My D18 truly would love to attend any of the 5Cs as she’s a true liberal arts student who loves writing, history and art. She also is a good math student and has set her sights on a Computer Science degree. She applied to Pomona (rejected), HMC (alternate list), and Scripps (accepted). She was thrilled about everything at Scripps and excited to do core, history and art classes at her home campus, while pursuing CS at Pomona or Mudd. Unfortunately she received an email this month from Scripps admissions saying that CS is no longer a guaranteed major to off-campus (read: non-HMC or Pomona) students. When pushed the admissions department suggested that if her heart was set on a CS degree or minor, it was unknown if she’s get any classes, and that she should pick another school to pursue that subject.
I’m wondering if any Pitzer or CMC potential '23 students have heard the same from their admissions officers. Also wondering if any Scripps, Pitzer or CMC freshman could share what their experience has been this year regarding CS classes. (I think that CMC has a new 6-course sequence. HMC said that they hope to be in better shape as 3 more CS faculty have been hired in the last year.)
When we toured over a year ago we had heard that CS classes were in demand at the 5Cs, as they seem to be in high demand everywhere. We just were surprised to find out so late in the game that it was no longer going to be a potential major. That said, grateful to Scripps for the heads up as it would be a financial and emotional hardship to find out after being on campus as a student and then not being able to get any CS classes.
My D is finishing up her 1st year at Scripps. She loves it. But, she is not a CS major. I have seen several times over the past year that CS classes are not guaranteed to those outside a particular school, ie- CMC or HMC. The major is over subscribed. And I believe Scripps made the decision to hire non CS degreed prof to fill CS teaching jobs because they cannot find CS profs. I will look for that article. You might try posting on the Scripps and CMS college sections of CC.
Thanks for your response, @mamom. It’s great to hear your daughter’s loving it at Scripps! The article you attached is interesting, but I’m not sure how students are going to get a real grasp on CS without getting a basic foundation in some programming languages and structures. Research says that coding skills will be more lucrative, useful, and necessary, even in medical and non-tech jobs. It seems like Scripps will have to look at how to get their students real classes in the future, whether it’s a partnership with other schools (like they do with Keck) or whatever. When I get more time I’ll try posting in the other college sections as you suggest. Thanks!
That’s really unfortunate - Scripps is definitely going to lose students who would have committed, because of this. My Scripps sophomore has several friends who are CS majors, and it’s an option she definitely wanted to keep open when she chose the school. I wonder if availability of the computation-focused track of Pomona Cognitive Science has changed as well.
Course availability for minors has been a problem for a while, even for students based at Pomona. CS majors get priority for classes that minors do not.
I hope there are going to be options going forward for Scripps students who want to study CS - it would be a real loss if there were not, and it’s a shame that they’re pulling the plug on off-campus majors without having something ready to take the place of this. Having the Mudd/Pomona CS option has been a real draw for the school, and changing the availability just a few weeks before the commitment deadline… well, better than after, but still not great.
Wonder how the upcoming changes at Keck will affect Comp Sci at the 5Cs, as Keck will now become a Pitzer/Scripps joint sciences department. “CMC plans to create an independent science department and construct a new science facility to house 22-28 full-time science faculty.” “Scripps and Pitzer are preparing to jointly assume ownership of CMC’s financial stake in the Keck Science department and invest in renovating and expanding the W. M. Keck Science Center and program.”
If she’s serious about CS, then that letter makes it clear Scripps is not the choice for her. Kudos to them for giving fair warning.
Agreed Scripps needs to figure out its science and tech profile or it will lose some students. That said, maybe they just want to double down on their strengths in humanities and arts which are certainly lower cost programs to operate.
My S was accepted last year and super excited (it was the only 5C she applied to b/c she was chasing merit and liked idea of women’s college) but as a bio major, Keck’s uncertainty (and overall tired look of the building) led her to choose another college.
It just seemed like there would be a lot of ‘transaction costs’ the get the courses she wanted across the consortium and a risk it wouldn’t always work out. She was worried about being a second-in-line student for course access. Maybe it would have worked out fine, but a stand alone LAC w/ really strong science program seemed a safer bet. Everyone’s on equal footing when it’s just one college.
Up 'til now, there has been no overlap between Keck and computer science. I suppose that could change, if Scripps and Pitzer are both losing the access they’ve previously had to the Mudd and Pomona CS majors and decide to house their own CS classes within Keck… but as of now the Keck transition is a completely separate issue.
The policy up until now has been that declared CS majors have priority for the CS classes that are required for the major, irrespective of their home campus. A Scripps student majoring in CS through Mudd, for example, has exactly the same access to CS classes as a Mudd student majoring in CS. Some students have been unhappy that this priority ends once requirements are met - students who want to take additional CS electives beyond the number required for the major can have trouble getting into those classes, because they’re prioritized below those who still need the class to graduate. But again, that’s that same for everyone regardless of which college they’re from.
My daughter is in an off-campus major through Pomona, and she is cleared to take majors-only classes based at Pomona or Pitzer as a matter of course. There’s no “second in line” aspect to it. When it comes to electives outside one’s major(s), there are some classes that are restricted to their home institution or that have an additional “perm request” step for students from other colleges, but for the most part the access is very good.
Scripps certainly does excel in the humanities and social sciences, but the science and CS majors I have met, in my daughter’s class and above, are truly impressive as well; and it saddens me to think that their counterparts in this entering class will be more likely to go elsewhere.
@aquapt – That’s good information and you certainly know more than my D or I. Tbh, I think we never fully understood how the whole majoring and taking courses at other colleges worked. She figured she’d have to be a bio major through Keck and as such she wasn’t sure she’d have equal access to bio courses at Pomona which had some of the specific electives she was interested in. Students she talked to said it always worked out, but she was somehow left unconvinced. But that was likely just the more anal side of her personality coming out; it worried her.
Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge at this point and I’m diverging from OP’s post on CS so sorry for hijacking the thread.
@nowon1234 I’m in the same boat. D loves Scripps and is interested in CS. She is considering Santa Clara university as an alternative( CS&CE) but feels Scripps would have been the college for her. We have to SIR in soon but are hesitating and hopeful that there is a way. It seems getting classes across the 5C is getting harder. Like Economics at CM or CS at Pomona and Harvey Mudd. The Data sc classes that are being added are only “ informational” and no credit towards a major which is disappointing. I wish there was a way and she woul choose Scripps today!
With the exploding popularity of CS, most good CS programs now have this problem to various degrees. Claremont’s problem is just more acute because of a) the quality of HMC’s CS program; b) the lack of CS programs on other 5C campuses besides Harvey Mudd and Pomona; and c) the ease with which to take classes across 5C campuses. So until they address b) by building up CS programs on other campuses, which will likely take a long time under the current environment, they have no choice but to eliminate c) for CS classes.
I would not say that “getting classes across the 5C is getting harder” generally. CMC Econ has been a known and stable exception for years. My Scripps daughter is doing a dual major - one at Scripps and one through Pomona. There was no difference in the difficulty of declaring the two majors; she met with prospective advisors, and the two were equally available, helpful, and encouraging. Paperwork was signed and submitted - done. Some of her classes are restricted to majors-only, but as a declared major she has proven to be at no disadvantage vs. majors from other campuses. She just completed pre-registration for fall, and she literally didn’t notice until I pointed it out that she had ended up with no Scripps-based classes at all this time around. She has a number of friends majoring in CS, and still more who have taken intro CS classes as electives. CS has not, until now, been an afterthought or an outlier.
Yes, CS classes are impacted in general, at the 5C’s and on campuses nationwide, but this Scripps-specific barrier is new and I’m very disappointed on behalf of the students affected. Scripps admissions probably did not plan to “bait and switch” these applicants, and they did let them know shortly after decisions were released; but some might have shifted their whole application strategy if they’d known sooner… not to mention the ED applicants! This is an abrupt and significant change, as the CS major has been a popular and important offering for Scripps students.
This is a real weakening of the promise of the Consortium. Restrictions like the closed nature of CMC Econ are in a different category - Scripps has its own Econ major and course offerings, so doing an off-campus major in that subject has never been a need or an option on the table. For current students and families, to be hearing about this CS change indirectly via newly-admitted students is, frankly, a little icky. I felt like something was coming when I read the TSL article about Scripps’ admissions results: https://tsl.news/scripps-housing-shortage-admissions-admit-large-class-crisis/ The VP for Enrollment quoted in the article sounded evasive - acknowledging that a larger class had been admitted, steadfastly asserting that they did not expect to over-enroll, but offering no explanation as to why the larger number of offers should not be concerning vis-a-vis housing capacity. Now we know why; they’re expecting the loss of the CS major to affect yield. As well it should. I’m upset on behalf of who have to shift gears so late in the process, and upset at how this affects the standing and character of Scripps going forward. Every other women’s college of comparable reputation has a computer science major available to its students. IMHO this will be a very consequential stumble for Scripps.
I was the OP on this and apologize for not checking back for awhile.
@aquapt, you asked what my D’s options were. She kept us guessing until the May 1 deadline, but decided on Mount Holyoke which has a reasonably robust CS program and generous merit aid. She had wanted to stay on the west coast so Santa Clara, UW and Whitman College were also in the running.
Thanks for validating our disappointment and concern that this is a big deal for the 5Cs, @aquapt. I agree that this is a stumble for Scripps, and hope that it’s figured out quickly. It’s such an amazing school and we were nothing but impressed with the intelligence and kindness of the students, and excited by the quality of the teachers and curriculum we witnessed the two times we were on campus. I’m still a little salty that we fell in love with the campus, the consortium, and the City of Claremont. We thought it would be the perfect home for our student. Her dad and I even tried to talk her into considering a major in Bio or History, because we thought the quality of education would be worth it. She stuck to her convictions and wouldn’t risk graduating without a CS degree in hand.
So we move on and she’ll explore New England, winters, and the quirky traditions of another great women’s college.