Campus Life

Information about campus life at Claremont McKenna can be found in the Guide to Student Life. There you can learn more about the different elements of being a student at CMC. The Guide includes information on areas such as:

Career Services

Career Services Center

Career planning is part of an individual’s personal and professional development. CMC students are encouraged to take advantage of the activities, services, and programs provided by CMC’s Career Services Center (CSC), housed in The Soll Center for Student Opportunity, located in the heart of campus.

The CSC provides individual counseling, workshops, programming, and employer and graduate/professional school information. The Center also provides help with resume writing, cover letter preparation, interviewing skills, job and internship search strategies, networking, online branding, offer negotiation, and international opportunities. Over 100 companies from various industries come to campus annually to recruit and hire our students and many hundreds more post positions on our 7-College recruiting system, ClaremontConnect. The Center has a student lounge designed for students, alumni, and employers to conduct daily business and interact in an informal setting.

Career information is provided to CMC students through the CSC Career Guide, group presentations, regular email messages, electronic newsletters, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and other activities. Professional staff and student career consultants staff the office Monday-Friday and are trained to help students with resumes and cover letters, to provide assistance with the electronic resources offered on our website and ClaremontConnect, and with general career planning advice. The CSC also hosts office hours and drop-in sessions (no appointment necessary) daily.

Beyond the formal services offered by the CSC, all members of the CMC community support students’ career development through teaching and service. Students are encouraged to use their classroom and co-curricular activities to explore career choices and seek opportunities to work and learn. Faculty often invite career-related speakers to classes, host dinners focusing on work-related topics, and network with graduates to whom they may refer current students. The CSC supports these efforts by helping to plan and publicize them.

Under the Claremont University Consortium Career Services agreement, each of the seven Claremont Colleges cooperate in providing services and programs to all students. Joint programs such as on-campus recruiting, workshops, and career fairs offer students a wide variety of career information and streamlined programming. CMC students are encouraged to use the career resources on the other Claremont campuses whenever those resources are more available or more relevant to their needs.

Recruiting Program

Thanks to CMC’s strong scholastic reputation, our curricular offerings, and the success of our graduates, we attract a large number and variety of top-quality employers who advertise full-time employment and internship opportunities and interview on campus each year.

Graduate and Professional Schools

A large percentage of CMC graduates attend graduate or professional schools, either immediately following graduation or within five years of graduation. Many CMC graduates pursue J.D. or M.B.A. degrees, and others seek advanced degrees in the social sciences, humanities, sciences, or medicine. The CSC helps these students by offering electronic resources to search graduate schools and programs, maintaining information about graduate/professional schools, and by hosting presentations by admission representatives. Both faculty and CSC staff provide graduate and professional school advising.

Internships

Since CMC considers internships an integral part of the learning experience, CMC students are strongly encouraged to identify and obtain internships during their undergraduate years. The CSC assists students seek and obtain internships by helping them research opportunities in their area of interest, soliciting internships, and maintaining directories and databases with hundreds of internship listings.

Career Services also coordinates the Sponsored Internship Program, which provides funding for summer internships in the U.S. and abroad and is comprised of these programs: The McKenna International Internship Program, Uoroboros Fellowship, KLI International Internship Program, Peter Adams International Internship Program, Community Service Internship Program, KLI Social Sector Internship Program, Non-Profit Internship Program, and The Political Education Fellowship.

Alumni Career Services

CMC’s career support does not end when a student graduates. The CSC offers career services to alumni, including counseling, assessment, web-based job search privileges, and access to alumni networking opportunities.