<p>Pick Northwestern! NU is probably the best for all of the majors you mentioned. No one is going to question you if you decide CMC or Georgetown though. Congrats on the great choices</p>
<p><a href=“Why Northwestern? | HuffPost Latest News”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<a href=“Why Northwestern: Normal and Smart | HuffPost College”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>My cred: worked in the Claremont Colleges for nearly 25 years, both as faculty and as senior administration; Ph.D. from Northwestern; lived near DC for more than half a decade. Unless you’re talking New York, it doesn’t make much difference what university you go to - your life will be mostly near your campus, with your friends. DC is sort of a bore for college-age people, but they love going to school there because they have great bright friends. Ditto Northwestern, not very close to the life of the Chicago sophisticate. And student life at CMC (and all the other Claremont Colleges) is vibrant, lively, interesting, and productive. </p>
<p>My heart is in Claremont, and let me tell you why. Students in Claremont are very very very bright, and they demonstrate their intelligence without being stuffy or boring. CMC students are the most likely to start something (a company, a publication, a movement to make things better), and they also have one advantage no other college in the nation has: The Athenaeum. The Ath features four nationally- or world-renowned speakers EVERY WEEK, and students may have dinner with them before they speak or perform. Free. And the dinners are grown-up: white tablecloths, with faculty and staff sprinkled through the crowd. All you have to do is sign up. Speakers are conservative (George Will), liberal (Anderson Cooper), in between; scientists, economists, political scientists, poets, biographers, politicians of all stripes. And every session ends right at 8 p.m., so you have plenty of study time. The Ath has been running since 1979, and its building was recently remodeled. (Students from the other colleges can come for the talks, but they can’t have dinner there first.)</p>
<p>(You will study very hard at CMC. But because every one else studies hard, it doesn’t seem odd or nerdy. And you will write a senior thesis. A good one. And you will splash in the fountain when you’re done.)</p>
<p>Of course there’s lots else to do. Sports are very big - a majority of students play varsity athletics. Theatre (headquartered at Pomona) is huge, and music (Pomona and Scripps) are there for the talented. Art, too, through Pomona and Scripps. Debate is very big at CMC, and the major intercollegiate publication started at CMC and has a big CMC contingent on its staff. (You might be interested to know that Bill Keller, former editor of the New York Times and now a senior columnist there, is a Pomona alum, as are Richard Perez-Pena and Tom Redburn, now chief economics editor. NPR’s Joe Palca is from Pomona, too. The Washington correspondent for The Jerusalem Post is a CMC alum - who graduated four or five years ago.) </p>
<p>Those who say CMC is big in economics are right. The CMC econ department is arguably the best in the country (the only other contender is at Williams). Yes, there are Nobel laureates at other places, and people who are more famous - but generally speaking undergraduates never see them or visit them in their offices. CMC is also famous in government (look at the books published by its members, in the departmental posting on line), international relations, and philosophy. And it’s no slouch in other areas, because there are all these other terrific colleges next door. </p>
<p>The physical facilities are top-notch (the Kravis Center is the most recent major building, but most of central campus has been refurbished recently, and the Roberts center for athletics is now under construction. It will be state-of-the-art, as is the fantastic Biszantz Family Tennis Center, which hosted Division III playoffs a couple years ago. </p>
<p>If I were young today and could get into CMC, I’d go there in a heartbeat. There’s a reason its students are the happiest in the nation.</p>
<p>I’m so glad we could get past the unpleasantness to something substantive. I was just about to emphasize the CMC consortium when I read celticbar. That consortium offers all kinds of possibilities to the student who might change their major some day–i.e., many many students. There are so many courses at four other colleges of national rank that you should have no worries about changing majors from a course-availability perspective. I had looked long and hard at CMC and Pomona (wait listed) and Scripps this year, and was very impressed with all of them and the consortium. </p>