Claremont Schools vs Northeast LAC

College Search & Selection
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I know Amherst has 1000 acres of land, but how much is part of the main campus that students will traverse regularly? Google Maps has a distance tool, and the top to bottom part (College St to Amherst Drive) is showing 2070 feet while the east to west part (Pleasant to East Drive) is showing 1900 feet. From top to bottom (1st Street to Foothill), the Claremont Colleges are 4650 square feet, and from east to west (College Avenue to Claremont Blvd), they’re 3600 square feet. Wesleyan’s main campus measures 3000 feet top to bottom (Huber to Washington) and 2100 feet left to right (Knowles Ave. to High). Pomona, the largest of the CCs by far, measures 2500 feet top to bottom (1st Street to 8th street) and 2250 feet left to right (Harvard Ave. to Amherst Ave.). I excluded athletic buildings placed at the extreme far corners of the 3 individual LACs (away from a “rectangular” confined main portion of campus) and also Keck Graduate Institute from the measures of the CCs.

They’re not small collectively, and the individual sizes don’t matter much when there are no barriers between the undergraduate colleges. Scripps would feel especially tiny by itself, but you don’t hear that complaint much since it’s in the center of all 5 schools. As for natural beauty, it is true that Amherst has two wilderness sanctuaries to the immediate east and south of campus, but the Claremont Colleges own the 86 acre Botanical Gardens and an 85 acre field station to the immediate north of Harvey Mudd, and gave the city ownership rights to the 1700 acre Claremont Wilderness Park in the nearby mountains (open to everyone now). Those might not be part of the “official” numbers touted by brochures or fast facts, but students, professors, and the public use them all the same. I’m not trying to one-up here, just giving some comparative info. Preferences are subjective, of course.

On foot traffic, the Claremont Colleges still feel very quiet. As mentioned, not a huge main-campus size difference between Amherst and Pomona, for instance. Having been to UCLA and USC, which are of comparable size in acres but can have as many as 50,000 people at one time (not to mention being across the street from major urban areas), the CCs can feel like ghost towns!

42

OMG, has it really come down to measuring who has the longest property line?

43

Have you even been to the Claremonts? Because they don’t feel cramped or overly busy at all. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the campuses, and it just feels like you made that up.

44

For a lighthearted twist, a couple of other things struck me when visiting the Claremonts:

  1. It’s a skateboard campus. Seems like everybody was riding their board to class. In contrast, Stanford is a bicycle campus and Wellesley is a walking campus (too many hills)!
  2. I noticed a lack of “my college name” apparel. At every other college, one would always see someone wearing a t-shirt/sweatshirt with their college emblazoned upon it. Those were absent at the Claremonts.
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Not just skateboards – also scooters and free lines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeline_skates

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When we visited Claremont Colleges last fall on a Saturday, the campus was very quiet. An east coast parent asked the tour guide, “where are all the students? Are they commuters and go home on weekends?” So, yeah, definitely not crowded.

47

I think somehow the phrase, “foot traffic” got interpreted by the 5C parents as a pejorative term. Sorry. Back East, I think it conveys “active” and containing some sense of street life, particularly after dark. Of course, leave it to LACs to actively compete for the title of “most quiet campus”.

Which leads me to what I feel is a bigger issue. What exactly do the 5Cs mean when they say they have “all the advantages of a university”? Surely, there’s more to a university than just the redundancy of five different departments of English next door to each other? Your sports teams would get clobbered by the weakest link in NESCAC. And, since we’ve already established there isn’t anything more exciting going on there than at Swarthmore on a Saturday afternoon, what exactly is the big advantage?

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Having just been, I’m going to say College of Charleston wins the “foot traffic” award. They can’t fit on the sidewalks even without the tourists and random residents. I liked it.

To me that would mean one can take graduate level courses, there would be larger and more advanced labs and libraries, the social scene would include grad students, things like that. And yeah, maybe a football team that is regularly nationally televised.

With the exception of that last, UMass Amherst fits.

49

There isn’t as much redundancy as one would expect from 5 LACs. Each college uniquely emerged to fit a certain role. Post #12 does a good job summarizing the differences. Of course, certain foundation courses will be similarly styled across the colleges, such as psychology or microeconomics or genetics, and the interest is enough with the small class size expectation that one section isn’t enough for the demand across all the colleges. But I’d say 70% of courses offered are unique for that year. For English specifically, I looked at the offerings of each undergraduate college for Spring 2018 (specifically for courses listed in English- other departments often have literature classes too) and counted 47 unique courses. The only overlap was British Literature and Fiction Writing Workshop. Princeton offered 36 unique English courses for Spring 2018, by comparison.

Additional academic perks are:

  1. Access to programs most LACs don’t offer, like engineering, accounting, urban studies, education, and public policy analysis. 4 of the 5Cs permit off-campus majors (who are treated equally to on-campus majors)
  2. Vast number of faculty within walking distance, most of whom conduct research and welcome students from across the colleges (750+ at the undergraduates colleges, an additional 111 at CGU). For instance, one psychology research group I was a part of at Pomona was half Pomona majors and half 7C. Several 5C students are part of CGU’s Game Lab. I know several Pomona students who chose to pursue independent projects and directed readings with Scripps professors. Academic events like colloquia and guest lectures are open across the colleges.
  3. Can take graduate level courses at CGU and Keck
  4. Many unique academic highlights are open across the colleges. For instance, Mudd’s Clinic Program, 5C only semester study programs like CMC’s Silicon Valley program, CMC’s Robert Day Scholars, Pitzer’s Production Center, Pitzer’s Monroe Center for Inquiry fellowships, Pomona’s Museum of Art internships, Oldenborg Language Dining Hall at Pomona, Scripps’s Humanities Institute/Feminist Center/EU Center. There are also 5C centers like the Hive for Collaborative Creativity and the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Really, the 5C emphasis is on quantity, not quality. Complaints about a lack of potential courses or research interests aren’t as common here. Are the courses or research any different from what you’d see at a stand-alone LAC? Not really. But quality can’t be discounted either. Some of the members have chosen to not offer the broad range of options available at other LACs. But this has given them the space to do what they do best in their specialty, while the other members help fill in the gaps. All 5 colleges individually rank- based on their own students, finances, and resources, not the consortium- among the top grouping of LACs in numerous rankings. Having access to five great schools all within walking distance is a big perk. Is it a perfect system with full fledged access to everything? No. But what is?

On athletics, they field quite competitive sports teams, so I’m not sure what you mean by your statement. For the Director’s Cup final rankings last year, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps ranked 4th nationally (above 9 of the 11 NESCACs), and Pomona-Pitzer ranked 29th (above 6 of the NESCACs). The year before, they ranked 10th and 34th (above 7 and 6 of the NESCACs). Also, no one has established that there is a lack of activity comparable to other LACs- just that they feel quiet to outsiders and lack the bustle of truly massive universities. As @Corinthian pointed out from her D’s experience studying away at Swarthmore, the size difference is noticeable in the day to day experience even though Swarthmore is part of its own consortium. At the CCs, you have 5 wealthy undergraduate schools- where some 90%+ of students live on campus- who share most organizations, events, employment fairs/visits, and dining halls, and operate under a consolidated health/security/library system. The whole set-up is similar to an adjoining campus size of ~300 acres with a mid-sized university population and social life of ~6000 undergraduates, while consistently maintaining the individual classroom experience of a small LAC. I don’t believe any other consortium has a similar dynamic. I would recommend you to do some research (tons of student experience websites out there) or visit in person to get a sense of it.

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Sorry, when I said “are the courses or research any different”, I mean in quality and approach, not in content. Should have been more clear. I definitely agree with a previous poster that several northeastern LACs have unique programs and that the Claremont Colleges, even together, don’t necessarily have every possible thing attainable at other LACs. Amherst has a great law undergrad major which none of the 5Cs have, Wellesley has a South Asian studies program, and Wesleyan has an archaeology major. Definitely consider your own needs and preferences first and foremost. I have no issues with someone favoring another LAC over a CC, even if it may seem like it! :slight_smile: Just trying to put some info out there which can help with understanding the dynamic.

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@nostalgicwisdom wrote:

Yeah, I’ve read the student websites and I’m sensing a disconnect here between the official line and the reality

I mean, it’s nice that you have Mudd there in the mix, but, do people really take engineering classes just for the heck of it? Most of the other 4Cs seem to avoid course work at Mudd at all costs. And, I beg your pardon, but, public policy analysis, education and urban studies are more common liberal arts offerings than you might think. And sports? We’re almost talking about apples and oranges here. Bowdoin doesn’t field a mixed team with Middlebury or Amherst with Wesleyan and Trinity. They would be pretty formidable teams, if they did.

Yes, 5C students have access to graduate level science courses thanks to Keck Graduate Institute. But, isn’t that restricted to seniors? And, last I looked, Keck ranked #518 in federal research dollars, according to the NSF, right below Bates which doesn’t even have a graduate school and below Middlebury in total R&D. CGU does significantly better at the non-science end, but, again we’re talking about tiny sums here, not at all what you would expect of a 6,000 student enterprise with over a thousand professors hard at work.

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Many consortium students take Computer Science classes at Mudd, whether they are declaring the major or taking it as an elective. Mudd CS is one of the best-regarded programs in the country, with unparalleled gender parity and multiple tracks to accommodate different backgrounds and interests. In addition to the Intro CS classes that are required for Mudd first-years in the fall, the spring sections are offered entirely to meet demand from the other 4Cs. (Higher math classes at Mudd - beyond what is rolled into the Mudd-only Core - are also available across the consortium.) The availability of these course offerings is definitely a draw for students who want the LAC experience without forfeiting access to a top-notch CS program. While Mudd students cannot base their major outside of Mudd, Scripps/Pitzer/CMC students can be CS majors based at Mudd. (Pomona also offers a CS major and minor, which are open to Scripps/Pitzer/CMC as well.) It’s true that consortium students can’t declare Mudd Engineering majors unless they do a 3-2 program; but Mudd CS is a huge contribution to the consortium. And with more than 25% of Mudd students majoring in CS, the inclusion of consortium students is hardly peripheral to the academic life of HMC.

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The data contradict your assumptions (where are you getting these perceptions from? genuinely curious).

According to internal data from CMC and Pomona, Harvey Mudd is the #1 destination for where courses are taken. For instance, at CMC, 300 students took a course in Fall 2015 at Mudd (followed by 221 to Pomona, 133 to Scripps, and 88 to Pitzer). I don’t have specifics for Scripps and Pitzer, but I’d expect a similar pattern due to the explosive popularity of CS and full access to Mudd’s distinguished CS program as an off-campus major. Some physics students across the colleges do take advantage of the engineering courses. I know one student from my class year who took at least 7 or 8 of them, conducted engineering research with a Mudd professor alongside physics research with a Pomona professor, and went onto a mechanical engineering PhD at MIT. At any given semester, my experience is that ~5 Pomona students take E4 at Mudd (Introduction to Engineering Design and Manufacturing). Some environmental analysis majors do the Environmental Physics and Engineering track at Pomona with some courses at Mudd. There’s a popular 3-2 engineering with CMC and Mudd for management engineering (BA econ + BS engineering), and Scripps has that option as well, so that drives additional 5C movement.

Out of the total number of registrations at the 5Cs, 47.6% were cross-registrations at another school. The extent to which the schools collaborate is significant. There are some limits, but they don’t apply to the many intercollegiate departments across the colleges.

Not many LACs offer a public policy major, from what I can tell (distinct from politics or government). I can only find it at Pomona, Hamilton, Lafayette, and Trinity College. It’s a unique major that requires a substantial internship component. Urban studies, same thing, though a few more have it than PP. In the research I just did, half of the top LACs seem to have education courses, while the other half don’t, so I’ll correct my stance regarding “most LACs”. The point isn’t about specific majors though (there are many others I didn’t reference)- just the reality of the collaboration and the access to off-campus majors which give CC students a wide breadth of options.

What is your point about athletics? Hypotheticals don’t change the reality. It is not apples to oranges- they compete in NCAA Division III. Furthermore, the NESCACs have more athletes and more varsity teams. According to government data, there are 417 varsity athletes at Pomona-Pitzer and 512 at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Williams has 744, Wesleyan has 604, and Bowdoin has 635. Also, the combined schools aren’t that large- PP is 2700 while CMS is 3200- around the same ball park as Wesleyan.

Keck is a school I’m not too familiar with. It’s extremely tiny, with under 500 students. It’s not in the central part of the Claremont Colleges but rather a mile away. Theoretically, any biology/related fields declared major could take a course at Keck, not just seniors, but I’ve only heard of one student taking a public health course there. Their website says you fill out a form if you’re interested in their courses. CGU is much more popular, especially for math (https://www.cgu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CGU-IMS-GraduateMathCourses.pdf), education, and economics/management. Education courses are open to all, math and econ courses are restricted to majors. Research is primarily 5C based since students take far more undergrad courses than grad ones, but as mentioned, some 7C research labs like the Game Center are at CGU. One can visit the CGU and Keck website and look up research for their various schools- faculty, their research interests, and contact info is described.

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  1. CS is probably the fastest growing department at every top LAC I’m aware of, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s lot of migration to Mudd (especially, considering three of the 5Cs don’t have classes of their own.) What’s interesting here is that if you go to LinkedIn and check out the baccalaureate origins of Google software engineers, Pomona doesn’t seem to be head and shoulders above any of the NESCACs (but, that’s a very jittery website and you’re liable to get slightly different numbers with every visit.)

  2. It’s funny, when I run a search for “CG”, the abbreviation for Claremont Graduate University in the Pomona course catalogue, I could only retrieve three courses, one for an Education course, one in Religion and one in English. Obviously not exhaustive, but it does seem odd that more information isn’t readily available on advanced work on any of the 5C websites.

  3. You’ve made my point about athletics at the 5Cs (Williams alone has more athletes than the combined total of three of the five.) Not sure why you wasted time challenging it.

  4. And FYI,

Urban Studies
http://www.wesleyan.edu/urban_studies/

Education
http://wesleyan.edu/education/index.html

Public Policy
https://catalog.wesleyan.edu/departments/center-study-public-life/

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And, 5) It’s EXTREMELY difficult navigating the separate websites of 7 different entities!

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edit- I feel like I’m taking up too much space with the responses, so I’ll just message you.

57

Got your response. Much appreciated. I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on 5C versus NESCAC sports. Go `Cac! :smiley:

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5C teams are nationally ranked in a couple of sports; the NESCAC teams dominate most.

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I’m not sure it matters which school tops the Director’s Cup. All of the schools in question here have relatively strong athletics.

And why do the NESCACs have to be better than the Claremonts or vice versa? What’s wrong with just saying they’re different and exploring the ways in which that’s true? I attended a NESCAC school, as did my kids, but I’m a fan of the 5C’s. For a kid who wants the advantages of a small school while still maintaining the ability to explore academic offerings that don’t exist at the home school they sound great to me. The fact that the 5C’s are in such close physical proximity gives it an advantage over many consortia.

I have heard mixed things about the ability of kids to get the classes they want through cross-registration, but as @nostalgicwisdom’s numbers show they are taking advantage of it.

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^ I agree. At some point during the thread, pointing out differences became suspect. To the extent that I contributed to the confusion, I apologize. NESCAC and the 5Cs are just different. Wesleyan and the 5Cs are just different ways of approaching the challenges that the modern university template presents to traditional LACs. One does it directly by operating small PhD programs and through economies of scale while the other attempts to solve it by, essentially, adapting a mall approach with different shops offering something the others don’t. In either case, it’s hard to argue with success.