Amherst vs Claremont McKenna (CMC) vs USC

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My parents are upper middle class so we don’t qualify for aid but they’ve been saving for college for decades. Cost of each is around 10k difference of each other which is negligible to my parents (except they’re really against USC because they view it as a school for rich spoiled kids that isn’t academically prestigious enough)

Domestic from PA.

Major: public policy/political science/psychology/sociology/philosophy (or some sort of combination degree like USC’s Philosophy Politics and Law or Amherst’s LJST) with a minor (or double major) in Asian American studies. 80% decided on Pre-law (and maybe MBA) so not worried about major, will take classes I’m most interested in and then decide. Thinking about going into public policy (think tank maybe or working for a nonprofit) or constitutional or corporate law or consulting,

Hoping to intern over the summers in D.C. for a senator, judges, AAPI congressional caucus, consulting firm, think tanks, and/or nonprofits etc.

Preferences:

  • warm and sunny (I tell people my ideal weather is 50-80 degrees year round and sunny and I want to be able to leave my puffer coats behind)

  • liberal and diverse state

  • football games and parties but that’s not the entire culture. So i guess work hard play hard. people who can do both. having maybe three football games the school shows up for and maybe 1-3 days a week people go out depending on academic stress

  • medium size. 1000 people per class would be ideal I think

  • undergrad focused

  • flat campus (this is such not a big deal but for example columbia, princeton, and duke have the best looking campuses imo)

  • good law placements, career center, etc.

  • diverse (at least 15% asian)

  • small class sizes (most under 20 ideally), faculty who are amazing teachers and mentors

  • convenient to an airport to travel home (sibling goes to school where the trip to the nearest airport is horrendous and takes a whole day and has strongly advised to not do the same)

  • equestrian (all three have but haven’t looked at barn distance or quality),

  • would like safe town/city to shop or study in cafes at

  • Do not want a super competitive atmosphere. Want ambition but friendly people who help each other out. People who compete with themselves and not others.

  • Want smart/ambitious people who also like to have fun but also love a good intellectual debate

  • Preferably grade inflation because law school

  • Amherst and CMC both well off (funding for students) and shielded from trump administration

  • Not really interested in doing deep research so I don’t mind a LAC

  • Scared both will feel so small but CMC interacts with consortium while Amherst doesn’t

  • visiting Amherst for their be a mammoth (they fully funded it for me) and CMC for inside CMC and CMC is me. Still trying to get my parents to let me visit USC while I’m in LA.

    Amherst:

  • applied because I heard amazing things about the profs and community from a family friend who went there, and because of their t14 law matriculation, open curriculum, and asian american studies dept (its rare from my research to have a full dept, usually its a minor)

pros?

  • students i’ve reached out to have been so helpful and the admitted students are all so nice
  • Close to brother at MIT (ish)
  • Don’t have to try out for clubs and riding wouldn’t cost anything
  • Open curriculum so no more math (I have too many holes in my knowledge and I’d rather take interesting classes but I’m aware I might have to take math for my majors)

things i’m worried about

  • Athlete divide is bad
  • Cold
  • Too small and doesn’t really benefit from consortium
  • Wish it was less rural
  • Food situation either going to be great or terrible (new dining hall)
  • from the looks of it the campus looks quite hilly which is not my vibe

Claremont McKenna:

  • Loved asian American psych class I sat in on

  • love how the consortium and the students in it interact

  • great career center

  • New facilities

  • Close to LA (1 hr drive isn’t bad especially because LA is unsafe and claremont is a nice town)

  • CMC in D.C.

things i’m worried about:

  • too pre-professoional?

  • Gen-eds?

USC: spring admit (I like the idea of the capitol campus because I want to do a D.C. semester anyways but I feel like a second thought to the admissions committee)

  • Warm, party, football - college experience I kinda wanted

  • campus felt like home when I visited a year ago

things i’m worried about:

  • unsafe area
  • USC’s financial issues
  • it actually having a large proportion of rich spoiled kids
  • Parents won’t pay for it

any and all perspectives would be appreciated!! sorry I know it was a long post but I’m very stressed about this.

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Seems to me that the answer here is CMC.

USC is spring-admit and your parents don’t feel good about paying for it. Plus, you don’t feel strongly about a research university vs. an LAC. So if you want SoCal, I think CMC wins over USC. I hear you saying that you like the USC vibe, but I rather think you’re downplaying the “parents won’t pay for it” bullet-point, plus spring-admit is a big downside IMO.

You’re concerned about going somewhere too small. As you note, CMC is far more seamlessly integrated into its consortium than Amherst is. Attending the 5C’s is in many ways like attending a mid-sized, undergrad-focused university with around 7K undergrads.

The great Asian-American psych class you attended is only the tip of that iceberg. There are fantastic Asian connections at CMC, both in terms of coursework and in terms of programs that interact with Asia, such as EnviroLab Asia.

Your only worries about CMC are gen-eds and whether it’s too pre-professional. Your interests are broad enough that you’re going to be able to meet your gen-ed requirements by taking mostly classes you would have wanted to take anyway. And perhaps the average CMC student will lean a little more “pre-professional” than you, but then again, there will be plenty of consortium students who are less preprofessional than you. (Also, you like USC, and the vibe there can be pretty pre-professional too.) There’s balance there, and you can find your tribe.

Amherst is a terrific school but given your criteria, I don’t see the argument for it over CMC.

Edited to add: You mention that you haven’t looked into the equestrian logistics yet - not sure why, as Googling this would take no more effort than posting here has taken… but the 5C’s equestrian team’s training site seems to be in Covina, 11 miles (20 minutes) from the 5C’s. USC’s training site is about twice as far from campus.

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Congratulations on these acceptances!

It seems that eliminates USC, so it’s between CMC and Amherst?

FWIW, based on the most recent CDSs, CMC has a little higher proportion of students without financial need as compared to USC ( 61.2% vs 59.4%), but there will be far more full pay students at USC simply due to size of the undergrad population (21K USC, 1.3K CMC (not counting the rest of the consortium.)

So, CMC vs. Amherst…seems CMC matches up much better with your preferences. I agree with aquapt that your CMC negatives aren’t that concerning, especially relative to the strength of the pros you listed. Good luck.

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Not a whole lot to disagree with here. So, I’m thinkin:

  1. USC is out; no sense going against your parents’ wishes.
  2. Amherst is essentially a hill with most of its new dorms built below the main campus.
  3. As noted, CMC is part of a much larger, practically university-level, community of close to 6,000 people. Not the typical small New England college experience, but not without its own attractions (like 5 different cafeterias to choose from!)
  4. Pretty sure Amherst has much, much more exciting football rivalries within NESCAC - it’s one of the New England “Little Three” colleges along with Williams and Wesleyan. I mean, do the Claremont Colleges even bother with homecomings?
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Nothing to add other than agreeing that CMC seems the best fit given the criteria and parents are a no on USC. Seems it will give OP most of what they want.

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The 5C’s have a fun rivalry between their two teams: The Greatest College Football Rivalry and Tradition You've Never Heard About - Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges

There are actually more than 5 cafeterias to choose from; Pomona has two, plus there are some smaller eateries in addition to the large dining halls. There’s an app (built by a Harvey Mudd student, unsurprisingly) that tracks the menus across the consortium, so that students need only check their phones to decide where to eat. (Cross-consortium dining was shut down by the pandemic but I believe it has returned to normal by now.) The food is very good, too!

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If your parents literally won’t pay for it then you cannot go. If it were me, I would not choose USC anyway. To me the spring admit thing seems odd.

Between Amherst College versus CMC you are comparing two very, very good smallish colleges. You can get an excellent education at either of them. You can do very well in life with a degree from either of them. The average drunk in a bar in middle America might or might not have heard of either of them, but the average drunk in a bar in Harvard Square quite likely would be impressed by either of them, as would graduate admissions and law school admissions pretty much anywhere.

If you are planning on law school, then I hope that your parents are also prepared to help you significantly with the cost of law school. 7 years of university are expensive.

Most of the lawyers that I know have a bachelor’s degree in engineering or math or computer science. However, most of the lawyers I know are patent lawyers. For other types of law, yes as far as I know you can major in almost anything.

Amherst College misses out on this point. I think that its location is beautiful, but I would not call it warm and sunny, at least during most of the school year. A puffy coat will be needed at some point. I would not call it flat either.

I think that you will do well at either Amherst or CMC.

I have not looked at recent crime statistics. At least when I have been in Amherst and Northampton I have felt very safe. To me it seems like the sort of town where I might lock the door on my house or car, but I might not and doubt that I would run into trouble.

You are going to find some competitive people at any highly ranked college or university. You are going to find some cooperative people at any highly ranked college or university. You will find lots and lots of very smart people at either of these schools.

Amherst is in a “five college consortium”. You can take courses at the other four schools in this consortium. Just as one example, you could take classes at U.Mass Amherst. Some might poo poo it as a large public school, but U.Mass is for example very good for computer science. It is also very good for math but I am pretty sure that Amherst is also. I have worked with multiple U.Mass graduates who are just as good as the best graduates who I have worked with from MIT and Stanford (which is very, very good).

I think that you just need to go to Google maps and see what it says. I think that CMC is closer to LAX than Amherst is to Logan airport. LAX is not my favorite airport, but at least it will have nonstop flights to lots of places.

Between Amherst versus CMC I think that you are comparing excellent to excellent. CMC seems to win on the warm and sunny and flat criteria. Otherwise it is hard to see how you could go wrong either way as long as you show up on campus in September ready to work hard and keep ahead in all of your classwork.

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I see USC as prestigious and wonder why your parents don’t. You wrote that it felt like “home.” Any chance your parents could change?

Amherst is part of a consortium and UMass is in the same town. The free curriculum is a major plus.

CMC has the consortium and the weather you want.

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Both Amherst and CMC are excellent choices and have a lot of what you are looking for, but CMC wins on weather. If your parents won’t pay for USC, then it is out.

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What aspects made USC feel like home when you visited ? Look for those qualities among your other options since your parents won’t pay for USC.

CMC is small. Maybe 1,400 students ? Reputed to have a heavy alcohol & drugs fueled social scene. Great post-undergraduate results. Is Fall air pollution still an issue ?

Amherst College is located in a cold weather environment and the athlete/non-athlete divide is real. Best school among your options for placement in top law schools.

USC is not an option because it is not affordable as your parents won’t pay for your COA at USC.

Amherst College & CMC are both great schools with respect to career results, but both are small. How much of a concern is the smallness ?

Any other options ?

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That rules out USC.

Why did they let you apply, visit, etc.?

However, their “University of Spoiled Children” image of it may not be up to date, since USC has a higher Pell grant percentage and a lower full pay percentage than Amherst or CMC.

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USC has definitely changed its standing over recent decades and is now a place I would consider quite academically selective/desirable.

That said, if your parents can’t be persuaded, then I agree you can largely make CMC into the sort of experience you want anyway, thanks to the total assets of the consortium.

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So -

You seem to like USC, it’s an outstanding institution academically, and you got Spring, not Fall admit - so that should say something to your folks.

USC does attract primarily full pay. I’m not saying they’re spoiled but yes it’s a wealthy kids’s school. Of 3630 first year, 1400 got need aid. USC is rather large.

Amherst doesn’t hit your weather desire. Of 485 first years, 278 got aid - so still lots of wealthy, but less as a percentage. Obviously the school is much smaller but very large UMASS is nearby.

CMC is part of a consortium thus making it midsize. 130 of 337 first years got need aid or 38%, the same as USC. I don’t personally see it as superior to USC - but very different.

In the end, parents are paying.

So let’s talk about your law school and MBA desires.

First off, do you have funding for law school? You could potentially be out another $300K.

You have to plan for seven years - and I don’t believe these schools give you an advantage over - let’s say - your state flagship or any state flagship or most LACs.

Look at Harvard Law’s first year class:

Less than 600 kids from 163 schools - like Christopher Newport (a regional public in VA), Elmhurst College, Grand Valley State, Mississippi State, Towson, etc.

You need great grades, a great LSAT and more and more today - a job or program - as 84% of their students are one year out and 69% 2 years.

Georgetown - 672 kids in the first year class from 222 colleges.

Penn - over 200 schools represented in the law school - from College of Charleston to Portland State to SUNY Potsdam to U Tenn Chattanooga.

So - you have three wonderful choices - but your parents are paying and if they say no to USC, not much you can do. I think that’s unfair personally - and it’s an equal in choice.

Amherst is certainly reasonable as a choice but your desires align better with CMC. I’ve read on here (don’t know) - many say Amherst has a big athlete/non athlete divide. I suppose that’s something to look atin any small school.

The other concern is law school especially (and an MBA) - if you have no way to pay for law school, which could be $300K+ - you can’t borrow that - so you need to ensure you have a path to pay for all your schooling. If you don’t, then your undergrad choice is too expensive and you should revisit less expensive schools you got into, that could allow savings for future schooling. The where is not that important for undergrad - top law schools and MBA programs have lots of kids (as I just showed you) who attended “lesser” names.

Best of luck.

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Please use pm for off topic side bars with posters that are not the OP. TIA!

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Oops, hot mic.

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Amherst certainly doesn’t fit this one!

Sounds like CMC has more pros than Amherst.

After your visits, you will likely have a gut feeling which is the best for you. Both great choices.

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What is the deal- breaker?? If it’s the weather, then the decision is clear. Enjoy CMC!!

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Amherst’s riding team is much closer, but I find it miserable to ride in the cold. Another thing that draws me to Amherst is how I feel like they’ve “rolled out the red carpet” for me compared to the others: nicer acceptance package (which I know is a silly reason but I got waitlisted from a ton of my top choices which were ivies which have really nice acceptance boxes that I’ve dreamed of for years) and fully funding my three day visit (flights, staying with a student, etc.) and providing us a list of 50+ classes we can sit in on. Amherst is also known for their law placements.

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This is really helpful, thank you! My parents can comfortably pay for my law school because of my 529 plan and said they would do so if I went to a T14! Obviously I’d rather have the support w/ no strings attached but I’m very grateful for their support and I plan to pay them back later in life.

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