</p>
<p>Thanks for your very helpful replies. I'll pass them on to my son.</p>
<p>As a freshman at Pomona, I agree with fairburn. There does exist a sense of kinship and cooperation between the Claremont schools, but respective students tend to have a sense of belonging to their school.</p>
<p>The amount of sharing and intermixing differs between colleges, and as a Pomona student I have come in contact almost exclusively with Harvey Mudd and Scripps students in my classes thus far. I'm sure there are CMC and Pitzer students taking classes at Pomona, but in general I see a greater presence of Harvey Mudd and Scripps. </p>
<p>Oh, and the male/female ratio must certainly work out, because I've been told (I don't remember the precise percentage) that percentage of Harvey Mudd-Scripps marriages are in the double digits (10-12%).</p>
<p>The Claremont schools share as much as any given student wants them to. As a Scripps senior, I know students who have stayed on their home campuses as much as possible and have felt little need to venture further, but they're faaar in the minority. I'm in multiple "5C" organizations, last semester took 5 of 6 classes on other campuses, am majoring in a joint program and minoring in a cooperative one, am dating a Mudder...you get the idea. I would call that the much more typical route. The consortium is the best part about Claremont.</p>
<p>That said, I would say that two schools have distinctly less consortium interaction than the other three: Pomona and Mudd. This is mainly because Pomona is much more self-sufficient than the other campuses (and putting underclassmen far away on south campus tends to set a precedent for less interaction) and because Mudd students really have some of the best social and academic (given their interests) offerings on their own campus (the former of which are often shared, but the latter of which are more rarely--which is NOT to say never--shared). Other schools' students do have access to Mudd courses and majors (engineering possibly aside...I'm not sure if the other schools are mandated to use 3/2 programs or if there's a 4 year cross-major option available). If your son isn't interested in a hardcore tech environment, Mudd may not be the place to go. There's certainly open-access to the consortium, but he will have less time to take advantage of it than most other students. Mudders can be (and usually are) very well-rounded people, but it's still very much a tech school.</p>
<p>It's a great place, the consortium matters greatly, and I'd definitely tell anyone remotely interested to come take a look (and when you do, ask students about the consortium...walk around all of the campuses. More than anything, have him spend a night). I'd also encourage your son to take a look at Pomona, where he would still have very strong classes and access to many of Mudd's resources, but a much more stereotypical LAC experience/environment. </p>
<p>Finally, don't bother with a visit until he applies and is accepted. These are reach schools for pretty much anyone (at the very least, they are virtually never safeties). $100 in misguided application fees is presumably a loooot cheaper than a potentially unnecessary (whether for disinterest or lack of acceptance) trek across the country!</p>
<p>m&m&m--</p>
<p>My D is a second-year at Pomona and has participated in 5C activities as well as taken a class at Pitzer (it was a class that wasn't offered elsewhere at the Claremonts), so there is a lot of opportunity for interaction among the colleges.</p>
<p>That said, as someone who has studied at MIT, I can say that MIT is much more focused on all of the disciplines, including humanities and the arts, than places like Cal Tech and other engineering schools (I was a music and English major). MIT has its own Office of the Arts and strongly encourages its students to participate and take courses in non-science/engineering departments and activities. Also, the ratio now of male to female students is pretty close to 50/50 (versus 75/25 when I was there).</p>
<p>Good luck in the college search!</p>
<p>I was in a similar position as your son last year. Math and science are my strong suites, and I plan on going into a career in science. However, after visiting both Calteck and harvey mudd, I felt that their education wasn't broad enough. While HM is technically a liberal arts school, it is clearly focused on the hard sciences, and their humanities classes are angled that way as well. Because of this, I decided to go to Pomona, which has a very strong science department itself. What I'm trying to say is if your S absolutely loves science and is pretty much dead set on it, HM is a good fit, but if he wants a strong liberal arts education, he may want to look into other LACs with strong science</p>