<p>Where I live, no one, and I mean NO ONE, has ever heard of Williams. In fact, when I say Williams, many folks think I said "Whitman", which is great, because Whitman has a good reputation. If you say Brown in my town, they think you are referring to United Parcel Service, which was founded in Seattle. And my town is the state capital! And if you say "Pomona", they think "Cal Poly-Pomona", also with an excellent reputation. </p>
<p>As for the graduate schools, they all know.</p>
<p>I tell my friends that my d. attends the school where they invented the cough drop. They are impressed!</p>
<p>Valuable, Pitzer and Scripps are both well respected by graduate schools -you won't have a problem there. However, they are better known for different things - Pitzer is well-regarded for its psychology and social science programs, Scripps for its English and art programs. Also, keep in mind that Scripps does not allow you to take classes in the other Claremont schools for the first year.</p>
<p>A source of information that I have found very helpful is to do an interest search on livejournal.com - all of the claremont schools are on there - you can connect with actual current students and ask questions directly of them. There are some very interesting comments about all of the schools.</p>
<p>However, realistically, with the exception of Pitzer, Scripps and the other Claremonts, as well as Oxy are all going to be reachy schools for you - median SATs for Oxy, for example, are in the mid-1300's. If you are interested in an all-female schools, you might also take a look at Mills, up in the San Francisco Bay area. We recently did a quick visit with our daughter and liked the campus very much. It is apparently a very liberal school but the academics are quite good and the campus is very beautiful. A bonus is its proximity to UC Berkeley and the chance to cross-register for classes there. I second Arizonamom and LAmom's suggestion of Redlands as a good possible match school in California for you. Another possibility is Whittier College near LA. If you don't mind a religiously-affiliated school, take a look at Santa Clara University, the University of San Diego, or St. Mary's College of California. If you'd consider some schools in the Pacific Northwest, check out Lewis & Clark and Willamette, both in Oregon, they are two excellent liberal arts schools, that you might like. Whitman College, in Washington State, is a top 30 liberal arts school that would probably be within your reach, depending on your GPA and other factors. It is an excellent school.</p>
<p>I try not to let SAT medians and rank etc. pull me down (although I know that is really hard to do when practically all of CC is based on statistics) so even though Scripps, Oxy, and the other Claremont schools are reaches, I am going to go for it anyway :) I am confident in my recommendations and my GPA is good so who knows ;) Plus if 1230-1400 is the median then 25% score lower than that, so that means anyone is in the ball park <em>I hope my 1240 does me some justice hehe</em> I will definitely look into Mills, because I had heard of it somewhere before and it seems interesting. I also did look into Santa Clara, which is also a great school. Ill keep searching and updating you guys on my college status. Thanks for helping me out.</p>
<p>Well, for what its worth, if you decide to stay on the east coast, my d. found Smith far, far more exciting than Wellesley. But you'll have to check it out for yourself. The reality is that all the schools mentioned are fine places - you just need to find the one that fits.</p>
<p>I go to Pitzer. Let me know if you have questions. As for its grad school rep., half of all Pitzer kids go to grad school within two years. Pitzer kids are eccentric, creative and radical. It is not a traditional school; if you want typical rigor, go to Pomona. Pitzer students have much more freedom in their academic endeavors. And that transcends to their persona. Dorms are wack but will be torn down and rebuilt by 2007. <a href="mailto:amontes@pitzer.edu">amontes@pitzer.edu</a></p>
<p>Hey! YAY! A pitzer student! I am from NJ so I will never get a chance to visit. What is your view on the campus? Other people on this board have said it isnt as nice as Scripps/Pomona, and there arent many pictures in the view book, so what do you think?</p>
<p>As far as work load, do Pitzer students work pretty hard? I dont want to go somewhere where the work is easy to put off. I want a little bit of a challenege.</p>
<p>Have you studied abroad? What was it like for you?</p>
<p>How would you describe your social life and the Pitzer perspective of the other 5'Cs?</p>
<p>What exactly are you studying? How well are foreign language classes conducted?</p>
<p>How was your Fin Aid?</p>
<p>What made you choose pitzer and if you dont mind, can you list your SATs, GPA, etc. I applied EA you?</p>
<p>Sorry if i bombarded you with questions but I have been waiting to talk to a Pitzer student on this board. I would love to know anything and everything from your student's view so please answer anything you can. Id really appreciate it. Thankz!</p>
<p>Sorry it took me so long to answer. I will try to answer these questions to the best of my ability. Pitzer, is not nearly as nice or big as Pomona or scripps; having said that, I must acknowledge that not too many campuses in the country are as nice as Scripps or Pomona. Pitzer, is a decent looking campus, however, the dorms will be completely replaced and rebuilt by 2008. This will drastically help the campus. As far as work load, be prepared to work a lot at any of the Claremont Colleges. Pitzer is turning into a school that is no longer laid back. Hence, you are working just as hard at Pitzer as you are at Pomona; the difference being that all classes at Pomona are rigorous, and at Pitzer you can find a couple each semester that are slacker classes. Nonetheless, be prepared to read and write vigorously. Most Pitzer students study abroad, the school encourages it. I have traveled myself quite a bit and did not feel the need to study abroad. But, I would encourage other to do it; practically, 80% of Pitzer students do it so likely you would as well. The programs are great, I hear.
Social life is, in my opinion, the weakest aspect of the 5c's. There are parties all the time, but there is such few people and the environment is so secluded that life in Claremont can be very homogenous; as opposed to a major city. As for the people, all the 5c's have stereotypes, part of which is true. Overall, the 5c's are a lot of privileged kids, some of who do a lot of drugs, some of who study incessantly and most of who are white. Most foreign language classes are at Scripps. Financial aid is great, that is the reason why a lot of kids end up at Pitzer.
As for my decision to attend Pitzer, actually I should start by mentioning the reason I was on this board is because I just started at Pitzer and I was thinking of transferring. I'm from downtown Los Angeles, and being at Pitzer is like being in a small, and quiet foreign country for me. I think, educationally/intellectually, it is one of the top schools in California. Academically, I'm glad to be at Pitzer because of the academic freedom to enjoy knowledge and discover your interests. My other options would be UCLA or UCI, those schools (at least UCLA) offer a more diverse atmosphere, primarily because of location. In synthesis, I would definitely recommend Pitzer if you want a challenging, unconventional and illumination educational experience. As for the social life, I guess it really depends on your background and interests. Don't hesitate to ask me more questions</p>
<p>as a california native, the claremont schools are looked VERY highly upon and soo many people try to get into them....primarily Claremont McKenna and Pomona. Those 2 are probably some of the most difficult schools to get into...i believe I saw in a ranking that Pomona was close behing Harvard in admissions difficulty. Scripps and Pitzer are good as well...because the schools are all part of the same community, you get to mingle with each other. You can even transfer into CMC or Pomona from Scripps or Pitzer. From a CA perspective, Wellesley is mostly seen as an incredibly uptight but good school. I know a girl who worked so hard to get into what she thought was her dream school- wellesley- and came back for thanksgiving complaining about how much she hated every part of it. Also my counselor cant rave enough about the claremont schools too....small classes, amazing professors. And about Occidental....i think its a great school, my cousin is a senior there double majoring there in accounting and spanish....shes already been offered a job and making money. Oxy has a lot of programs and is recognized highly in CA. Im reconsidering applying there cuz i hate the campus so much but ya hope this helps.</p>
<p>I didn't apply to Swarthmore or Haverford partially because they both felt too small. </p>
<p>That said, I think the biggest difference between a big college and a small college is the frequency which you see other people around campus. You'll have your same group of 15 friends at each school, and your same group of 100-150 people that you know...there are enough people even at Swarthmore (1400) that these two groups won't be significantly different than they would be if you went to Cornell (18,000). What will be different is at Swarthmore the people that you will see walking around from class to class, at social events, and local restaurants will seem much more familiar than they would at Cornell. There will be more of a college "community," partially because of this lack of anonymity. The larger a college gets, the more this community changes and the possibilities for anonymity grow. For me, Swarthmore seemed just a little too claustrophobic for me--it felt like a boarding school or summer camp. Williams (which is almost 50% larger) was exactly the right mix--there is still a very tight college community, but there are enough students that you never feel like you've ran out of people to befriend. I think when you start increasing the college size to much more than about 3,000 students you lose a lot of that college community feeling you get with the smaller colleges. </p>
<p>My honest feeling about consortiums is that while they look great on paper, they don't work nearly as well as advertised. Colleges with consortiums seem (to me) to tend to have either a significantly more broken community, or students who rarely take advantage of the consortium. </p>
<p>Academically, yes, it's true that smaller colleges will have smaller departments even if it's a focus at that university. It is important to understand that after a certain number of faculty members, departmental size stops mattering nearly as much. For example, a department with 25 full profs will offer more than enough courses for an undergrad...adding 10 more profs wouldn't make a significant difference in the courses a major would end up taking. It becomes much more shaky when we look at departments with smaller numbers (at what point does size of a department start mattering? I would guess that up until 15 members or so size matters a lot). Consortiums are often advertised as a way to overcome this difficulty, but I feel that in this area as well, consortiums do not work as well as advertised. Like mini said, many departments in consortiums are fairly uncooperative, and even in consortiums that work as they should, students tend not to take advantage of courses offered at other universities. At Amherst the average student takes something like 1-3 courses at a 5CC college...IMO that's a small enough number NOT to justify choosing Amherst for its consortium.</p>
<p>How is the air at Claremont, Scripps, et. al.? Didn't the wild fires cover the campuses with soot and ash last year? Is breathing a problem from air pollution?</p>
<p>Can a student at Scripps take courses at any of the consortium? What are the restrictions?</p>
<p>Does the consortium run buses into LA ever?</p>
<p>If you're interested in West Coast LACs, you should probably check out Redlands as well. It's particularly known for its business/government/commun disorders/music programs and JP which enables students to create their own majors. No, it's not as 'fluffy' as it sounds -- it requires a great deal of creativity and independence from those brave enough to go ahead with it. </p>
<p>As a doctoral student at Oxford in the UK I can't stress enough how the Redlands atmosphere and learning environment were particularly helpful in my grad. studies. I'm not a recruiter or an employer and, honestly, I hated the administration while I was there but apparently they've ditched the problems and gotten better people. The professors are brilliant, I encountered precious few poor profs and you can't beat a senior seminar in a conference room with just you and a Harvard PhD for an entire semester. Intimidating, yes, but I can't stress enough the importance of an education like that. </p>
<p>Redlands is a little 'eh', nicknamed Deadlands but it is close to San Berdu and LA provided you have a car. If not, you can still head up to the mountains in the winter to go skiing or, in the summer, go boating up at Big Bear Lake and water skiing/hiking/etc. It's at the base of the mountains so the drive isn't too bad. One warning: the gorgeous pictures of the snow-capped mountains? Yeah, they're taken in the Spring when it's gorgeous. In the summer it gets pretty damn hot and a touch smoggy as, again, it's right against the mountains. That being said, the physical beauty of the campus (gorgeous dorms, amazing landscaping) are rather stunning. It's very "East Coast", if that helps. Do a Google Image search for University of Redlands and you'll see what I mean.</p>