Charlotte Korer ’27
Copy Editor
For many, the major selling point of attending the Claremont Colleges is the five-for-one school deal. You can take classes at other schools, eat at one of the seven dining halls, and have more friends than you could ever imagine having at just a singular liberal arts school. Additionally, if the school you attend does not offer the major you want, you can just take it at another one of the 5Cs. Or can you?
Firstly, you didn’t get into Pomona? You now have two options. The first option is to attend any other 5C and never take a Pomona class just to spite them. Option two (the more embarrassing one) is to eat, sleep, and breathe Pomona. Only eat at Frary, have Pomona friends, maybe even pick a major not offered by Scripps just to major at your dream school.
Now, a preface to my spiel. Yes, I was rejected from Pomona. No, it did not crush my spirit in any capacity (really, it didn’t, I promise). No, I did not go to Scripps planning on majoring at Pomona. So please keep that in mind.
I am a sophomore at Scripps majoring in English (at Scripps) and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) through Pomona. As a young, naive freshman, I started Scripps thinking I would major in Politics. I took some politics classes (all boring, sorry not sorry) and decided I needed a little guidance from the Scripps politics department.
I am a planner. I have had my four-year plan in my beloved Google Doc since my first semester of freshman year. However, when I went to the politics department for guidance, they told me that everything I thought I knew was wrong and that I was an idiot for ever assuming I could figure out what I was doing on my own (roughly paraphrased for dramatic effect).
Safe to say, I was pissed and worried that I had wasted my time. The calling card of 90k-per-year tuition is one-on-one advising from a professor who cares about you and your academic career. And the Politics department was far from it.
After my incredibly disheartening talks with the Politics faculty, I considered majoring at another campus. I was slightly bored by the politics classes, but maybe another school would do the trick. That is when I came across the PPE major at Pomona.
Now, please don’t take this to mean that majoring through Pomona was my saving grace and I found the academic mentor I so desperately sought for. That would be incorrect. What I found at Pomona was an advisor who couldn’t care less about me but was incredibly loyal to the PPE department. And with that came a beautiful academic relationship.
I am not saying this works for everyone. If you are not a planner or able to self-advocate, I would advise you to stay close to home with your Scripps advisor. They certainly know the law of the land better than any professor from any other campus, including what you need to do to graduate.
But, for those discontented few out there who are not afraid to speak up for themselves and face a little pushback, majoring off campus might be for you. While I do not have any life-changing advice that will instantly make the experience easier, I can share my own trials and tribulations.
If you are double-majoring like I am, your Scripps advisor will know nothing about majoring through another 5C. Not to worry, you are proactive and self-sufficient. Start by emailing the head of the department that you would like to major in. If you are hoping some classes you took when you dreamt of majoring at Scripps will transfer, make sure you include those and the requirements you hope they will fulfill. Keep your email as straightforward as possible while also stating your case. Please don’t beg, I’ll be embarrassed for you.
I recommend setting up a meeting just so your new advisor can know your face. Flatter them by laughing at their awkward jokes and saying you just couldn’t imagine majoring in a better department. If they seem relatively bashful, ask them to be your advisor. If you are majoring off campus you need someone who is flexible and susceptible to a little pushing.
Once you have met in person, you probably won’t ever have to do that again. Unless you don’t know how to use Box (like me) and you need your major declaration form signed. From now on, email your advisor so that, one, you don’t have to make the trek down to Pomona again and, two, you have paper trails of everything. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. If you want a class to transfer, make sure you have a screenshot of the email with the course code, name, school, and approval. An advisor can really screw you over if they don’t remember agreeing to something and change their mind.
By no means am I saying that I know best. I have really only been doing this off-campus major stuff for a semester and even then, I have never taken a class at Pomona. I will get around to it eventually. Even so, I wanted to offer the few things I have learned on this journey so that others are not so intimidated by the mysterious, bureaucratic process of off-campus majoring that they find themselves trapped in an ill-fitting department for another seven semesters.
