Collegewise

Lewis and Clark College

Portland, OR

If you want to be more than just a number once you get to college, you might want to check out Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where you won’t even be reduced to a number when you apply.

Admissions officers at Lewis and Clark understand that numbers like test scores alone don’t always tell the full story of a student. Since 1990, Lewis and Clark’s Portfolio Path option has given applicants a truly personal evaluation. As a supplement to the standard application form, Portfolio Path applicants create a portfolio consisting of at least four samples of graded academic work, three academic letters of recommendation, and one piece of visual or performance art work. And for students applying via the Portfolio Path, submitting test scores is optional.

Scripps College

Claremont, CA

Sorry guys—it's women-only at Scripps College where 800 smart, artsy, confident women enjoy a rigorous liberal arts education with a strong sense of female community.

Scripps is the women's college of The Claremont Colleges, a cluster of five tiny schools on 317 acres in Claremont, CA that includes Claremont McKenna, Pomona, Harvey Mudd and Pitzer. Each school specializes in a particular area that compliments the others (Scripps is strongest in the humanities like languages and history and also has a strong psychology program). Students may take up to a third of their courses at any of the sister campuses. This allows students at any of the Claremont Colleges to combine the personalized attention of a tiny college with the academic and social opportunities of a large university. And yes, even the boys can take classes at Scripps.

Grinnell College

Grinnell, Iowa

Small liberal arts colleges like Grinnell are widely renowned for small classes, dedicated faculty, and academically rich environments where students enjoy learning.

But the nation‘s highest-scoring basketball team?

You‘d have a hard time finding a more entertaining basketball team to watch than the Grinnell Pioneers. They play a run-and-gun offense that shoots the ball within 12 seconds, takes threes every chance they get, and constantly substitutes entire squads of players like a hockey team.

The result? The Pioneers average over 110 points a game and, last February, were featured in the first nationally-televised regular season Division III game.

Wednesday, May 3rd

Greetings from Portland!  We started our day bright and early this morning with a 3-hour drive from Seattle to Portland, where our first stop was Reed College.

Reed has sprawling lawns, tall trees, old brick building, and a river running right through campus.  Since it’s reading week (the week right before finals), the students we saw usually looked like they were dashing from the library to a study session.

We started with a meeting with an admissions officer, Andrea, who was a recent Reed graduate.  She explained the highlights of the academic program, the most notable being the fact that they deemphasize their grades.  Students do not receive grades on their papers, and grades are not given to them at the end of the year.  While teachers officially record a grade for the student at the end of the year, most of the students seem to care more about the intellectual spirit of the class.  Andrea even said that she didn’t check her grades until after graduation!

After our meeting was over, we went on a student-led tour.  Our tour guide told us more about her classes, including the required Humanities 110 class that she took freshman year.  For this class, students go to lectures three times a week and then meet in small groups.  She said that students call their professors by their first name and many of them even bring their dogs to class.  The classrooms we saw were generally long oval tables that looked like they held about 15 people (and a canine or two).  Another academic requirement is the senior thesis.  When we went up to the library, she showed us the location of all of the theses ever written at Reed.  As we left the library, she told us that the library is the “social hub” of Reed.  At a place that’s full of quirky intellectualism, we could definitely see how that was true.

After lunch we headed down to Lewis and Clark, also in Portland.  One side of Lewis and Clark is home to most of the residential buildings and the other side has academic buildings.  The two are connected by a bridge overlooking a stunning gorge.  Crossing over it, I almost felt like we were in a National Park.

As we toured the academic halls and the dorms, it became clear that Lewis and Clark is full of open-minded students that are excited to learn about the world.  Signs for study abroad programs were everywhere, and there were associations made to help international students share their culture with the rest of the school.  All students at Lewis and Clark are required to take two international studies courses or study abroad.  Students are also open-minded in regard to their living situations.  Most bathrooms on campus are co-ed, and students can even request opposite sex roommates.

Lewis and Clark capped off a fun week of college visits and too many lattes.  Thanks for following our trip and feel free to contact us if you have any more specific questions about any of the colleges!