Ishita Jayadev ’26
Copy Editor
As someone who’s known many people who have transferred from Scripps, whether it be friend, acquaintance, or just another class of 2026 person who changed their bio over the summer, I thought it would be interesting to interview some of the people in my class and ask why Scripps wasn’t the right school for them.
Over the course of a week, I interviewed four former class of 2026 Scripps students. Emilia Dang, Ishika Varma, Ellis O’Brien, and Ailin Zhang all answered questions and talked through their own experiences at this institution, thinking about how both the personal and the structural played a part in their decision to leave Scripps.
Tuition Prices
While all four people had very different experiences — Zhang and Dang both left after their first semester at Scripps while Varma left after her first year and O’Brien after three semesters — all of them cited concerns with Scripps tuition prices as one of the biggest underlying factors in their transfer.
Dang and Zhang were both on the pre-health track at Scripps and realized early on that with their less than positive first semester experience, and years of medical school debt down the line, private school tuition was a steep price to pay. Both transferred to their state schools, Dang to University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and Zhang to University of Washington.
Varma similarly transferred to her state school, Rutgers University. While she mentioned the merit scholarships Scripps had to offer, she also expressed annoyance about their financial support saying, “There’s just so much more that [Scripps] could be doing to support low-income students; but they can’t because they don’t have the money to do that.”
Dang spoke similarly about how she felt her access to scholarships increased greatly at UNLV saying, “When I transferred to UNLV, [the cost was] substantially lower ‘cause it’s in state,” Dang said. “And I also think that I applied to a lot of different scholarships that I felt like weren’t as easily accessible at Scripps.”
O’Brien, who is currently taking classes at Durham Technical Community College, also talked about their constant anxiety over finances.
“I think a really big thing for me was definitely the cost of the school,” they said. “A lot of the time, my mom was telling me, if this isn’t something that’s perfect, like you’re in love with it, you’re not enjoying your time here all the time, then it’s not worth it to spend all that money.”
They elaborated on their experience with financial aid as well as Scripps’ yearly tuition increases, saying, “Especially [my] second year, the costs got more expensive, and my parents separated that year. [The financial aid office] really didn’t give me much support, even though I had way less income that I could pull from and a lot less support from both my parents income-wise. So it was very difficult for me to think, like, is this worth it?”
Academic Culture
Scripps classes and academic culture were also a common topic of contention, with all four students expressing varying degrees of frustration with the classes they took as well as ones they were never able to.
Varma, who came in as an economics major but quickly realized she was interested in psychology, discussed her inability to take any psychology classes at Scripps due to the popularity of the major.
“I feel like the big problem is that because Scripps prides itself on having such small class sizes, they have to limit their classes obviously, but the demand is so big,” she explained.
“At Rutgers, every professor has multiple sections of every class.” she said. “Like if it’s not gonna be a 300-person lecture, then it’s gonna be like five sections of like 50 people. I don’t know, like it just would shock me that at Scripps, there’s no repeating classes. It’s like this is the only chance to take this class. And another thing that was difficult about Scripps and the 5Cs is that classes aren’t offered every semester.”
O’Brien had similar thoughts as someone who came in wanting to be a psychology and media studies double major, both of which are infamously popular majors at Scripps and the 5Cs.
“I feel like they should have accounted for that and made it easier to get into those courses, just by having more of them,” they said. “I think, honestly, I really wanted to come for the consortium, and it ended up being kind of not as good as I thought, because it’s just so many people competing for a very minimal amount of classes.”
Due to this competition, O’Brien elaborated on how registration was always a difficult and stressful time for them.
“I didn’t actually get into that many classes that I actually want to take; and then when I did, a lot of them didn’t really end up being everything that I wanted” they said.
This false perception was at least partly due to their consistent negative experiences with professors.
“I had a lot of just interesting experiences with a lot of the professors, like most of the ones that I had, [ended up] being a little bit creepy,” O’Brien said. “And it almost became like a thing at Scripps, where I just heard people talking about how it was super common for professors to talk about their lives, in too much detail. And that happened to me multiple times. And I was like, this is kind of weird.”
On the other hand, they talked about unsupportive experiences with professors, “I would have teachers that I needed help from or they could see me not doing as well in their class, and they would either say openly mean things to me, or almost convinced me that I should just give up on their class completely.”
O’Brien added, “I mean, some of them did. They had some good advice, like [accessing] accommodations and stuff like that, which did really help me. But the way that they told me that I should do that was kind of a little mean-spirited.”
Varma also expressed how incoming first-years could be frustrated by not finding any of the classes on the course catalog on the Scripps website actually available to take.
Looking on the website she would think, “Oh my God, this sounds so cool. And it’s like, oh, that actually hasn’t been offered since like Spring 2015. Like what’s the point? That’s like, I think so disheartening too for prospective students and people that are maybe choosing which college to go to, just based on that major, I think that’s really unfortunate as well.”
Small, niche classes also seemed to be an area of frustration when trying to transfer credits. Zhang mentioned that a combination of summer classes and her AP credits were able to help her make up some of the credit gaps that transferring caused. O’Brien expressed that a lot of their Scripps classes not transferring properly was part of the reason they were at a community college right now instead of at another four-year university.
Core 1
Both Zhang and Dang, as second-semester transfers, had specific qualms to share about Core 1.
Zhang said that as an incoming first-year, she thought Core 1 would be more of an open-ended class, allowing students to discuss their daily lives, politics, and other real-world issues. “I thought it’d be more in the students’ control compared to, like, professors controlling everything. I thought it would be easier to discuss issues within the class,” she said.
As she was taking it, she found that the enjoyment of the class was largely dependent on the professor you had, as each professor clearly had their own specialization. Zhang continued, “I didn’t feel it was easy to express myself in that class, and I felt like the theme [Crossroads] we had was not that interesting.”
Dang talked about similar misconceptions as she felt that Core 1 ended up being more of a writing class rather than an avenue to explore different subjects saying, “It wasn’t as interdisciplinary as it could have been.”
She continued, “I’m a big advocate for exploring things and I think Core 1 was trying to do that. It didn’t accomplish it or it didn’t execute it the way it wanted to.”
Dang also recalled discussions in her class being very surface-level.
“There’s a difference between actually having engaging conversation [instead of] oh, I’m saying something and everyone’s just kind of like, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I think it wasn’t as productive as I wanted it to be.”
She thought this could at least partly be attributed to the class environment.
Dang said, “I felt like Scripps had this culture of, not necessarily cancel culture, but like no one could push against certain narratives or a certain way of thinking. And I think when you’re at this stagnant route where everyone just agrees with everyone, you don’t really gain anything from it. And as a gender and sexuality studies major, learning about something is always about critically thinking.”
Dang expanded on this, saying she felt tokenized as an Asian American woman in her Core 1 class especially when she shared about her lived experience in a majority-white classroom.
She said, “I think that at Scripps we had a very liberal way of thinking. But it was very surrounded by a white feminist type of ideology. And it was hard to kind of push back on that. I think it’s even better when we have the freedom to push against narratives and add on to things. And I think that’s what Scripps had lacked as a culture, just as a student body.”
Dang also felt that Core 1 wasn’t as relevant to her as a first-year.
She said, “At UNLV I was required to take a first-year seminar, which I guess is kind of similar to Core, but not really, because first-year seminar is very life-based. Like, it’s [about] career readiness and things like that. Whereas CORE was more like dissecting big picture issues, which I don’t think is necessarily bad, I just didn’t find it as helpful in the moment, like present time.”
Scripps Culture
In the vein of tokenization, Varma, Dang, and Zhang all had critiques of Scripps culture to share as people of color who attended a predominantly white institution.
Varma and Dang both came from underrepresented backgrounds and felt that navigating a PWI was extremely difficult.
“When I was at Scripps, I had a really hard time fitting into certain groups… I think maybe that caught me off guard because I’ve always been used to my more diverse group and I think that’s a privilege in and of itself for sure,” Dang said.
Even though Zhang went to a predominantly white high school, she had similar difficulties adjusting to Scripps.
“I thought, it’d be easier to fit in, because I’d always heard that college is the time you meet your lifelong friends and stuff like that,” Zhang said. “But I just didn’t feel that way. I felt really lonely and isolated.”
She continued, “Because [of my high school], I was used to it, but I didn’t want to [get used to it] in college, like I want to go somewhere and see more diversity and people that have similar backgrounds or share the same culture and stuff. And I guess I didn’t find that as Scripps.”
Varma also spoke more broadly about how she felt about Scripps culture, beyond it being a PWI.
“I think the mindset of people at Scripps [is different]. Like most people are pretty wealthy and maybe not like using their degree as a way to gain class mobility or like social mobility. Whereas at Rutgers, you see a lot more people from diverse backgrounds that are like first generation or low income and really want to leverage their education,” she said. “[People] wanting to find real-world experiences on top of just studying in the classroom and internships or like finding ways to get the most out of their college experience.”
Varma also spoke about how cliquey Scripps could feel.
“Once you find your friend group, you stick to them and people are really hesitant to branch out and meet other people and form different relationships with them just ‘cause you get really comfortable. And I think at a small school it’s a lot more amplified,” she said.
Dang felt like it was hard to find opportunities to hang out with people outside class. “I felt like there was nothing really to do outside of academics. And maybe that’s why I had a hard time connecting with people.”
She also mentioned that she developed an eating disorder during her time at Scripps which also made it difficult to hang out with people. “I think going out and eating was really hard for me and I wasn’t able to do it with people.”
On the other hand, she said that being in Vegas and having more tangible things to do with friends really helped her after she transferred.
O’Brien emphasized that most of their issues were to do with their academic experience rather than the students or culture at Scripps.
They said, “It was almost like a revelation I had one day where I was just feeling very, very depressed, and I didn’t really know why, and I kept thinking wow, it’s a lot of things to do with Scripps and just having these weird classes that I didn’t really enjoy, and having teachers that were just like, I don’t know. I came in really wanting to learn, and they kind of made me not motivated to learn.”
While they suggested that their experience may have been better had they gotten accommodations earlier, they also said, “I knew that they could give you accommodations, but I didn’t know for what specifically you could get accommodations. Or what kind of paperwork you needed, stuff like that. So I feel like I really didn’t know how to even apply for them until, like, I went out of my way and did my own research.”
Mental Health Support
O’Brien and Dang also talked about their experiences trying to get mental health support at Scripps.
Dang said that her anxiety and depression were at an all-time high during her semester here and that while resources for mental health existed, they were hard to access.
She said, “I was trying to make an appointment and it was like, oh, we have availability like a month from now. Or two months from now. And I need consistency, right? And so that sporadic schedule was pretty difficult for me.”
O’Brien had a similarly hard time setting up an appointment. “It was hard to get an appointment and get everything started, because you needed to have, like, multiple meetings,” they said.
O’Brien’s circumstances were also slightly different as Monsour Counseling and Psychological Services referred them to off-campus therapy.
“They [Monsour] were really helpful with trying to get me an outside therapist,” O’Brien said. “But I also was a little bit saddened that they couldn’t do the therapy sessions there, I guess. But I also understand because I needed more than what they could offer.”
Due to their insurance at the time not taking many therapists, and their lack of access to transportation as they didn’t have a car their first year, it was a long time before O’Brien was able to find a therapist they could see.
O’Brien expanded on how they felt through this tumultuous process. “I felt like they were like, we can’t help you here, because you’re too mentally ill,” O’Brien said. “And at the time, I was already feeling like I was drowning at Scripps, and like I just didn’t know what I was doing. And so it was kind of like a punch in the gut.”
Both students expressed how they wished mental health support was more widely accessible and known about for incoming first years.
Despite these issues, the students still have fond memories of their time at Scripps.
Varma spoke specifically about how being at Scripps changed the way she thought about her own queer identity. “I think about this a lot. Like if I didn’t go to Scripps, I would have no idea about the like queer aspect of my existence,” she said. “I don’t even know who I would be as a person if I didn’t go to Scripps. So like, even though I left, there were so many transformative things that I learned.”
O’Brien shared the excitement they had about Scripps before actually attending. “I was, like, literally, the target demographic [as a white queer person],” they said. “I was so stoked, it was my top pick school and so I think it’s so funny that I transferred because I was such a big Scripps fan.”
Dang said something similar. “Going into Scripps, I had a lot of enthusiasm,” Dang said. “Like being a part of an all women’s college, being a feminist gender studies major, of course that seems on paper like the most perfect experience ever. And everyone was super excited for me here in Vegas and I was really excited.”
She continued, “No one wants to transfer out going into college. Right? Because it’s like if you choose the school, you wanna be at the school.”
Dang emphasized how taking a leave of absence, an option her professors presented to her at first, should be more widely known.
“I think if you’re having a rough semester or a rough year or you need to take a leave of absence for whatever reason, then students should be aware of that, so that they can take a break and come back better than ever,” she said. “That should be common knowledge, not necessarily having to leave and start over somewhere new, but just kind of taking a little break.”
Varma also said tha`t she wished people were more open about the transfer process as it was never something that was on her radar as a legitimate option.
“I had never met anybody who’d transferred, ever,” she said. “So like, I didn’t even process that as a choice. People don’t talk about how transferring is, like, a very normal thing that people do.”
At the end of it all, Dang’s biggest takeaway was that she wanted students to find the support they needed for whatever situation they were in.
“I just hope that students who kind of experience the same things I did, are able to find those resources and find areas they’re more comfortable being in.”
Illustration Courtesy: Zoë Cooper ’26
