ilovecollege1

What is it like to go to Claremont with so few people? Is it hard to deal with or not because of the other schools (Pomona and such)?

Miru

I'm not from CMC, but I'm from Mudd which is nearby and even smaller, so I think I'm qualified to answer.

When I was trying to choose a college, this was a pretty big deal to me. My H.S. was twice the size of Mudd, and I had always imagined going to a university that was way bigger than that so I thought that going to a small school would really suck. But so far its mostly been the opposite. You'll actually know the people in your classes and your dorm since they will be small enough that people won't feel too overwhelmed by trying to meet everyone within those groups. There are no "freshman dorms" at CMC, which might seem like a bad thing at first, but in fact its pretty cool because you'll end up with awesome upperclassmen friends who can help you with your homework, drive you places, tell you where to go on a friday night, etc.

Basically the only huge downside to going to a small school is that everyone knows everyone elses business. You can't really hide whatever awkward thing happened at a party last weekend from the rest of the school, and you can't effectively avoid anyone that you break up with either.

So when things are going good its awesome to be at a small school, but when you screw up...not so much.

The other schools do definitely make it a lot more bearable. When you get bored of your school's food, you can go to another campus. If you make the effort to make friends on other campuses (generally through clubs and music and such), then you can escape with them, etc.

kaliyama

I went to CMC. No problems with it - it would have gotten a bit claustrophobic, except the 5Cs means that there's about ~5000 undergrads, not ~1000. That means there's about 1250 new ones every year. It's way better. You know people, you have a context, and if you want to meet new people, networking is easy. Everyone is a friend of a friend. Similarly, the alumni network for these schools actually means something because everyone is likely to have a shared friend if they attended school the same time you did, or a shared teacher or dorm or experience if they didn't.