About Pitzer > Annual Reports of Excellence > 2007
One of America's Best Colleges
- Pitzer College is ranked 40th in the top tier of 125 liberal arts colleges in academic reputation and as having the 35th lowest acceptance rate among all 248 liberal arts colleges, according to U.S.News & World Report.
- Pitzer College completed the first of a three-phase construction project, the largest since its founding, with new residence halls that are socially and environmentally responsible. The College stands positioned to become one of the first colleges in the nation to replace all of its residence halls with LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) gold-certified residence halls.
- Fifty-two Pitzer College students received prestigious Fulbright Program Fellowships from 2001-07, setting a national record for colleges its size for four consecutive years. Other student awards for 2007 included a Thomas J. Watson fellowship, two Robert E. McNair scholarships, a Coro fellowship, a Kemper Foundation scholarship, a USA Freedom Corps Volunteer Service Award, a Princeton-in-Asia fellowship, and a Rotary International Ambassadorial scholar.
- Pitzer College has the nation's third finest faculty, eighth most politically active students, and was ranked eighth for lots of race/class interaction in The Princeton Review’s The Best 361 Colleges.
- Pitzer ranks as the fifth most diverse private coeducational toptier liberal arts college in America by U.S. News, with students of color representing 30 percent of the student body.
- According to U.S. News, Pitzer ranks 28th in the top tier of 125 liberal arts schools for the percentage of students studying abroad. The College's thirty-five international and domestic exchange programs make it possible for students to study abroad for two semesters in two countries.
- Pitzer is one of seventy-six colleges or universities that has been selected by the Carnegie Foundation for their elective Community Engagement Classification.
- Pitzer is included in The Princeton Review's The Best 361 Colleges, which named the College as one of the “Best in the West.” Pitzer was one of 129 schools profiled in the first edition of The Best Western Colleges, and one of five profiled in the regional guidebook series.
- Pitzer is one of the nation's most effective schools fostering social responsibility and public service, according to The Princeton Review and Campus Compact. Pitzer is one of eighty-one institutions in thirty-three states that The Princeton Review commends and features in its book, Colleges with a Conscience: 81 Great Schools with Outstanding Community Involvement.
- In Kaplan Publishing's The Unofficial, Unbiased Insider's Guide to the 328 Most Interesting Colleges, Pitzer is cited as offering “the most creative curriculum of all The Claremont Colleges.”
- The College is a member of the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning (CIEL), a group of the most progressive colleges working to reinvigorate American higher education.
- Pitzer is cited by the National Wildlife Foundation as one of the foremost schools in the country for Environmental Studies.
- The Fiske Guide to Colleges lauds Pitzer's strong Media Studies program.
- The Claremont Colleges Debate Union, in which Pitzer students actively participate, is among the top-ranked debate programs for the past fifteen years, including top five rankings for the past five years. At last year’s U.S. national championship, the Debate Union placed fifth amongst 275 teams.
Outstanding Joint Science Program
Pitzer, Claremont McKenna and Scripps Colleges share an interdisciplinary Joint Science Department housed in the state-of-theart W. M. Keck Science Center. From 2002 to 2007, nearly 78 percent of Joint Science students who applied were admitted to medical school. By contrast, the national average acceptance rate is 43 percent.
Exceptional Media Studies Program
Pitzer College's Media Studies program appeals to socially committed artists and showcases grass-roots filmmaking at its best. Professor Jesse Lerner was awarded a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Fellowship for 2006–07. Films by three Pitzer Media Studies professors have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Other works by Pitzer professors: Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner co-edited F is for Phony, a study on fake documentary practice and theory (University of Minnesota Press); Professor Juhasz made “Video Remains,” an experimental video in the film festival circuit; and Jesse Lerner released “Magnavoz,” an experimental work circulating on the film festival circuit. Professor Juhasz taught the first-ever college course on and about YouTube.
Major Student Awards
Pitzer College student awards earned from 2001 to 2007:
- Fifty-two Fulbright Program Fellowships
- Five Thomas J. Watson Fellowships
- One Harry S. Truman Scholarship
- One Princeton-in-Asia Fellowship
- Two Freeman Foundation Asia Fellowships
- Five Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships
- One Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship
- One Morris K. Udall Foundation Native American
- Congressional Internship
- Five Coro Fellowships
- Four Kemper Foundation Scholarships
- One Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarship
- Two American Sociological Association Minority Fellowships
- Two Teaching Assistantship Fellows from the French government
- (selected by the Institute of International Education)
- Two Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarships
- One Rudolph Polk Memorial Award in Music
Pitzer students enjoy a strong tradition of receiving major fellowships and scholarships. One Pitzer student has received the Rhodes scholarship and eight additional students have been finalists. Since 1997, Pitzer students have won six Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, eight Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships, six Freeman Foundation Asia Fellowships, five American Sociological Association Minority Fellowships (the highest number among colleges and universities in the U.S.), one Morris K. Udall Foundation Native American Congressional Internship and one Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship.
Highly Selective
Pitzer College had the 35th lowest acceptance rate among the top-tier liberal arts colleges for its Fall 2006 entering class, according to U.S.News rankings. Fewer than thirty-five liberal arts colleges have acceptance rates less than 38 percent as Pitzer did in Fall 2006. The 2006–07 academic year set an all-time record for number of applications to Pitzer, and showed an increase for the ninth consecutive year.
Year in Review Sports
LEFT: The Sagehen baseball team won their first SCIAC Championship with a 30-11 overall record and a 16-5 record in conference. RIGHT: The Sagehen women's soccer team won fifteen total games and eight conference wins in 2007.
The women's and men's water polo teams won SCIAC Championships with the women's water polo team advancing to the National Collegiate Water Polo Championship. In women’s soccer, three Sagehens were honored with All-SCIAC selections.The softball team won fifteen total games and eight conference wins; eight of the fifteen wins were shutouts. Men’s baseball won their first SCIAC Championship with a 30-11 overall record and a 16-5 record in conference. Women’s tennis won the SCIAC Championship and reached the quarterfinals during the NCAA National Championships, finishing sixth in the country. The men's tennis team ranked 29th in the country with one student named as Division III doubles All-American, finishing the season and 10th in the country for doubles. In men's golf, a student was named to the All-SCIAC First Team. The women’s lacrosse team finished with a 10-2 record overall in their first year as a varsity sport.
Innovative Community Service & Outreach
Pitzer College's focus on social responsibility and community
service provides students with a plethora of volunteer opportunities
on and off campus. Among the many programs offered
through the Center for California Cultural and Social Issues
(CCCSI), Pitzer students have the opportunity to conduct
reading groups with women in recovery, tutor homeless and
at-risk young children, or help juvenile offenders improve their
literacy skills at area probation camps.
Pitzer faculty offer course-related projects in community-based Spanish; early academic outreach; and the Leadership in Environmental Education Partnership (LEEP). Another community service program is Jumpstart, a national nonprofit outreach program that pairs college students with preschool-age children struggling in the areas of communication, literacy and social skills. The highly successful Jumpstart pilot program begun at Pitzer in 1999 has become the model for other programs at universities throughout the United States.
Pitzer is also one of fifteen California International Studies Project (CISP) locations, funded by the State of California to support the development of public school teachers through collaboration with faculty in social sciences and world history. There are forty-two current and former Peace Corps volunteers who are alumni of Pitzer. Pitzer was invited to become one of ten colleges forming the founding core of the national Project Pericles, which encourages liberal arts colleges to turn rhetoric into action by training students to be responsible citizens.