Claremont McKenna

This weekend is my ten year college reunion. In the last 3.5 years of writing weekly, I’ve hardly mentioned Claremont McKenna College, but it’s naturally top of mind today. Being here I am reminded on the tremendous positive impact this sunny, beautiful, competent, and happy institution has had on my life. I would not be the person I am today, for the better, were in not for the lessons learned here in what was both a formative and supportive college experience.

I keep saying to people, some of whom I truly haven’t seen in ten years, that I wish I could go back to this place as a 17 year old freshman with what I know now at 31. But of course, that’s just not how it works. I know what I know now because of the path that begin here in 2008, and I couldn’t have learned any of it any other way. I was very intentional about my decision to go to Claremont McKenna, my top choice school, and I knew immediately when I started here that for once, I was exactly where I needed to be.

Claremont McKenna was an unconventional and controversial school choice. Despite being a well ranked elite liberal arts college, just about nobody on the east coast had heard of it. My parents threatened not to support me financially if I went here, and made it so challenging to apply that I almost didn’t submit my application on time. It would be putting it mildly to say that my family was obsessed with academic prestige, and Claremont McKenna was a perfect foil to their intentions as a place brimming with substance and potential but almost totally lacking in name recognition. Indeed, a select few who were in academia or had for whatever reason kept up with US News & World Report college rankings were aware that CMC was indeed a school comparable to Georgetown or Brown, but the lot of superficial east coast snobs my ilk were so keen on impressing were decidedly unimpressed my school of choice. That’s part of why I liked it so much. Claremont McKenna was underdog, indefatigable up and comer that seemed like the college version of me. CMC was also a bit of a Gatsby.

Founded in 1946 as tiny men’s college for GIs, the ascension of Claremont McKenna from upstart to one of highest rated and resource-rich colleges in short time is unprecedented. Like the United States itself, the college early on differentiated itself with pragmatism and a devotion to competence. It’s alumni were more financially successful than most, achieving career outcomes comparable to students from more elite institutions, and also more loyal and generous to their alma mater. Claremont McKenna’s past college President Pamela Gann stated yesterday that she believes that Claremont McKenna alumni have donated more money to their college per capita than the alumni of any other school in the world. We may not have the data to say this definitively, but it seems likely true. Though by the time I began here in 2008, the school was no longer an upstart.

By the time I got here, the school had been on a long winning streak and its gains were compounding. Claremont McKenna by 2008 had developed a reputation as a CEO factory that was rated #1 for happiest students. Back then, there was no shame in stating this openly, though today I suspect it would be considered distasteful. An anonymous comment from a student on college admissions internet forum in the mid-2000s stated approximately that Claremont McKenna was unique in that it was a school that really stood to serve its students, and treated each one as if they would be a future leader. I took that anonymous comment to heart. Plenty of elite east coast institutions groomed future leaders, but the student was not the customer; the identity of the individual was deprecated to that of the institution.

Ivy league students are special, but their schools seemed to go out of their way not to make them feel that way. Maybe many do need to be humbled, but at that point I needed encouragement. After taking one beating after the next growing up at home and in school, I was ready to go a place where people might actually believe in me, and maybe even be nice to me and each other. That’s exactly what I got when I came here.

It may sound obnoxious that a school treated a bunch of privileged drunken youths like gold — the school quite literally spoiled us with free beer and housekeeping. They would even buy us DisneyLand and concert tickets, all we had to do was ask a man named Jim Nauls (RIP). One might think the graduates of this place might have been, on average, a bunch of spoiled jerks. That simply wasn’t true.

I would characterize Claremont McKenna students circa 2010 as young adults who had their cups full, and thereby had much to give to others. We didn’t need lectures on privilege to know we had it. Whatever our backgrounds were, most students were upper middle class but many weren’t, our family backgrounds and the zip codes we grew up in didn’t matter once we were here. What I’ve witnessed this weekend in seeing what so many classmates are doing ten years out is that happy people help people. I’m heartened to see how healthy and well everyone looks, and how so many are already shifting from filling their own cups to helping others through philanthropy and career changes such as working at nonprofits or as public servants.

There was a wonderful natural filtering of the types of people who went to CMC. Anyone obsessed with image and brand literally didn’t apply, because no one was impressed by our college’s name. I recall no instances in which I felt like any students were competing with another academically, or even for jobs. When multiple interviews for the same elite jobs, they would band together to prepare. If one got the job and others didn’t, the others would be disappointed for not getting it themselves, but genuinely delighted for the one that did. Growing up on the east coast, I had never experienced anything like this. There was fighting amongst families, classmates, neighbors, and brethren of any sort; that was the norm. Socially CMC was also like nowhere else.

Every single person I ever met at this school was nice and friendly. There was no one I felt uncomfortable around. I wasn’t necessarily in every circle of friends, but even as a shy and then insecure young man, I had no trouble being around and getting to know anyone. I wish I had walked up to more groups of people, sat down with lunch those I didn’t know well, and strolled through various North Quad suites just to say hey to people. These are the learnings that didn’t crystalize until later. But I know certainly today that back then I could have done these things with no fear of rejection. People were open here, as happy confident people usually are. I really can think of no other place before or since that is this way. Even in the spiritual communities, some folks are always a bit iffy.

I can’t forget the weather. One of the big reasons I came to Southern California is the weather. I love warm weather and the sun. I shiver at 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Yesterday, the sun was out, as it was almost everyday during my four years at CMC. Stumbling up the stairs into this North Quad dorm, the historic party place on campus, with its awkwardly low ceilings and awkwardly high twin xl beds, taking after some cross between a motel and a barrack, I felt the pangs of simple joy that were a part of the everyday experience here. So much of college I remember, but I had forgotten this particular feeling. It really is wonderful.

I wasn’t a happy and confident person as a teenager, but I knew that most of the students here were happy and confident people. My bet was that being a student here, I would become like everyone else. I didn’t want to be like the brilliant wretches who went northeast to be successful and sad, trading prestige and wealth for joy. I wanted to be like the beaming, happy people depicted on The OC. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that was fiction, but Claremont is real. I believed, a little naively but for once optimistically, that I could do well and be happy. It took time, and the learnings continue to this day, but my 2008 bet on CMC has paid off. By being surrounded by smart, confident, nice people in a sunny, beautiful, and healthy place, I imprinted a vital part of the template for happiness.

There are so many decisions I made and places I went that I shouldn’t have. But I now know as I did then, that going to Claremont McKenna was exactly the right decision for me, and that I was in exactly the right place at that time in my life. I can hope that more of my life will be as sure as CMC was and is.