Early Decision at the Claremont Colleges: Three Times the Rate at CMC, More Than Twice at Pomona (2026)

Walk through the Claremont Colleges and it's hard to tell where one college ends and the next begins. The five undergraduate colleges sit side by side, and their students take classes at all five. Admissions is where the borders come back. Each college reads its own applications and runs its own Early Decision round, and a binding application commits you to one college, not to Claremont.

Those five rounds behave very differently. In its 2025–26 filing, Claremont McKenna admitted 22.1% of its Early Decision applicants and 7.4% of everyone else, three times the rate. Pomona admitted 13.7% against 6.1%. And the regular-round odds on this one campus run from 6.1% at Pomona to 38.8% at Scripps, the kind of spread you would expect from five colleges in five different states.

"Everyone else" is our arithmetic: the whole first-year pool in the same filing, minus the Early Decision round. Pitzer's and Scripps's early rounds had fewer than 400 applicants. At that size a few admits either way can swing the gap from one year to the next, so we leave their multiples blank and don't read anything into them.

Claremont McKenna decides a third of its year in December

About one in seven Claremont McKenna applicants applied Early Decision. They received 216 of the college's 655 offers, a third of the year. The other 5,961 applicants shared 439.

If Claremont McKenna is the one you would pick over the other four, the filing makes the case for November 1 about as plainly as a filing can.

Pomona: the hardest early round, and the date people miss

Pomona's early round admitted the smallest share of the five, 13.7%. That is still more than double the 6.1% everyone else faced, the lowest regular-round rate on the campus. It was also the biggest early round here by far: 1,656 applicants, more than Harvey Mudd's, Pitzer's and Scripps's combined.

Pomona's first deadline is November 8. Claremont McKenna's is a week earlier and the other three a week later, so a student with "November 1" or "November 15" fixed in their head can miss Pomona in either direction.

Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps: November 15

Harvey Mudd admitted 18.4% of its early applicants against 11.6% of everyone else, about seven points. That is the smallest edge among the three most selective colleges here, and it matters most to students who already want Mudd's science, engineering and mathematics curriculum.

Pitzer admitted a quarter of everyone else and Scripps nearly two in five, so for students who fit them, the regular round is a real option. Their early rounds admitted 43.4% and 51.3%, from 385 and 275 applicants.

Two binding chances on one campus

Because each college decides on its own, a December no from one of them doesn't close the other four. All five run a second binding round, and at all five it closes on the same day as the regular round: January 5 at Harvey Mudd, January 8 at Pomona and Scripps, January 10 at Claremont McKenna and Pitzer.

So a student set on Claremont could apply Early Decision I to Pomona by November 8 and, if the answer in December is no, apply Early Decision II to Claremont McKenna by January 10. The second round costs no extra time here. It is the regular application on the regular date, with a binding agreement attached. A deferral is less simple, because you stay in the first college's pool; what the Common App and the colleges allow after a December no sets out the rules, and Spend Early Decision I where there is no Early Decision II covers the general case.

What families pay depends on the band

For families earning $75,001–$110,000 who received federal aid, the average net price in 2023–24 was:

The colleges with the two largest multiples were also the two least expensive for this band. Look one band down before you lean on that order, though. For families earning $48,001–$75,000, Scripps averaged $15,831, about what Pomona averaged one band up, and Pomona's own average for that lower band, $17,054, was higher than its average for the band above it. These are averages of what aided families paid, not a formula. A binding round asks you to accept one college's real number, so run each college's net price calculator before you sign.

What the filing can't show

The Common Data Set counts every early applicant the same way, including recruited athletes and anyone else whose file carried something extra. A multiple describes the round, not what the round would do for you.

Where the numbers come from

Applicants and admits are from each college's 2025–26 Common Data Set: section C1 for the whole first-year pool, section C21 for Early Decision. The "everyone else" rates and the multiples are our calculation from those counts. Net prices are College Scorecard averages for 2023–24, for families who received federal aid. Deadlines are for students entering in fall 2027, read from each college's admissions pages or the Common App in September 2026; confirm them with the college before you submit.

If one of the five is already your first choice, see what it published and where your score sits there, free. Weighing it against the rest of your list is what the paid document does.