<p>I chose between Cal and Scripps, and ultimately wound up at Scripps. At the time, I told my disappointed father "I love Cal. I'll be back to look for grad school," and sure enough, it's quite high on my list for "Places I'd love to go" for my next step. Ultimately, my feeling was that Berkeley has AMAZING resources, prestige, etc., but that I would not be experiencing most of it as an undergrad. I wanted, as you say, the full focus, access to everything. If my professors are Nobel winners, awesome, but what good is that if I'm watching them on a TV screen in an auditorium? I'd rather have the "plain old" Phd. professor but get to have dinner at her house. Obviously, I'm making gross generalizations, b/c not every experience at either school will be like this, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>If you can figure out what is more important to you, you'll go a long way in solving your problem. If you want the huge urban setting and don't think you could stand suburbia, then you will HATE Claremont. On the other hand, there's not a lot of need to get off campus...we're pretty self-contained, and there are SOME nice areas nearby (The Village, which I've heard they want to make more appealing to students). While LA is easy to get to, we are definitely NOT in it. Remember that matters of campus beauty, general atmosphere, quality of food, surrounding area, etc. <em>ARE</em> relevant and are in many ways as important as questions of academics. It is crucial to remember that this is not ONLY your school, it will also be your HOME. I really didn't grasp that during my own search and lucked out into picking the right place (for me) anyway.</p>
<p>What I can tell you is that you really don't need to worry about Pomona having a lack of things to do or a lack of resources, even relatively speaking. (1) There is a TON to do. There is at least 5x the amount that you'd expect. Whether you mean parties, things like movies and game nights, lectures, concerts, or whatever else, there's an overwhelming amount as long as you're willing to utilize the other campuses (while it's available to you, Pomona students often underuse the other 4C resources simply because they're farther removed in distance and their own facilities are often independently sufficient...if you do wind up at Pomona, my biggest piece of advice: use the other schools!!!). (2) Same goes with resources. Together, the schools have a HUGE pool of resources (including the 3rd largest academic library west of the Mississippi...it's true, lol). We also have a system which allows us access to most other SoCal college libraries, including those of the UCs (libraries being my random example). One plus is that these resources are usually pretty available to all students, and the schools are small enough that individual exceptions can usually be made. For example, Scripps has music practice rooms which music students can access any time with their student IDs. I'm not a music student, but I do play the piano, so I requested and was granted special access to the practice rooms. Though I cite Scripps, the personalization allowed by small schools applies to all of Claremont. One of the reasons I ultimately chose Claremont was b/c I wanted the best of both worlds...the small school, personal attention, etc. combined with major resources.</p>
<p>If prestige and name recognition mean a lot to you, then Claremont might drive you nuts. That is one thing that I sometimes find hard...people disregarding my school because they've never heard of it, when I know how wonderful it is, and when I was so close to going to places with names. It's not a big deal, but some people find it very important.</p>
<p>Ultimately, my guidance counselor had me make a table. I had a column for each school and a row for my top 5 factors, in order of importance (availability of my major, niceness of dorms/food, small classes, school size, location, or whatever). I ranked each school independently (so they could share rankings...two schools might both get a 3 in size, for example) and then multiplied each score by the inverse of its importance (so the first most important got multiplied by 5, the second most important got multiplied by 4, the third by 3, fourth by 2, and fifth by 1). In the end, Scripps came out waaaaaaaaaay ahead and I realized that I was probably putting too much emphasis on the thought of "why go to this school nobody's heard of that costs all this money when I could go to BERKELEY"! That's not to say that Berkeley's not an amazing institution, but I was definitely letting its name cloud my vision (and same goes for the other school in the mix).</p>
<p>Both schools are great. I think I could've been extremely happy at either and I imagine that you could be, too, given your deliberation. I'm glad that I chose small for undergrad because I think it will give me the better preparation for post-grad, where I look forward into trying something larger and more urban. Like you, I want the best of all worlds...good luck in your decision :o)</p>
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<li>Just realized that this was a weird time to be asking this question since confirmations should already have been sent in. I see that the original post was from April...were you sending in your confirmation on 5/1, are you already a junior, or are you a transfer who can confirm later? If the first of those...let us know how things turned out!</li>
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