We toured Scripps this morning, which is part of the Claremont consortium of several colleges, including Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Claremont-McKenna and Pitzer. Scripps is a women’s college, but students can take classes at any of the consortium colleges, so there may be men in the Scripps classes, and the women can be in any of the co-ed classes at the other colleges. You can even major at one of the other colleges, interestingly.
I really liked it, and I think it might be a good place for Kavi. It reminds me quite a bit of my all-girls’ high school, Miss Porter’s — there’s a huge focus on leadership programs for women, and I think if she went there, she’d get extra guidance in applying for that kind of thing, for women-focused scholarships and grants, etc.
Research shows that girls tend to do better academically at all-girl schools — they get called on more by teachers (even egalitarian-committed teachers tend to call on the boys more, sadly), they’re more likely to take on leadership roles and speak up in meetings after having that kind of academic experience. Kavi is a little soft-spoken and I think this might be really good for her.
She’s a little hesitant because it’s small — about 1000 students, but if you include the whole consortium, it’s more like 6000. I think her perspective is a little skewed from having gone to a giant high school — OPRF is 3400 students, and she’s having a hard time envisioning being at a college that’s smaller than her high school. But it’d feel really different — OPRF is all one giant building, rather than a spread out campus (or several campuses, in this case), for one.
Well, we’ll see. I think she’ll be applying to this one, and the chips will fall where they will. They had a pond with koi fish and turtles, and she was entranced. I told Kavi she wasn’t supposed to choose her college based on falling in love with the turtle pond, but I’m not sure she believed me…
We took a little time to rest in the room rather than trying to do sightseeing in between — both of us are tired. Lots of driving today (probably at least 4 hours all told), as we’re going on to a college tour at Chapman, and then driving to Venice Beach. I do not love driving, but at least it means she’ll get a little bit of an authentic LA experience.
Interestingly, freshmen at Scripps aren’t allowed to have cars (new rule going forward), so it’s going to be all public transit for her the first year. Luckily, she’s used to that, and is not daunted by taking buses and trains. One of the other parents on the tour was quite indignant that her daughter wouldn’t be allowed to have a car and easily pop back home (to LA) on the weekends. Her daughter might be relieved, though. 🙂
