<p>I am really interested in Liberal arts colleges that are part of a consortium because that doesn’t limit the variety of courses that I can take in college just because I’m enrolled into a smaller school. </p>
<p>The only liberal arts school that is a part of a consortium that I know is Amherst, Hampshire and Smith (along with UMASS and some other uni…). If you know more, can you help by adding them on and writing which unis are in their consortium?</p>
<p>Thanks heaps!</p>
<p>Haverford, Penn, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr have a consortium.<br>
I heard that classes can be shared at Dickinson, Gettysburg and Franklin & Marshall.</p>
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<p>gasp. how could you forget Mount Holyoke??!!!1!1</p>
<p>Heh, just kidding :P</p>
<p>Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Scripps, and Harvey Mudd are in the Claremont Colleges consortium.</p>
<p>There are the Claremont Colleges in Claremont california.</p>
<p>Pomona, Claremont McKenna, and Harvey Mudd are probably the most well-known of the five. With Pomona being a traditional liberal arts college, CMC has a strong emphasis on leadership, and Harvey Mudd is very science oriented.
There is also Pitzer, which has an emphasis on social sciences.
And Scripps which is the women’s college with an emphasis on the humanities.
There are also two gradute schools, whose names are escaping me right now.</p>
<p>It’s a very nice consortium, nice weather, not too far from beaches or skiing on mountains. I think the undergraduate student body of the entire consortium is around 5 or 6k. </p>
<p>There are plenty of threads on CC about these schools, I will post some links for you later tonight or tomorrow. Or you can simply search for them.</p>
<p>^^ The Keck Institute and CGU. Claremont Graduate University I believe.</p>
<p>^ [Welcome</a> to Claremont.EDU](<a href=“http://www.claremont.edu%5DWelcome”>http://www.claremont.edu)</p>
<p>IMO, The most significant distinction between Claremont and other consortia is that the Claremont colleges are all adjacent to one another (with the exception of KGI, which is a few blocks away)…they were literally created as a consortium. More than just possibilities, cross-registration, shared facilities, etc. are the norm. Makes the vibe pretty different, I imagine.</p>
<p>Columbia/Barnard isn’t quite what the OP’s describing, but it certainly belongs in the thread.</p>
<p>MIT/Wellesley/Northeastern/Olin/Tufts is another I’ve seen mentioned. Don’t know how well-utilized it is.</p>
<p>In the Twin Cities, we have the Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities (ACTC), which is comprised of Macalester, Hamline, U of St. Thomas, College of St. Catherine & Augsburg.</p>
<p>Pretty sure all the Boston-area schools have a consortium of sorts.</p>
<p>I don’t know if these count as “consortia” exactly but Wellesley-MIT and Barnard-Columbia have cross-registration relationships that allow students at the smaller LAC to take classes at the larger research university and vice versa.</p>
<p>claremont schools ftw</p>
<p>You can cross-register at St. Olaf College and Carleton College (Minnesota). </p>
<p>I thought Villanova was part of the Upenn/BrynMawr/Swarthmore consortium ? Perhaps not.</p>
<p>nope, it’s a quaker school consortium. :)</p>
<p>Really it’s just Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swat. I think you can only take classes at Penn if they aren’t offered at the other schools.</p>
<p>The information on the Haverford website does not make that distinction:
[Haverford</a> College: Academic Partnerships](<a href=“http://www.haverford.edu/academics/partnerships.php]Haverford”>http://www.haverford.edu/academics/partnerships.php)</p>
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<p>[Swarthmore</a> Registrar](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/registrar/page.phtml?sidebar=tricopenninfo&content=tricopennreg]Swarthmore”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/registrar/page.phtml?sidebar=tricopenninfo&content=tricopennreg)</p>
<p>Swarthmore students take courses at Penn every semester. Most Swatties don’t, but it’s certainly common for some to do so. The registration process is slightly more involved than registering at Haverford or Bryn Mawr – Penn is like the government, lots of red tape. Swarthmore will even pay the train fare to and from Penn (it’s about 20 minutes, direct route on the same line between stations on both campuses. </p>
<p>Now, as a practical matter, Swarthmore students don’t usually take courses at Penn unless it’s something in a fairly arcane niche. It is true that you can’t get approval to take a course at Penn if the exact same course is taught at Swarthmore. But, nobody in their right mind would want to do that, unless they are just looking for an easier version of the course. Many Swarthmore students find the Penn courses to be below the standards they are accustomed to.</p>
<p>If the Penn students were smart, they would sign up for courses at Swarthmore. But, I guess all the frat stuff keeps them pretty busy.</p>
<p>Swarthmore gets more Haverford and Bryn Mawr students coming in than Swarthmore has going to those two schools, which makes sense. Swarthmore has the broadest course offerings. The real back and forth action is between Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Both colleges have decided to simply not have certain departments and send their students to the other school for those courses…kind of in the same way that Harvey Mudd doesn’t have any arts or languages and Pitzer/CMC/Scripps rely on a skeleton shared “joint science” department for their science offerings.</p>