2025 College Rankings

Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is regarded by many as the best liberal arts college on the West Coast, especially in the area of free speech. We rank it highly, but several elements, including its DEI commitments, cause it to underperform its potential. The school maintains a modest diversity bureaucracy, and nearly half of all faculty jobs require a DEI statement.

Still, some leaders at CMC appear to value free speech. We rank the school first on this metric among all those that we studied. A survey conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that more than half of students say that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus. Over 40 percent of students also say that it is “extremely” or “very” likely that the administration would defend a speaker’s right to express his views in a controversy over offensive speech. FIRE gives the school a “green” rating, meaning that its policies seek to protect free speech on campus. CMC has endorsed the Chicago Principles, a commitment that colleges make to promoting open inquiry among faculty and students.

Given CMC’s support for free speech, it’s unsurprising that the faculty is ideologically diverse. Here, too, we rank the school first overall. Students tell FIRE that they place faculty members, on average, almost exactly at “moderate” on an ideological continuum. This perception is reflected in faculty campaign contributions during the 2023–24 election cycle. About 80 percent of contributions went to liberal or Democratic causes, and about 20 percent went to conservative or Republican causes. Taken in isolation, that number looks lopsided, but in comparison with other universities, where nearly all campaign contributions go to liberal or Democratic causes, it is rather balanced. In addition, nearly 6 percent of CMC faculty—the largest portion of any school that we studied—are members of the free speech–supportive Heterodox Academy. And as one might expect, given the faculty’s ideological pluralism, the college’s administration has adopted institutional neutrality.

CMC’s students are not as ideologically balanced as the faculty, though students are among the most tolerant of views other than their own. The last five years have seen no attempts to de-platform speakers. FIRE finds students virtually equal in their tolerance of controversial left-wing and right-wing speakers. The vast majority of students view illiberal attempts to disrupt campus speech as unacceptable. Sixty-five percent of students tell FIRE that it is “rarely” or “never” acceptable to shout down a speaker; 77 percent say that blocking a campus speech is “rarely” or “never” acceptable; and 86 percent say that it is “rarely” or “never” acceptable to use violence when faced with a controversial speaker. For the most part, students are unafraid to express themselves freely on campus and in the classroom. Still, 19 percent of students confess to being “very often” or “fairly often” personally offended by perspectives shared by classmates.

Compared with peers, CMC’s curriculum fares well on our metrics. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) awards Claremont McKenna a B+ in its What Will They Learn? ratings, which assign letter grades based on how many of seven core subjects are required in the core curriculum or general education program. CMC requires students to take a course focusing on U.S. government or history to graduate. ACTA has identified at CMC one institute promoting academic excellence: the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, which encourages students to study the political philosophy of the American Founding. Though it is not the powerhouse it once was, CMC’s Government Department still has notable strengths.

CMC’s alumni are well served by the institution economically. The Princeton Review rates CMC’s alumni network in the top 20 for private colleges. On average, it takes about 1.3 years to pay back the cost of education, much shorter than our overall average of 2.3 years.