Pitzer College Regular Decision - Class of 2020

starkly
Sun, 03 Apr 2016 19:06:46 +0000

@parentgeorgia… Though its US News ranking is higher than Oberlin’s, I thought the kids at Pitzer seemed very intelligent. The girl I was staying with said that Pitzer wasn’t looked down upon amongst the other schools and that almost everyone seemed to be on the same page intellectually - differences were based more on major and interests than aptitude.

If Pitzer wasn’t a part of the consortium, I don’t think I’d be considering it. It would seem too small, and lack diversity of thought. But being a part of the consortium means that Pitzer doesn’t have to stand on its own. The kind of student who is attracted to CMC or Harvey Mudd is very different from the average Pitzer applicant, and that means that students have access to a student body that is diverse in every way while still having a “home” of likeminded peers to return to. Personally, I find Oberlin to be much less diverse - it attracts a certain kind of student, and that is who you are surrounded with for four years. That’s not necessarily a bad thing to me, because by and large I have a lot more in common with the the artistic, intellectual, socially conscious kids who want to go to Oberlin than the preppy, beer pong playing government majors at CMC. But in terms of diversity, Pitzer wins.

At this level, selectivity is somewhat irrelevant. These schools are all self selecting with acceptance rates of less than 30% - to get in, you have to be intelligent and driven. There’s no such thing as slackers here. I don’t think there’s a significant difference in academic merit between the students at any of these schools, regardless of their SAT scores.