Edit: This post is NOT to bash on CMC, it is a unique school with much to offer. Please read the whole post, and judge objectively.
I was accepted to CMC previously with excellent financial aid.
Let me say this, I was dead-set to attend right before I read this article, read it, confirmed it’s reality on campus (by talking to students), and eliminated it completely from my college list.
To find it, Google “the great lie of claremont mckenna”
If you still love the college, then you should definitely go. Just make sure you do the research.
I admit, I failed to do the research on this, so my fault for applying. But please, read the article and make your own conclusions. If you are not deterred, then have fun! You’ll have a great 4 years.
Those who follow berkvard’s link should be careful to read all the comments, which will leaven the concoction in the original letter. Background: I hung around small colleges from 1959 till I finally retired from consulting last year. I spent 23 years working at the Claremont Colleges, holding faculty and senior administrative positions at Pomona, Pitzer, and CMC. CMC focuses on government, economics, and the practical world in which things get done - and has since it opened in 1946. Pomona has as its school color “Yale blue” and comes from the great tradition that created the leading colleges of the Northeast. HMC wants to be the toughest engineering/science college in the country while still demanding enough work in the humanities and social sciences to be able to claim to be a liberal arts college. Scripps used to be mostly a college focused on the humanities but has shIfted to give more emphasis to science and the quantitative end of the social sciences, while maintaining the flavor that comes only in a single-sex college. (There is a difference, a beneficial one - which I learned going to a college for men, back when that was not uncommon.) Pitzer has long had a thrust toward social science and social change.
When I first took a faculty position in Claremont, in 1967, I learned all the stereotypes, and I find them to be true, and untrue, now as they were then. The biggest difference is that students at all the colleges are much smarter than they were then.
And yet: it is true now and it has always been true that you can make each college, including CMC, serve your needs whatever your intellectual, artistic, athletic, or political needs. Dan, the letter writer, shows unfair buyer’s remorse because CMC turned out to be what everyone knows it to be. I count among my alumni friends - from all the colleges - politicians, inventors, cooks (and cooking celebrities), actors, entrepreneurs, merchants, novelists, billionaires, dancers, journalists, and philosophers. If you saw their biographies you would not know which Claremont college each attended, unless I told you.
That is the beauty of having the right to choose. CMC is obviously doing most things right since overall the student body and parents are happy and being the most selective LAC backs up those sentiments. Taking the opinion of one somewhat disgruntled student seems like a strange way to make a decision in August. It makes you wonder if the post is the truth because the time when schools demand firm commitments and deposits has long since passed.
I think the CMC Forum chose not to publish the piece because it is not very well written. The story towards the end, about the drunk guy cutting in front of him at the Scripps party is, well, an odd way to sum up his arguments, which are all over the place and don’t really speak to the quality of his education there. Why did you choose this piece to highlight, OP?
As you said in on of your other threads, fit is really important. Dan should have spent more time on campus before he accepted CMC’s offer of admission. Beyond that, I really don’t see anything at all useful in it.
Yes, definitely. I like CMC, I just realized that the sentiments expressed in the article above were supported by alumni I talked to (in person & on the phone). I just want people to read this piece, and make their decision with this information.
CMC and the 5Cs are great schools, not denying that.
@SAY seems a little unnecessary to accuse me of lying. I’m simply stating that the sentiment in the article are consistently corroborated with what current students I talked to said.
CMC is hardly the only college out there with its own vibe. Every college has a “feel” to it that you won’t pick up on just from looking at the website or the marketing materials. This is why on-campus visits are so important.
I’ve heard some people describe CMCers in unflattering terms because they are typically the capitalists by reputation and not the poets. But for others, that “go-getter” energy is exactly what they want surrounding them at college. My oldest loved the college for exactly what it was, and liked that vibe (but didn’t get in).
In some ways, this is really the magic of the Claremont Colleges…that you have “fratty” CMCers next to the Pitzer dreamers and alongside the HMC “nerds”…sometimes collaborating, sometimes clashing, but always a vibrant mix. What a marvelous place!
I’m surprised that @berkvard was apparently unaware of the CMC stereotype. If you do minimal research you’ll hear or read about it. If anything, potential applicants need to be admonished to not buy into the idea that everyone fits the stereotype. And even though the CMC Forum didn’t publish that particular letter, it has certainly published many other opinion pieces about similar issues. Just go to the CMC Forum website and type “party culture” into the search bar and you’ll get lots of hits including: “Partying Like a Pre-Professional” “Sexuality and the Hook Up Culture at CMC” “Reclaiming our Campus Culture” and “5 Myths About CMC’s Alcohol Culture.” Reading the student newspaper is always a good way to get insights into campus culture.
My husband is a CMC alum and D is PO '19. While she felt Pomona was a better fit for her, the presence of CMC in the consortium is definitely a big plus in her mind. I agree with @prospect1 that the CMC “vibe” is part of the magic of the consortium.
You might be surprised to know the CMC has a substance free dorm…
And my daughter (at Scripps) has friends at CMC who don’t drink.
OTOH, we took a campus tour on a Saturday morning and saw kids carrying a keg across campus…(didn’t seem to care that prospective students and parents were nearby)
As for the lack of art education (music, etc), that’s what is great about the 5C’s, what your school lacks you can find at the other school. I don’t see why he has such a problem with the “guitar-wielding” student image.
Every college is going to have some form of drinking culture. It’s college. The students at CMC don’t mind poking fun at themselves and at the stereotypes, so it’s more of a sarcastic “fratty” vibe than anything else. I have plenty of friends who don’t drink and I rarely go out myself because I, like the majority of CMC students, place a huge emphasis on my future/grades. CMCers aren’t getting belligerently drunk every night (or week, for that matter) like some students you’d meet at ASU or SDSU. Yes, we like to have fun but we also like to excel in our classes and career searches. Don’t let that article convince you. Spend a night at CMC on a Saturday if you’d like and you’ll see for yourself that some students are going out while others are slaving away studying for exams (and the groups often flip roles continuously).
berkyard if you read my post I never said anyone was guilty of lying. But can you explain how you still have admission options at this late date and where you decided to go.
berkvard you are a young person so I don’t want to be overly harsh but that is a completely different answer from what you stated in your original post. Are you telling the thread you received a better FA award from UCB than CMC?
Your first post said that the posted info was the reason you decided not to go. You were dead set on CMC, but then you read it and changed your mind. It was an interesting read, OP.