After three years experience at Scripps...

CAorBust
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 21:18:53 +0000

My daughter is a rising senior at Scripps. She is very happy with her choice and just finished a fantastic semester abroad (Scripps uses IES Abroad for its foreign study programs) As a parent, wanted to give incoming students and upcoming applicants some feedback:
(1) Scripps flaunts its “affordability” ranking, and while it may give out a lot of financial aid to some students, if you are middle income or better, you will receive nothing in the way of financial aid and the “rack rate” is EXPENSIVE. Not made any better by charging regular Scripps tuition for semesters abroad which is $12k PER SEMESTER more than the IES charge. Kind of a lot for overhead. We had saved a substantial amount toward college but at $60k per year it’s gone. Plus, if you don’t get financial aid, you don’t get work/study, and there are few campus jobs for non work study students.
(2) Likewise the touted Scripps summer fellowships for internships or research seem to be reserved for needy students. So again a paradox, need paid student work since no aid, but much more difficult to find work if not receiving aid.
(3) The Core was a big selling point for me. However my daughter found the three semester core requirement very disappointing, including one professor (who has since received tenure) who was quite open about his low opinion of Scripps students’ intellectual abilities. I had hoped she would be inspired by Core in choosing her major but she was not.
(4) Cross registration for courses at other 5C campuses is impossible as a practical matter unless you have a major not offered by Scripps. My daughter has tried for four semester to enroll in a CMC econ class, ANY CMC econ class, without success.
(5) The feasibility of double majoring is lower than the official line would have you believe, and the English department actually attempted, and may have succeeded, in eliminating writing as a major or minor.
(6) With rising yield and enrollment, there is a housing crisis at Scripps. Those beautiful dorms and dorm rooms are only luck of the draw. My daughter had a double created from a smallish single room thanks to putting the beds on platforms. Somehow two girls managed to share a 30" wide closet. Last year (junior year) some students had to room at a Pomona dorm. Now in her senior year, my daughter considers herself fortunate to have gotten a single the same size and on the very same hallway as her freshman “double.” Forget about the beautiful suites and rooms with balconies.
Scripps: A beautiful school with wonderful, amazing, talented fellow students, but you should be aware of what you are really getting and paying.