Claremont Mudd Scripps Baseball vs Pomona Pitzer Baseball

The colleges themselves are VERY different.  You might want to look at potential majors, that will be more of a deciding factor. All of the Claremont colleges are for the elite level student,  Harvey Mudd is EXTREMELY difficult to get into.  Students who go there do so for school, not baseball.  We know a few alumni and two current players they were/are all very happy with the experience.  Neither team is playing this spring but you can look up previous year's standings in SCIAC by going to thesciac.org they have all the standings if you click on baseball, more+ and then archives (I tried to paste a link but got balled up.  Clearly I didn't go to Mudd)

The short answer is that if a player gets an offer from either one of these, he should take it.  I believe that the players at both tend to be very happy, both with their schools and their programs.  As for facilities, right now CMS has the edge. The fields are fairly similar in quality but CMS has a brand new, extremely nice athletic facility.  Pomona's is pretty old, but they just started to build its replacement.  I'm guessing it will be ready by the 22-23 academic year.

RE LL's comment. I actually think the profile of the average Pomona or Pitzer student and the average Claremont McKenna student is pretty similar;  you'll see lots of Econ majors, government majors, some pre-law and pre-med type majors etc.  The Pitzer students have the rep of being more crunchy, while the CMC students are thought to be conservative "econ bros" and the Pomona kids are more liberal. But those are the stereotypes.  In real life I think they're all very smart, very motivated, very hard-working kids.   The Mudd kids are a different beast. Many of them are more like Caltech players - prodigies and geniuses who happen to also play baseball. Note that they get no help with admissions, unlike the others.

My son plays in the SCIAC with both of these teams and was also recruited by both.  Academics have already been mentioned...top notch at both.  The CMS campus is a little nicer especially the new athletic building.  Coach Walk at CMS is a really good guy.  I would say Pomona usually fields a better team but it can easily flip flop any given year.  My son knows a few players on both teams and they all seem happy and no complaints.  As strange as this sounds CMS does have more of a party culture which includes school sponsored parties with lots of drinking.  Really you cant go wrong at either one.  

@SoCal OG posted:

As strange as this sounds CMS does have more of a party culture which includes school sponsored parties with lots of drinking.  Really you cant go wrong at either one.  

We took a student led tour (preCovid) and the thing that impressed Lefty the most was a 6foot plus Christmas Tree being built from empty beer cans in the area in front of some of the dorms.  I was impressed by the schematics they were using. (jokingly he told me he finally had seen a real life use for geometry)

From a current Pitzer student:

I do like my experience so far at Pz.  Workload as a stem major has been challenging but not overbearing. Non stem kids seem to have no problems balancing it all.

The program recently has been middle of the pack which is a little frustrating but the conference is really competitive.

It’s really hard to retain assistant coaches due to low pay but we get some good ones before they move onto d1.

Coach P’s philosophy is mainly recruit good players and let them figure it out without changing much. This leads to a program with not as much structure but it seems to work out okay.

They’re building a new facility which will make my senior year difficult.  I heard it’s going to be super nice and very comparable to the CMS facility.  

The combination of baseball and academics + the consortium is what makes being at Pitzer worth it.

@SoCal OG posted:

My son plays in the SCIAC with both of these teams and was also recruited by both.  Academics have already been mentioned...top notch at both.  The CMS campus is a little nicer especially the new athletic building.  Coach Walk at CMS is a really good guy.  I would say Pomona usually fields a better team but it can easily flip flop any given year.  My son knows a few players on both teams and they all seem happy and no complaints.  As strange as this sounds CMS does have more of a party culture which includes school sponsored parties with lots of drinking.  Really you cant go wrong at either one.  

I'm always surprised when anyone says they prefer CMC's campus to Pomona's.  Pomona is sweet, like an eastern small town college campus, with lots of old trees, and the buildings integrated into the town street grid, only with neo-Spanish architecture instead of Gothic or Georgian.  CMC is more self-contained, which has some advantages, and has a some cool modern buildings, but most of it dates to the 1950's - not exactly a high point in design.  Pitzer is very slick -- it looks more like a resort in Scottsdale than a college, with great desert plantings and lots of modern buildings.  (For athletes, it's a bit of a hike from Pitzer to Pomona, BTW) Scripps is small and very pretty, with lots greenery, ironwork, stucco and red tile roofs.  It's kind of like a romanticized mini version of Stanford or Santa Clara.  Mudd is to me, frankly, ugly. Except for the new CS center, which is cool, it's all poured concrete monoliths and looks like it was designed by Soviet architects.

@JCG posted:

I'm always surprised when anyone says they prefer CMC's campus to Pomona's.  Pomona is sweet, like an eastern small town college campus, with lots of old trees, and the buildings integrated into the town street grid, only with neo-Spanish architecture instead of Gothic or Georgian.  CMC is more self-contained, which has some advantages, and has a some cool modern buildings, but most of it dates to the 1950's - not exactly a high point in design.  Pitzer is very slick -- it looks more like a resort in Scottsdale than a college, with great desert plantings and lots of modern buildings.  (For athletes, it's a bit of a hike from Pitzer to Pomona, BTW) Scripps is small and very pretty, with lots greenery, ironwork, stucco and red tile roofs.  It's kind of like a romanticized mini version of Stanford or Santa Clara.  Mudd is to me, frankly, ugly. Except for the new CS center, which is cool, it's all poured concrete monoliths and looks like it was designed by Soviet architects.

Good point about being a student at Pitzer and playing for Pomona-Pitzer...Pomona is a little bit of a hike.  I think a lot of people dont realize they are actually two different schools but play together.  Same goes for Claremont and Mudd.

Yes, and Pitzer students have to walk through the Claremont campus to get to the Pomona field and facilities. For them, an away game at CMS is much closer than a home game.  The walk from Mudd to CMC is not bad.

Both are baseball paradise. But choose CMS 😉

Agree with the above. My son was recruited by CMS and was looking at Mudd. (Pre-new coach and facility) After a tour he felt he did not fit the typical Mudd student profile and wisely figured out that there are very very few Mudd students that make the team and can compete at both baseball and academics. That said Mudd is an elite technical college (on par with MIT) which many are not aware of and all graduates from there are highly recruited at top salaries.

Neither program will compete consistently with the top SCIAC programs that don't have the same academic restrictions, but who cares if you can get a degree from either of them. Best of luck.