Getting To Know: Clark University (MA)-Again

Clark University was the last school that I visited on my trip to Worcester. With approximately 2,100 undergrads, Clark tries to hit a midpoint between a liberal arts college and a small research university.

The university also has nearly 1,300 graduate students. After my visit I felt that Brandeis was probably the most similar school in terms of the community and opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research with the faculty.

Like most liberal arts colleges, Clark has a core curriculum. But there are also topical First Year Intensives as well as Problems of Practice courses Every student must also complete a Capstone Project.

One of the Colleges That Change Lives, Clark was the first American university to award a PhD in Psychology. I had visited Clark before, but also knew the school from when I worked as an urban planner. It was a popular destination for students interested in geography. They often pursued masters degrees in urban planning. Today, Clark offers its own masters degree in urban planning. Clark also has popular programs in environmental science, game design, international development and business.

Small classes will be the rule at Clark. Only nine of the more than 400 undergraduate courses taught during the 2024-2025 academic year have more than 39 students. About two thirds had fewer than 20.

Qualified students may earn a free master’s degree in a fifth year in one of 23 subjects.

This is a rare and genuinely compelling benefit that significantly reduces the cost of graduate education. However, these programs also have prerequisite courses that must be taken during the senior year to help ease the transition into graduate school. Those who choose Clark and express interest in these programs early should plan courses carefully.

It was a little tough to gather data about this school.

The university posted a 2025-26 Common Data Set. There I found four-year graduation rates for the Class of 2023. That was 67%. For the Class of 2022 it was 70%. The latest freshman retention rate I could find was 87 percent for the class that entered in 2024.

Working through different data sources and using an AI, I found that the size of freshman classes has gotten smaller. Clark welcomed 384 freshmen in 2025. That was down from 582 in 2018 and 665 in 2019.

Clark is relatively selective.

The university admitted 40 percent of all applicants for the class that entered this past fall. The yield rate. the percentage of accepted students who enrolled, was nine percent. Clark received over 10,000 applications for its class. That might have been driven by charging no application fee and placing less emphasis on test scores than other schools. Less than 20 percent of the recent entering class submitted SAT scores. The middle 50 percent scored between 1270 and 1410. Interesting to me: Clark did not need to admit from the waitlist to fill the class.

Clark has placed a high level of importance on recommendations, essays, extracurricular involvement and achievements and character than most schools I have reviewed.  However, it doesn’t place as much emphasis on an interview and demonstrated interest as I would believe, given the areas considered important or very important outside of academic achievement and rigor. Clark is a “single doorway” school; students are not admitted to a specific major.

Clark is fairly generous with merit and need-based scholarships, presuming students qualify for them. The average need-based award was over $44,000 for students who entered in 2025. The average merit-based award was just over $30,000. Average student loan indebtedness was high, just over $37,000 because about ten percent of the class needed to take out private loans. However, it is possible that those who took the fifth year needed to borrow to cover housing costs. Between 25 and 30 percent of a senior class continues towards a masters at Clark. More surprising, nearly 40 percent of the Class of 2025 graduated with no student loan debt at all.

I felt that Clark had a creative and inclusive student culture.

However, I could not get a sense of what bonded this community. This appears to be a school where you must try to find your friends and interests quickly though there are not as many students and not as large a selection of clubs and organizations as one might find at a larger school. Clark has neither fraternities nor sororities. Interestingly, I learned that Clark students have a passion for filmmaking. The Screen Studies program hosts a free Friday film series as well as collaborations with the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival to showcase student and alumni work. Clark is also big on community service within Worcester, even allowing Work Study students to be employed with local non-profits as well as the university.

Clark competes in 17 D-3 (non-scholarship) varsity sports; a fifth of the undergraduate students are varsity athletes. The Cougars compete in the New England Men’s and Women’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC). Their rivals include nearby Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MIT, Babson and the US Coast Guard Academy, among others. Clark’s most recent success was in Women’s Basketball, where the Cougars finished third in the conference standings. This past season the other teams were closer to bringing up the rear.

Clark’s campus is compact and walkable, featuring a pleasant mix of Gothic architecture and modern academic buildings.

However, some facilities such as the fitness center and the dining hall I toured looked dated compared to other schools I have visited .  I dropped some photos below.

More famous than any building is this statue of Sigmund Freud (below). He delivered five lectures in German on his core theories of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. This was his only visit to the US when he arrived on campus in 1905.

The campus is relatively small, only 72 acres.

This can foster a tight-knit community. However, the surrounding neighborhood is mostly residential; access to a car is a plus to get around Worcester or to Boston, whether one drives into the Hub City or takes the train. While most schools of this size and slightly smaller have nearly everyone living in on-campus residence halls or apartments, a third of Clark students live off campus. Moving off, however, can be expensive.

This school goes all out for alumni.

Clark attracts between 1,500 and 2,000 alumni for its spring reunion, organized around the same weekend as graduation, with over 70 events on campus. The university also hosts a Family Weekend for students, alumni and parents. Each undergraduate class from first-year to the last year at Clark has a Class Dean who interacts with parents of all of the students in the class.

Notable Clark alumni include Matt Goldman, co-founder of the Blue Man Group; Hugh Panero, CEO of XM Radio; Ronald Shaich, founder and CEO of Panera Bread and co-founder of Au Bon Pain; Mark Bittman, food journalist for the New York Times; film producer and screenwriter Mitch Glazer; and Padma Lakshmi, co-host of Top Chef. 

Conclusions

Clark University is an excellent choice for  motivated students who thrive in a close-knit, intellectually engaged environment with a genuine social conscience. They can get much of they would hope to receive academically from a more selective school, if they seek it early. That’s probably why Clark remains one of the Colleges That Change Lives.