Pitzer College is the most “artsy” campus with many cartoon panels/vignettes painted on the walls. The huge “Dali-style” mural on the outside of the dining hall is impressive. There is an arboretum on the far side of campus by the tennis courts and even an interesting small cactus garden. Scripps College is located in the [...]

The San Gabriel Mountains are immediately north of the campus. There is a healthy competition among the students to see which campus uses less water in this ecologically fragile environment. Students are attracted to the Claremont campuses where they can pick limes and grapefruit on their way to class.

These five premier colleges are the western version of New England’s small ivies and live up to that reputation superbly. Within a hundred years they have replicated and branded their identities well short of the three centuries of their peers in the northeast. Each has a particular architecture that drives its own character academically and [...]