Claremont McKenna College is a small liberal arts school located in Claremont, California, and it’s a part of the Claremont Colleges – a unique consortium of 5 undergrad colleges that share resources and a campus, but each has its own focus. Claremont McKenna is known for their programs on business, finance, government, econ, public affairs, and international relations, and is also slightly more conservative than their fellow Claremont College associates.
Claremont McKenna (CMC for short) is a hard school to get into, with a first-year acceptance rate of 11%. It’s even harder to transfer to, with an acceptance rate of 6%. To put it more plainly, in 2022, 388 students applied to transfer to CMC and only 24 were admitted. Because the school is competitive and has a relatively high retention rate, very few spots open up for transfer students. But don’t let that dissuade you! Let’s talk about how you can prepare and make your application stand out.
Claremont McKenna’s Requirements
Unlike a lot of schools, CMC has no requirements for a minimum number of credits, although you cannot transfer more than 16 credits over. If you’ve even been enrolled in college at all, you are eligible to transfer to CMC. Nice!
Here’s what they do require of you:
Transfer Common Application
Essays (more on this later)
Official high school and college transcripts
An academic evaluation/recommendation
Transfer college report (a Dean or advisor has to fill this out)
Transfer mid-term report for your in-progress grades
And your “optional” requirements (although we don’t believe in optional):
Test scores
Interview (optional – but you should take it. These are rarely offered to transfers)
Video response (if you can’t get an interview, absolutely do this)
More on their requirements and process for transfer applicants here.
Pick the Right Classes
You want to go to CMC to get a stellar liberal arts foundation for your poli sci degree, so you should take classes that feed into that narrative. It makes no sense to load up on classes that *don’t* fit that mold, except for a few required classes you need at your current school.
That’s right, don’t forget those pesky core classes. Transferring is hard, especially to CMC, and you may not get in – so don’t neglect the classes you need to take to graduate. Remember, they only accept 16 credits for transfer, so you’re going for strategy here.
And make sure those classes fit into the niche you’re building. If you’re interested in interest group politics, it won’t look great if you’re only taking international politics classes.
Get Really Good Grades
CMC says they don’t have a required GPA, but state that you need at least a 3.3 to be a viable applicant and that most accepted students have over a 3.5. So yes, you need great (read: near perfect) grades to be extra-competitive. Since you’re already in college, you need to show proof that you can handle college classes!
Hot tip for you freshmen: don’t take classes you did bad in during HS if you don’t absolutely have to! We want quality grades – and those classes probably don’t fit into your narrative anyway.
And don’t forget to go to office hours. You’d be surprised how face time with a prof can positively impact your grades, and bonus: you’ll need those connections for rec letters.
Develop Your Niche
You need more than just the right classes to prove that you want to major in your stated major to get into CMC, you need depth! You want to prove to them that you’ve actually engaged in your stated passion. To keep with our poli sci example you should get involved in the current affairs magazine on campus, run for student government, join political orgs, volunteer for a campaign, write for the student paper, get a congressional internship, or research with a poli sci professor.
You should get plugged into your current school, not just because it’ll look good on your application, but because you want to have a safety net of community in case you don’t meet your transferring dreams.
Write Great Essays
CMC has two supplemental questions, both are standard college essay fare.
CMC’s mission is to prepare students for thoughtful and productive lives and responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions. With this mission in mind, please explain why you want to attend Claremont McKenna College.
This is “Why CMC,” so follow the standard rules for this one. Tell them your origin story, declare the major, pick a few upper-level classes you’d take, a professor to research with, and throw in some extracurriculars in there while you’re at it.
A critical part of fulfilling our mission is living out the commitments of CMC’s Open Academy: Freedom of Expression, Viewpoint Diversity, and Constructive Dialogue. We want to learn more about your commitment to listening and learning from others with different viewpoints, perspectives, and life experiences from your own. Describe a time when engaging with someone about a specific topic resulted in you changing your attitude, belief, or behavior, or you changed the belief or behavior of someone else. What was the change that occurred for you, and what facilitated that change? What did you learn from that experience, and how has it informed how you engage with others?
This one will be a story about a time you disagreed with someone. They used a lot of words to ask a fairly straightforward question!! You’ll want to make sure you answer all parts of this question, and you also probably don’t want to pick some massively hot-button political issue, although if you’re a CMC hopeful, we’re sure you have a lot of examples of those.
A more detailed guide on how to write these (and how to answer the video questions, too!) here.
We hope these tips help you a) prepare to transfer and b) make that transfer application happen. Good luck on your Claremont McKenna application and make sure to keep your grades up, get plugged into your community, and dive into your passions.
If you need help with your transfer applications, reach out to us today.