<p>With respect, I think parent57 needs to take a chill pill.</p>
<p>People don’t visit CC for gospel truths, they come for peer impressions, opinion, experiences, hearsay, scuttlebutt, camraderie, support, gossip, commiseration, and facts wherever appropriate and relevant. </p>
<p>Elucidating the nature and quality (perceived or otherwise) of various and sundry institutes of higher education is subjective at best – a fool’s game, really. But that doesn’t stop interested parties from trying to quantify the unquantifiable.</p>
<p>It’s a harmless pursuit, though, like trying to define the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin. At the end of the day, the cream rises to the top, and when one is discussing the range of elite colleges, whether a motivated student attended Middlebury or Swarthmore won’t make a damn bit of difference to their eventual life and career prospects.</p>
<p>So stop pestering manarius for proof positive and take his comments for what they are: One earnestly proffered opinion among many, in a sometimes contradictory patchwork of generalized impressions.</p>
<p>Your blood pressure will go down considerably and we can all get back to shooting the breeze.</p>
<p>Listen , because you guys like to disparage other schools for the h*ll of it, doesn’t mean it is useful for students who would really like to learn something to help them with their college application process. You guys protest too much; you have a guilty conscience.</p>
<p>As for JW, he has a history of denigrating other colleges for probably no reason other than to boost his own college. I expect this type of thing from some students, but would expect more from supposedly an adult. If you guys can’t see that, then your hopeless.</p>
<p>Thank you for your concern regarding my blood pressure, but I can assure you it is just fine. Over the years, I have had no problem with 99% of the Pomona posters, but every so often you get the occasional few who now feel it is perfectly appropriate to denigrate other schools, because in their minds they are now part of an elitist group that gives them carte blanche to engage in silly stereotypes and nonsensical put-downs of other schools to justify their exalted view of themselves. When I see this behavior, I will point it out to them whether they like it or not. </p>
<p>I would bet if some poster came here and made some disparaging remarks about the Pomona student body, you, Enkephalon, would be the first to burst a blood vessel in your outrage at the poster. BYW, I know you are proud of your daughter’s school, but don’t you think you may have gone overboard with the following: </p>
<p>“I have written before that if you carefully and intentionally select a handful of diamonds representing only the finest cut, clarity and colour, and they are as a group clearly superior to the widely variable cohort from which they were chosen…”</p>
<p>I have had a number of posters privately email me and express their feelings regarding comments such as these. If you would like, I would be happy to elaborate.</p>
<p>Finally, you’ve picked on someone your own size.</p>
<p>Look, the only thing you’ve demonstrated by your behavior as a Claremont-McKenna parent through countless threads is the one teeny-tiny drawback that I would say attaches to most consortiums, but, seems especially acute in Claremont and that is, the awkwardness of living cheek-by-jowl with your biggest regional rivals. It’s like having Wesleyan, Amherst, Williams and Middlebury all within several blocks of each other, sharing the same library, and eating each other’s food. That would get on anybody’s nerves after a while. :(</p>
<p>JW, I would say your response to my comment is a non sequitur. Your comment, “Finally, you picked on someone your own size”, I think validates my earlier comment about you. I know you have had your fun denigrating the Claremont Consortium on other threads, but all your doing is proving my point about you once again. Please don’t feel you must respond.</p>
<p>john, you do say that about the Claremont Colleges quite a bit, but it’s simply not true. The consortium is, far and away, a big advantage. You never went to school here, so by drawing on sources from CC to make that assertion you are misinforming potential students. The assumption that having sport rivals nearby denigrates the quality of life makes sense in your head, but it’s not the reality. Personally, I think it would be incredible if Wesleyan and Amherst were next to each other and cross registering was allowed. It would be an amazing opportunity. Claremont offers that opportunity. We do go to school, after all, for an education, and the “best of both worlds” applies here. Claremont is the best, most efficient, and most functional consortium in the U.S. </p>
<p>Leave the opinions about it to those who go there.</p>
<p>This leads us back to the op’s question. What makes Pomona different from the other top LACs- and perhaps better, location aside - is that Pomona offers the academic and social benefit of four other schools. Amherst also offers this, but the Amherst consortium does not function nearly as well because students need to be inspired enough to take the bus to another campus.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how I’m misinforming anyone. You agree with me that the Claremont Consortium is like having “sport rivals” across the street from each other. You agree that the five undergraduate colleges – and, one grad school --share the same library. You agree that they share the same dining halls (in fact, they share everything except the dormitories which seems a rather arbitrary place to draw the line, IMHO.) I’m merely suggesting that a 6,000 student footprint squeezed into a shoe equal to the size of one normal-sized New England college may not appeal to everyone.</p>
<p>I know a bunch of people at the 5Cs. The consortium only ever comes up as a huge positive. I have never encountered anyone who shared johnwesley’s view. </p>
<p>I think there are valid criticisms that can be made of each of the 5Cs and certainly none of them are fit for everyone, but the drawback of the consortium as expressed by JW really seems to exist only in his mind.</p>