I got in! I’m a bit shook after a whole string of rejections
@road2college2018 – Tks! It was in the award letter – I think 2nd paragraph. Her financial aid portal is not up yet.
My D got wait listed. She had 3.95 UW GPA and slightly above avg. SAT with almost equal scores in math and English. Great essays and letters and unique but not numerous ECs. Congrats to those who were admitted!
In my frustration over my D’s wait list status I neglected to say congrats to all that were accepted!!
Rejected, not suprised because my stats are pretty low and my why scripps essay was pretty bad
UW GPA 3.56
31 ACT
1380 SAT
accepted!! 33 act, 93.5 avg out of 100, 10 ap classes, 2 dual credits, 2 honors!
Waitlisted 32 act, 5 AP’s and a college class, good amount of EC not a lot of leadership positions though. 3.95 UW GPA. Congrats to all those who got in!
Accepted! But no merit. SAT 1500, math lvl2 800. International student from India on a gap year. 10th ICSE 97.4% and 12th ISC 92.8% with lots of honours. Rigorous high school so 9th and 11th in the 80s%. Good recs. Music and community ECs. Essays pretty okay i guess, had fun writing them.
For those who got in how do you check financial aid?
Shocked I was accepted! ACT 31, GPA: 3.98 (UW) 4.4 (W), 9 APs, decent ECs,Bilingual, no interview,my guess is it was b/c of my essays & letters of rec. I’m guessing no merit b/c I don’t see anything about it and my scores are fairly lower than the rest. Congrats everyone! 
Congratulations to all those accepted! D2 was waitlisted.
For all those waitlisted, when we visited in February our tour guide told us that last year they had a higher yield than expected and overenrolled by 30. Some students had to live in graduate student housing and were given $$ to cover laptop to make up for it. She said this year they would admit fewer. Based on all the WLs here, it seems like they played it safe to avoid this happening 2 yrs in a row – but that could mean a bigger than normal pull for the WL! Just wanted to add that info if it’s helpful.
Yes, @AlmostThere2018 - last year was very unusual, and you received the “pretty” version on your tour. There was a tragic incident on campus last winter, and Admissions concluded that the fallout was likely to affect yield, so they made more admissions and scholarship offers than normal. Then, to their surprise, yield did not go down, and they ended up with significant overenrollment. There were 38 first-years housed at the Claremont Graduate University apartments this year, and that’s only half of the total “overshoot” - the entering class was actually ~80 students larger than intended.
So Admissions is in a tricky spot this year. They cannot afford to overshoot again, but they also don’t want to overcompensate with an extra-small entering class, because such a big differential between classes would be undesirable too. So it stands to reason that they are waitlisting a lot of candidates this year who would have been accepted last year. They need the precision in controlling this year’s class size. I think you’re right that waitlisted students should expect that they still have a real chance at an offer; Scripps is just needing tight control over this year’s class size, and utilizing the waitlist is a way to accomplish that.
@aquapt what was the tragic incident???
Yes that is likely the reason though they don’t offer merit to anyone on the waitlist which essentially negates the waitlist opportunity for mine. I’m still really surprised my D was waitlisted with her stats and demonstrated interest. She was an early write at both Smith and Mt Holyoke. But she really loved Scripps and it is much easier to get to from our location.(which probably didn’t help with geographic diversity)…so as parents it was high on our list too. It is a lovely school so congrats to all who were accepted.
@wrenwu An RA committed suicide on campus in February of last year.
@wrenwu - A very well-loved and influential young woman who was an RA at Scripps took her own life, in the first week of March last year. http://tsl.news/news/6706/ This loss was, in itself, very upsetting to a lot of students, for obvious reasons. In addition, it brought a number of underlying issues to the fore. This young woman had been involved in racial justice activism, and a reporter for the Claremont Independent, the conservative paper that is bankrolled by a right-wing national organization, had taken photos of posters she had posted inside Scripps dorms that included her personal contact information and published them as-is in a story that was picked up by national-level alt-right publications, resulting in harassment and threats toward the student that contributed to her emotional distress. In addition, a number of issues were raised vis-a-vis the RA role, and the fact that many lower-income students have little choice but to take on the ongoing stresses of being an RA in order to fund their education. An RA strike ensued, which has since led to revisions to the RA job description as well as examination of many related issues. There has been much discussion of the issues around economic disparities and racial diversity, and the way that students on financial aid can find themselves in a financial bind in that anything they do to improve their financial stability can in turn adversely affect their award. The issue of mental health resources and support structures has been raised as well. (There was also a suicide at Harvey Mudd last February, and a fair amount of upheaval last year at HMC regarding the stresses associated with their rigorous core curriculum.) The Scripps RA’s who went on strike published a detailed list of concerns/demands which touched on all of these issues. The administration supported the RA’s request to step away from their responsibilities for a period of time, and worked with them to achieve a resolution.
Few if any of these issues are unique to Scripps and/or the 5C’s. The economic realities of financial aid and educational costs are challenging for this generation of students at colleges and universities across the country. Political polarization and social media bullying are, likewise, nationwide issues. Colleges across the country are struggling with the question of how to support students who struggle with depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges. My sense is that what happened at Scripps last year could as easily have happened at almost any peer institution… but it did happen at Scripps last year, and the upheaval was particularly intense at the time when admissions offers were being made and admitted students were visiting and making their college decisions.
Certainly the issues raised are important to consider in weighing the pros and cons of a private liberal arts education, and how economic and other disparities play out at high-priced institutions that struggle to fund the levels of diversity that they would ideally like to attract. These are systemic issues that play out throughout higher ed. Assessing whether Scripps has done better or worse than other peer institutions at addressing such issues is a complex and challenging analysis that I won’t attempt to weigh in on here. They’ve definitely made a substantial effort, but inevitably opinions will vary on how successful that effort has been. I’ll just say that the unfortunate reality is that crises like this one do occur on college campuses, and Scripps had its turn last year, and an anomalous year in terms of admissions statistics resulted. I hope the way I’ve explained it is helpful rather than inflammatory or disturbing.
@aquapt Thank you for clarifying. How tragic and heart-breaking.
@aquapt – yes, very helpful. I think your analysis was very even-handed and insightful. Thank you for weighing in with this info and good luck to everyone during this exciting but nerve wracking time!
Niece accepted. 3.65 UW, 28 ACT, 2 APs. International school. Did not interview. Lived abroad most of her life.