When you ask most high school kids talk about the top colleges they want to attend in California, names like Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley usually get mentioned. However, California houses some of the best small liberal arts colleges in the country in the consortium of the Claremont Colleges. Each of the colleges is well known for their own unique properties, and provides valuable, small-scale individual learning for students who like the smaller colleges.
The two biggest colleges, Claremont McKenna and Pomona, are the two with the greatest academic reputations for liberal arts, and only hold a student body of just over a thousand each. Harvey Mudd, a smaller school with around 750 people, is one of premier Math and Science Liberal Arts Colleges on the west coast. Pitzer is the 4th of the colleges, proclaiming a “liberal arts education emphasizing social justice, intercultural understanding and environmental sensitivity” (http://www.pitzer.edu/about/index.asp). Pitzer has a student body around 1000, and stresses the value in interactions in a smaller classroom environment. Finally, Scripps, the fifth and final undergraduate Claremont college, is an all women’s institution that stresses the individual growth and development of personal character. Again with a student body of around 950, Scripps completes the mission of the Claremont Colleges to provide more attention to a smaller student base.
Together the consortium is home to just over 5000 undergrads. All five campuses are adjacent to one another, which provides a unique sense of community in a bright academic campus seen nowhere else in the country.
For more information about all of the Claremont Colleges, see their website at http://www.cuc.claremont.edu/
