Pomona: yes. just yes.

If you are going to build a campus in Southern California you should do it like Pomona.

In 1887 a group of graduates from schools like Dartmouth, Yale, and Colby wanted to found a college in the New England style… but without the snow. They built Pomona.

They must have done something right because in 2013 Forbes.com ranked Pomona the #2 college in the country. Stanford got #1.
Pause for a minute. #2 over all. This means it beat Harvard, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., Duke, Cal, and pretty much everyone else.

You may not have heard of Pomona before. Don’t feel bad. A lot of people are just like you and just like you, most people don’t really know what a liberal arts college is. Pomona is a liberal arts college. When I was 17 I thought a liberal arts college was a place for democrats. I was not too bright; one of the reasons I didn’t go to Pomona.

A liberal arts college is normally small, which is why most of us haven’t heard of most of them. These schools focus a bit more on critical thinking ability than a specific marketable skill. If education was stretched out into a line, one end would be poetry and the other would be engineering; business perhaps. A large research University normally lets a student choose one point on this spectrum and focus on it. Upon graduation the student should be proficient, and employable, in whatever they studied ie chemistry, marketing, or even -gulp- English.

A liberal arts education aims to give a student experience and knowledge on as many points on that spectrum as possible. Then, upon graduation, the student should have the ability to look at problems, tasks, or anything, and draw on a wealth of knowledge to generate answers, ideas, or whatever is needed at that moment.

What this does not always generate is a job; or so many think. Many people are wrong.

Now lets not us get this wrong. A job on Wall St. is not and should not, be the sole purpose of college. That being said, about 20% of Pomona grads work in finance. But it is not a pipeline, that would be Wharton. Now if you want to go to grad school, or get a Fulbright (the class of 2007 alone won 24 Fulbright scholarships), or be a lawyer, or simply want to learn in a rigorous and supportive environment, consider the liberal arts route.

There are plenty of such schools around, but at places like Pomona it is kinda hard to get in. 23% of those admitted were their high school’s valedictorian. Most were in the nation’s top percentile on the SAT. They accept less than 1,000 students year to year. That is small.

Don’t worry about the money. When it comes to the top American schools, never worry about the money, worry about getting in. Pomona promises that if you get in, they will make sure you find the money. They also promise that money won’t come from a loan.
But ya gotta get in first.

Scripps: not a sister but it should be.

By 1926 all seven women’s colleges that made up the prestigious “seven sisters”, had been established, along with the ivy league schools with which they were affiliated.

Sometimes when affiliations are being established, the affiliaters miss out on things.

In this case the sisters missed out on Scripps.

The school was founded as an all girls school joining the newly formed Claremont University Consortium. The consortium at that time consisted of Pomona College, the Claremont Graduate University, and then Scripps.

They weren’t trying to be the sisters, or even the ivies, they were modelling themselves after Oxford.

This modelling was referring to the academics of course, as the architecture is much more Mexico than England. When you go there today it is much more California than it is New England.

Too often the little sister, the one who didn’t get picked to join the sorority, the one who wasn’t first, is thought to be a little less. In this case that would be a mistake.

Scripps is the #24 best liberal arts college in the country and the third best all-women’s school. This means it outranks Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Mt. Holyoke.

And at Scripps, it never snows.

Claremont McKenna College

If you are a college without a long storied history, if you don’t have churchlike stone buildings, this is what you build instead:

Claremont McKenna was founded in 1946, about an hour East of Los Angeles, as a men’s college. Back then there were a lot of men coming back from a war with tuition dollars to spend. In 1976 they went coed.

It is a good school. US News & World Report ranked it the #9 liberal arts college in all America.

But theres a little twist.

In 2012 one of the deans admitted to lying to US News & World Report about applicant’s SAT scores. They lied to get a better ranking. It is a shame really. They acadmeics are still top notch.
They have a new president now.
Not only do they have a new president but they have what is called “need blind admissions.” That means they have no idea how much money an applicant’s family has. This becomes significant once you consider they also have no loans, needs met guarantee.
This means if you get in, which is still very hard to do, and you happen to be broke, they cover your tution bill.
No seriously they do.

But you have to get in first.