One concern or question that I get pretty often when interacting with prospective students is questioning if the Claremont Colleges are as social cohesive as admissions officers and student ambassadors say they are, so I thought I’d type out a little explanation of what it’s like to be in 5C spaces as a Scripps student.
Through cross-registration (explanation here), 5C students can take classes at the schools other than their home campus. Each school has their own rules and limitations about that so be sure to check each school’s individual policy if you’re looking at/applying to other 5Cs. Scripps is fairly lenient on their cross-registration policy so Scripps students can really make our class schedules our own. We can major, minor, or take classes at the other schools and definitely like to use that ability to our advantage.
A worry that I definitely had before starting my first year at Scripps was that it would be awkward to take classes or potentially major at another campus. I had an image in my head of walking into a classroom late and everyone immediately knowing I didn’t go to that school. The professor wouldn’t call on me, and everyone else would be close friends and not welcoming to me.
That worry quickly dissipated on my first day of classes when I walked into my first college class: Intro to Psychology. The course met at Scripps, but one of the ice breaker activities our professor led was for everyone to share what school they went to and their class year. I was impressed and amazed by the variety and diversity of class year and school; the first person I talked to in that class was the Harvey Mudd sophomore sitting next to me. It made me feel a lot better to know that even in my Scripps class, I was going to be around other 5C students and I’d have no idea what school they went to unless they told me. My professor called on non-Scripps students and answered their questions exactly as she would for me.
I had my first non-Scripps class the next day for Basic Acting at Pomona and while I was still nervous to walk around a campus I was less familiar with, I felt comfortable getting to know my classmates and professors knowing that they were eager to get to know me as well. That class was a majority Pomona students but I was never treated differently because I went to Scripps. My professor for that class didn’t even know I went to Scripps until my junior year. I made some of my closest friends in the theater department in that class and it was the reason I decided to major in Theater.
The only time when your home campus really factors into your class dynamic is the commute from your dorm to your class and vice versa. You have to leave a few minutes earlier to get to an off-campus class or roll out of bed immediately into a classroom if you’re on your home campus. When you’re leaving a class, you might walk back with people from your school if you’re going back to your dorms. In the spring semester of my first year, I took a night seminar class at Pomona (very rare and don’t super recommend) and I would walk to and from class with two of my classmates who also went to Scripps. We’d start discussing the books we were reading in class or catch up on our days and it made the three of us closer friends.
Overall, it’s a lot easier to be a 5C student than one might think. While each school seems like a completely separate entity, especially during the application process, we really are a cohesive unit on a day-to-day basis. It’s a great privilege to be able to technically attend five amazing colleges and study from a wide array of professors in an almost infinite amount of classes with relative ease.