<p>Well I had an overall good impression of cmc and wonder if theres anything unique to this school? Like how kalamazoo has the K plan, and cornell college has its one course at a time thing, are there any unique programs here?</p>
<p>special about CMC?</p>
<p>It's just about the best school you could find for either government or economics (not to mention other sweet-ass under-mentioned majors: literature, international relations, psychology, PPE [politics, philosphy, and economics], accounting, history, philosophy]. It has the benefits of a small liberal arts school (small class sizes - usually under 19 students, good student-teacher ratio, intimate campus, no huge LECTURE HALLS, no TAs teaching anthing, you get help from facult, administration, and staff when you need it), while retaining the largeness of a mid-size school because it is part of the Claremont Consortium (ex: I have taken classes at Pomona all four years, you crossregister at any other college for any course that interests you, the social life is bigger than just one college, you have the resources of a HUGE library to serve all 4 undergrads and two graduate universities).</p>
<p>Basically you've got BIG and small all in the same place. That's the specialty of claremont.</p>
<p>Another unique program is the Washington Semester. If you're a governement or econ or IR major, you would probably want to participate in this. In an average semester abroad program, you would simply take classes from anotehr institution and enjoy your new surroundings, etc. Instead, with the Washington Semester you hold a 40 hour a week internship. This intership can be held anywhere you can get accepted to, whether its an NGO, a lobbying group, a congressman, or a media organization. In addition, you take a seminar course at night with CMC professors. The courses change each year, as they are based on current events. Furthermore, you're not living in dorms. You are supposed to rent your own appartment or house with other people in the program. I have never heard of a program that even comes close to this.</p>
<p>One of the most unique and amazing programs at CMC is the Athenaeum. We have really famous speakers at least 4 times a week. The speakers this semester include Robert Fitzgerald, a big time environmental lawyer, and Ehud Barak, a former prime minister of Israel. This are part of the meal plan and include a really good, fancy meal (everyone dresses up) and then a speaker including a Q&A session. We also often have class dinners at the Athenaeum and there is tea in the afternoon on weekdays, which includes tea, coffee, juice, cookies, and really good rice krispie treats.
We also have 11 research institutes where we work with professors to do research. One of our most famous institutes is the Rose Institute, which does research on state and local government. There are institutes in nearly every field- economics, international relations, government, psychology, science, math, just to name a few. Students can begin to do research at these institutes working closely with professors even in their freshmen year.
Both of these programs are very unique to CMC. While students at the other colleges in the consortium can get involved in them, priority is given to CMC students.</p>
<p>The #1 most unique aspect of ANY Claremont school is the OTHER Claremont schools. Period.</p>
<p>If you want to know what's special about CMC, you might also want to ask what's special about Scripps, Pomona, Mudd, Pitzer, and CGU (we generally have much less interaction with KGI). For <em>almost</em> every program, you can find a way of somehow getting involved, regardless of the campus. So while the Ath, research institutes, etc. are a good start to a list, the facts that you'll have access to 7 dining halls (and 7 or so non-dining hall places to order food), a 2,000,000+ volume library system, 5x the social events, 2,500+ courses per year, top-notch departments across the disciplines, major speakers/performers (Michael Moore, Margaret Cho, Mary Matalin, Erin Brokovich, Maroon 5, The Ataris, Ben Harper...), AND only about 1,200 students in your actual school...</p>
<p>All pretty notable!</p>