<p>Woah! Please read my description again. I said the only reason, academically, to prefer Scripps over Pitzer is if you wanted to do those programs. Because joint registration is so easy, it isn't like you're picking and choosing academic programs. You're right that the joint-science program is shared, well, JOINTLY, by CMC, Scripps and Pitzer. Because it's shared jointly, you don't need to go to scripps to use it. So you shouldn't worry about academics when you consider going to Scripps or Pitzer. </p>
<p>I don't get your point about school rankings. Since I go to 13th-ranked CMC, by your logic, that makes me 13 degrees smarter than your 26th-ranked brain. That's a silly way of thinking, isn't it? Different people go to different schools for different reasons. While Scripps students tend to be good at some things, they are also not as good at others. IE, this year, a Pitzer and CMC team took 8th out of 400 teams at the national debate championships. A Pomona/CMC team joined them last year as well. Next year, students from Pitzer will be attending tournaments across the united states as well as Oxford, Cambridge, South Korea and probably Singapore. There are currently two active scripps debaters. </p>
<p>Pitzer also excels in another objective standard of academic merit-Watson and Fullbright scholarships, federally-funded grants for doing international research and education post-graduation. Pitzer has done better than every claremont school other than 150-year old Pomona in producing students who are awarded these extremely competitive scholarships, even my dear CMC.</p>
<p>Your point with rankings seems to come from the US News and World Reports, rankings. They have NOTHING TO DO WITH ACADEMICS. This is ranked on 7 metrics, all of them wrong for different reasons.
1: 25% of the Rank is Peer assessment: what other school administrations think of your school. This, especially in the ivies, leads certain schools into reciprocal ranking relationships that have a tenuous connection to reality. And relying so heavily on what other schools <em>think</em> of your school, given that they don't run it or ever set foot on campus, is dubious to begin with.</p>
<p>2: 20%: Graduation & Retention Rank: How many students return from being freshman and go on to graduate. This is important, kind of, but people go or don't go to school for such a myriad of reasons it's really hard to reach any kind of generalization from it. It often is a case of someone thinking they'll like a certain kind of school, but not going to investigate it themselves. Or, sadly, it involves the death or illness of a parent or other loved one. Or people simply get homesick and trouble in school. In a general sense, it gives you an indication of how well students are looked after, but I think it's safe to say both Pitzer and Scripps does a good job of this.</p>
<p>3) Faculty Resources: %20 The issues about faculty access inherent here are kind of skewed because of cross-registration. CMC, for example, gives professorslarge teaching-expense accounts. the result is that they have a higher faculty resources ranking, but every year, people put in ridiculous requests for computer equipment from bloated budgets.</p>
<p>4) Selectivity: %15 This is a good measure, to a point. However, all it says is that a lot of people other than you want to go there, too. If the school's a good fit for you, and you should go there, then the number of other people who want to go there is really meaningless. Much like these arbitrary rankings themselves, it's simply a point of pride and vanity for those who do get into certain schools.</p>
<p>5) Financial Resources: 10% The endowment's important, yeah. However, Pitzer and CMC are underranked here compared to say, Pomona and Scripps because they were founded in the last fifty years. A lot of endowments come from the estates of deceased alum. Both Pitzer and CMC are morbidly awaiting the death of more of their successful alumni so they can expand their endowments.</p>
<p>6) Graduation rate performance: %5 rate of change in the abovementioned grad rate.</p>
<p>7) Alumni giving: %5 The % of alumni who donate. Given that students from the different schools go into different careers (cmc students tend to be investment-bankers, whereas pitzer students tend to do something that actually helps others.) with different payscales, this doesn't really reflect on the quality of the school.</p>
<p>The point isn't that Scripps students don't work hard or aren't smart; they do and they are. One of my friends at Scripps, Annie a history major/hardcore techie, is probably the hardest-working person on any of the campuses. The point is that you don't lose anything academically by going to Pitzer. Even if they don't require SATs, one of the most riduculous, easily-prepped for (if you have enough money.) and useless indicators of performance ever designed by modern man. What's surprising is that you feel you have to defend the intelligence of scripps by calling Pitzer stupid. That's really disappointing.</p>