Why is Pomona so special?

[Anonymous]

I can only say that when my DD was rejected I was so thankful - I told her we couldn’t afford it in the first place but she told us they had some calculator that told her we qualified for aid and without us knowing she applied and paid for the application fee herself. Grateful we never needed to explain AGAIN that we couldn’t afford it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can only say that when my DD was rejected I was so thankful - I told her we couldn’t afford it in the first place but she told us they had some calculator that told her we qualified for aid and without us knowing she applied and paid for the application fee herself. Grateful we never needed to explain AGAIN that we couldn’t afford it.

What is your HHI? This relates to other thread

[Anonymous]

Another Pomona alum
Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about. When it snowed big groups of us would hop in cars and be at the snow line in 20 mins. I didn’t have a car but enough students did that getting around the area wasn’t an issue. Never went to the beach during term but certainly did during the summer I stayed on campus.
Smog was a problem for a few weeks in the fall but most of the year it was clear and you could see the mountains. I’m not sure how long ago the previous poster went to Pomona but my impression is that LA smog was far worse in the 80s/90s so it’s possible the smog situation has significantly changed
Close enough to Joshua Tree and the Eastern Sierras that you could easily do a serious backpacking trip on a regular weekend. The school had a wonderful outdoors club and you could check out equipment easily. For longer breaks (fall break, spring break) there were trips to places like Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, that the school would fund.
Overall excellent faculty who had very close relationships with students. It was very common to go to dinner at their houses, babysit their kids, etc. One of my friends was David Foster Wallace’s regular house sitter/dog walker.
Good research opportunities when you don’t have grad students and post docs to compete with. It was very common for students to graduate in the sciences with a first author publication. Science grads typically went to top tier med and grad schools. I did summer research projects at Pomona and at major research institutions and as an undergrad the experience at Pomona was far better.
I didn’t go in to LA all that often but was certainly an option. The school would offer cheap tickets and transport for things like LA Philharmonic and opera and I did that a few times. I went out in Hollywood a few times and had a blast. But definitely not an every weekend thing (I wouldn’t have been able to afford it more often).
Much easier to get to and from campus than Amherst and Williams. I’m from the West Coast and getting to those would have been a nightmare. I did visit Amherst in high school and was so turned off by the remote location that I decided not to visit Williams, Middlebury, etc. Pomona’s culture is fairly integrated with the rest of the 5 C’s so it’s a much bigger student community than the east coast SLACs.
Lots of kids who come to Pomona from other parts of the country end up staying West (probably Bay Area more than LA). So if your kid from DC goes there beware that they may never come back…

I am worried that the campus atmosphere has worsened since I graduated. I went back for an alumni weekend and was taken aback by the viciousness of student protests against the outgoing president over the firing of undocumented dining hall workers several years earlier. I felt that there was a culture of mutual respect when I attended that had been lost. Not sure if that’s the same at all left-leaning colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another Pomona alum
Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about. When it snowed big groups of us would hop in cars and be at the snow line in 20 mins. I didn’t have a car but enough students did that getting around the area wasn’t an issue. Never went to the beach during term but certainly did during the summer I stayed on campus.
Smog was a problem for a few weeks in the fall but most of the year it was clear and you could see the mountains. I’m not sure how long ago the previous poster went to Pomona but my impression is that LA smog was far worse in the 80s/90s so it’s possible the smog situation has significantly changed
Close enough to Joshua Tree and the Eastern Sierras that you could easily do a serious backpacking trip on a regular weekend. The school had a wonderful outdoors club and you could check out equipment easily. For longer breaks (fall break, spring break) there were trips to places like Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, that the school would fund.
Overall excellent faculty who had very close relationships with students. It was very common to go to dinner at their houses, babysit their kids, etc. One of my friends was David Foster Wallace’s regular house sitter/dog walker.
Good research opportunities when you don’t have grad students and post docs to compete with. It was very common for students to graduate in the sciences with a first author publication. Science grads typically went to top tier med and grad schools. I did summer research projects at Pomona and at major research institutions and as an undergrad the experience at Pomona was far better.
I didn’t go in to LA all that often but was certainly an option. The school would offer cheap tickets and transport for things like LA Philharmonic and opera and I did that a few times. I went out in Hollywood a few times and had a blast. But definitely not an every weekend thing (I wouldn’t have been able to afford it more often).
Much easier to get to and from campus than Amherst and Williams. I’m from the West Coast and getting to those would have been a nightmare. I did visit Amherst in high school and was so turned off by the remote location that I decided not to visit Williams, Middlebury, etc. Pomona’s culture is fairly integrated with the rest of the 5 C’s so it’s a much bigger student community than the east coast SLACs.
Lots of kids who come to Pomona from other parts of the country end up staying West (probably Bay Area more than LA). So if your kid from DC goes there beware that they may never come back…

I am worried that the campus atmosphere has worsened since I graduated. I went back for an alumni weekend and was taken aback by the viciousness of student protests against the outgoing president over the firing of undocumented dining hall workers several years earlier. I felt that there was a culture of mutual respect when I attended that had been lost. Not sure if that’s the same at all left-leaning colleges.

Too bad the school culture may have deteriorated as you described. Sounds like it was an awesome place to go to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Location isn't that great either. Very far from the beach and downtown LA, very smoggy.

It's one of those cases where "it's great because everyone thinks it's great".

Basically the beaches are at one end of LA county and the school is at the other. DD really liked the campus - as well as Pitzer - but the drive from our hotel in Santa Monica to the Claremont campuses, then back in one hot afternoon was not lost on her.

Yeah, it makes sense that the beaches are in part of LA county that’s … by … the … ocean.

LA is one of the US' largest counties and is roughly 800 square miles larger than a combined Delaware and Rhode Island. Most 17 and 18 year olds don't know that. They hear LA, they think of Hollywood, the beaches, so yeah, they are not imagining driving 50 miles from one end of the county to the other.

Around 5 miles from campus, according to GoogleMaps. Nice!

Why does everyone assume this is why a student wants to go to Pomona OR that students/families who consider Pomona do not know where it is located? Perhaps your view if LA is beaches and Hollywood...but that doesn't mean everyone else's does.

Our child is interested in Pomona and the only way LA is remotely involved is that it makes it close enough to transportation so that getting there from accoss the country is not a nightmare. They have no interest in the beach or Hollywood. They like the idea of nice weather and are far more interested in exploring internal land features of CA via trips while they are there (Joshua Tree/Yosemite/Redwoods/Desert). They like the school because of the small size of the college with access to 7000 kids over multiple schools. They like a place where kids live on campus 4 years as a community.

Please. DC lives on the East coast and had never been to California, but is a creature of social media. So yeah, thoughts of the beach popped when they first heard that Pomona, which was suggested to them by their college counselor, is in LA. That doesn't seem so far-fetched.

DC ultimately decided they wanted a school that was not that far from home as well as easily accessible to the outdoors - right outside their dorm door. They are now at a top NESCAC.

It’s in LA County. Big county. Ocean and mountains. Trees too. Last I checked, Pomona was easily accessible to the outdoors.

Clearly,
you haven't been there. There are trees on campus, but it's in a desert wasteland. There are hills behind it. It's flat. very flat. That's
what Claremont/Ontario is. FLAT. And no one from out there would say it's in Los Angeles County. It's on the far east end of Los Angeles county near San Bernardino. Do you have any idea how big Los Angeles County is? And that descriptor isn't a positive anymore.

These are the “hills” PP is talking about, they include a 10,000 foot “hill.” My kid who is at one of the 5Cs spends a lot of time in the Angeles National Forest because it’s right nearby.

Around 5 miles from campus, according to googlemaps. Nice!

When I was there I never heard of anyone going to Mt Baldy. That photo is deceptive, a view of the mountains is very uncommon, mostly they are obscured by smog.

The way I would describe the area around campus for many miles is “boring suburbia” - somewhat like if you went to GMU.

There’s nothing like Claremont Village in the hellscape known as nova.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Location isn't that great either. Very far from the beach and downtown LA, very smoggy.

It's one of those cases where "it's great because everyone thinks it's great".

Basically the beaches are at one end of LA county and the school is at the other. DD really liked the campus - as well as Pitzer - but the drive from our hotel in Santa Monica to the Claremont campuses, then back in one hot afternoon was not lost on her.

Yeah, it makes sense that the beaches are in part of LA county that’s … by … the … ocean.

LA is one of the US' largest counties and is roughly 800 square miles larger than a combined Delaware and Rhode Island. Most 17 and 18 year olds don't know that. They hear LA, they think of Hollywood, the beaches, so yeah, they are not imagining driving 50 miles from one end of the county to the other.

Why does everyone assume this is why a student wants to go to Pomona OR that students/families who consider Pomona do not know where it is located? Perhaps your view if LA is beaches and Hollywood...but that doesn't mean everyone else's does.

Our child is interested in Pomona and the only way LA is remotely involved is that it makes it close enough to transportation so that getting there from accoss the country is not a nightmare. They have no interest in the beach or Hollywood. They like the idea of nice weather and are far more interested in exploring internal land features of CA via trips while they are there (Joshua Tree/Yosemite/Redwoods/Desert). They like the school because of the small size of the college with access to 7000 kids over multiple schools. They like a place where kids live on campus 4 years as a community.

Please. DC lives on the East coast and had never been to California, but is a creature of social media. So yeah, thoughts of the beach popped when they first heard that Pomona, which was suggested to them by their college counselor, is in LA. That doesn't seem so far-fetched.

DC ultimately decided they wanted a school that was not that far from home as well as easily accessible to the outdoors - right outside their dorm door. They are now at a top NESCAC.

you...are not making the point you think you are lol

not just a NESCAC, but a “top” one.

so smart he can't even spend 30 seconds looking at a map!

Until looking at a map also simulates the climate, terrain, and a feel of the traffic, then it really means nothing.

But go on, dog on what was then a 17 y.o. kid.

Those maps exist on the interwebs!

[Anonymous]

Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about.

When I was there (80s) Baldy was terrible (maybe 4 lifts) and if we wanted to ski we drive to Mammoth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another Pomona alum
Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about. When it snowed big groups of us would hop in cars and be at the snow line in 20 mins. I didn’t have a car but enough students did that getting around the area wasn’t an issue. Never went to the beach during term but certainly did during the summer I stayed on campus.
Smog was a problem for a few weeks in the fall but most of the year it was clear and you could see the mountains. I’m not sure how long ago the previous poster went to Pomona but my impression is that LA smog was far worse in the 80s/90s so it’s possible the smog situation has significantly changed
Close enough to Joshua Tree and the Eastern Sierras that you could easily do a serious backpacking trip on a regular weekend. The school had a wonderful outdoors club and you could check out equipment easily. For longer breaks (fall break, spring break) there were trips to places like Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, that the school would fund.
Overall excellent faculty who had very close relationships with students. It was very common to go to dinner at their houses, babysit their kids, etc. One of my friends was David Foster Wallace’s regular house sitter/dog walker.
Good research opportunities when you don’t have grad students and post docs to compete with. It was very common for students to graduate in the sciences with a first author publication. Science grads typically went to top tier med and grad schools. I did summer research projects at Pomona and at major research institutions and as an undergrad the experience at Pomona was far better.
I didn’t go in to LA all that often but was certainly an option. The school would offer cheap tickets and transport for things like LA Philharmonic and opera and I did that a few times. I went out in Hollywood a few times and had a blast. But definitely not an every weekend thing (I wouldn’t have been able to afford it more often).
Much easier to get to and from campus than Amherst and Williams. I’m from the West Coast and getting to those would have been a nightmare. I did visit Amherst in high school and was so turned off by the remote location that I decided not to visit Williams, Middlebury, etc. Pomona’s culture is fairly integrated with the rest of the 5 C’s so it’s a much bigger student community than the east coast SLACs.
Lots of kids who come to Pomona from other parts of the country end up staying West (probably Bay Area more than LA). So if your kid from DC goes there beware that they may never come back…

I am worried that the campus atmosphere has worsened since I graduated. I went back for an alumni weekend and was taken aback by the viciousness of student protests against the outgoing president over the firing of undocumented dining hall workers several years earlier. I felt that there was a culture of mutual respect when I attended that had been lost. Not sure if that’s the same at all left-leaning colleges.

Thank you for the post. I learned on Friday DD got in Pomona. We are considering several options. Your post is very helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about.

When I was there (80s) Baldy was terrible (maybe 4 lifts) and if we wanted to ski we drive to Mammoth.

To clarify, I never skied at Badly but hiked there frequently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about.

When I was there (80s) Baldy was terrible (maybe 4 lifts) and if we wanted to ski we drive to Mammoth.

To clarify, I never skied at Badly but hiked there frequently.

BS. Nobody goes to my baldy more than once. It's not well developed. It's down right depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Princeton doesn't have professional schools, like Harvard and Yale, if that is what you mean. Undergraduates are the primary focus of the university and it probably does a better job than any school in America of providing an intensive small LAC environment with the resources of a large research university. The professors do not drag their feet. The accessibility to Philly is less relevant than the accessibility to NYC. Princeton is the gold standard for undergraduate education in America.

Endowment per capita is extremely important because endowment distributions are what fund about half the budget of these schools. The larger the endowment, the more money gets spent on students. Princeton's endowment per capita dwarfs all others.

The majority of endowment funds are restricted to the purpose designated by the donor.

But schools are not spending on a per student basis for most endowment expenditures beyond aid, especially once you reach different levels of scale. The metric has meaning but I'd still take Harvard's endowment!

Princeton isn't within 3 of Harvard or Stanford in any of the larger scale university rankings:
https://www.phdportal.com/ranking-country/82/united-states.html

Their graduate schools are good but not on the same level plus they have no professional schools. My partner and I would choose to spend another 6 years in Palo Alto doing it all over again. Princeton does have the most impressive set of eating clubs!

You misunderstand how endowments work. Schools distribute 4-5 percent of the endowment value every year into the operating budget of the school. It all gets mixed together with tuition and other revenue. So the larger the endowment and the smaller the student body, the more money is being allocated from the endowment to each student. Princeton is literally kicking off over a billion dollars every year to serve its midsized student population. Many good schools not so much smaller than Princeton have endowments that are less than what Princeton just spends from its endowment annually. It’s actually pretty nuts at this point

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about.

When I was there (80s) Baldy was terrible (maybe 4 lifts) and if we wanted to ski we drive to Mammoth.

To clarify, I never skied at Badly but hiked there frequently.

BS. Nobody goes to my baldy more than once. It's not well developed. It's down right depressing.

I grew up there and went to college there. Never once went to Mt Baldy. I went to Big Bear (baby slopes) only if it had adequate snow. Drive to Mammoth (long drive!) when serious. Never went to the beach. Hated the endless traffic and left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Princeton doesn't have professional schools, like Harvard and Yale, if that is what you mean. Undergraduates are the primary focus of the university and it probably does a better job than any school in America of providing an intensive small LAC environment with the resources of a large research university. The professors do not drag their feet. The accessibility to Philly is less relevant than the accessibility to NYC. Princeton is the gold standard for undergraduate education in America.

Endowment per capita is extremely important because endowment distributions are what fund about half the budget of these schools. The larger the endowment, the more money gets spent on students. Princeton's endowment per capita dwarfs all others.

The majority of endowment funds are restricted to the purpose designated by the donor.

But schools are not spending on a per student basis for most endowment expenditures beyond aid, especially once you reach different levels of scale. The metric has meaning but I'd still take Harvard's endowment!

Princeton isn't within 3 of Harvard or Stanford in any of the larger scale university rankings:
https://www.phdportal.com/ranking-country/82/united-states.html

Their graduate schools are good but not on the same level plus they have no professional schools. My partner and I would choose to spend another 6 years in Palo Alto doing it all over again. Princeton does have the most impressive set of eating clubs!

You misunderstand how endowments work. Schools distribute 4-5 percent of the endowment value every year into the operating budget of the school. It all gets mixed together with tuition and other revenue. So the larger the endowment and the smaller the student body, the more money is being allocated from the endowment to each student. Princeton is literally kicking off over a billion dollars every year to serve its midsized student population. Many good schools not so much smaller than Princeton have endowments that are less than what Princeton just spends from its endowment annually. It’s actually pretty nuts at this point

Did you mean to be on the Princeton thread. And btw you are wrong about endowments. Most are not “mixed in with tuition”. Each one is different. Most grants are earmarked and cannot be touched. This was a problem for my slac during COViD -it couldn’t access the endowment but was $30m in the red. It called an emergency board meeting and moved some accounts ts around, fired 30 people, dismantled the football program, stopped funding retirement funds but still could not touch the endowment by its own terms. My gifts are always restricted so it can’t be touched due to mismanagement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Went to Baldy all the time so I don’t know wtf the other poster is talking about.

When I was there (80s) Baldy was terrible (maybe 4 lifts) and if we wanted to ski we drive to Mammoth.

To clarify, I never skied at Badly but hiked there frequently.

BS. Nobody goes to my baldy more than once. It's not well developed. It's down right depressing.

Not well developed? Isn’t that kind of the point of hiking trails? There are trails all over the mountain, camp sites and I believe some tent cabins you can rent, and the summit is a strenuous but rewarding day hike. Just because you weren’t into the outdoors doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. This thread is so bizarre.

To the PP whose daughter was accepted—congratulations! I’m sure she has several fantastic options and will do well wherever she chooses. Like one of the PPs I had a magical time there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Location isn't that great either. Very far from the beach and downtown LA, very smoggy.

It's one of those cases where "it's great because everyone thinks it's great".

Basically the beaches are at one end of LA county and the school is at the other. DD really liked the campus - as well as Pitzer - but the drive from our hotel in Santa Monica to the Claremont campuses, then back in one hot afternoon was not lost on her.

Yeah, it makes sense that the beaches are in part of LA county that’s … by … the … ocean.

LA is one of the US' largest counties and is roughly 800 square miles larger than a combined Delaware and Rhode Island. Most 17 and 18 year olds don't know that. They hear LA, they think of Hollywood, the beaches, so yeah, they are not imagining driving 50 miles from one end of the county to the other.

Around 5 miles from campus, according to GoogleMaps. Nice!

Why does everyone assume this is why a student wants to go to Pomona OR that students/families who consider Pomona do not know where it is located? Perhaps your view if LA is beaches and Hollywood...but that doesn't mean everyone else's does.

Our child is interested in Pomona and the only way LA is remotely involved is that it makes it close enough to transportation so that getting there from accoss the country is not a nightmare. They have no interest in the beach or Hollywood. They like the idea of nice weather and are far more interested in exploring internal land features of CA via trips while they are there (Joshua Tree/Yosemite/Redwoods/Desert). They like the school because of the small size of the college with access to 7000 kids over multiple schools. They like a place where kids live on campus 4 years as a community.

Please. DC lives on the East coast and had never been to California, but is a creature of social media. So yeah, thoughts of the beach popped when they first heard that Pomona, which was suggested to them by their college counselor, is in LA. That doesn't seem so far-fetched.

DC ultimately decided they wanted a school that was not that far from home as well as easily accessible to the outdoors - right outside their dorm door. They are now at a top NESCAC.

It’s in LA County. Big county. Ocean and mountains. Trees too. Last I checked, Pomona was easily accessible to the outdoors.

Clearly,
you haven't been there. There are trees on campus, but it's in a desert wasteland. There are hills behind it. It's flat. very flat. That's
what Claremont/Ontario is. FLAT. And no one from out there would say it's in Los Angeles County. It's on the far east end of Los Angeles county near San Bernardino. Do you have any idea how big Los Angeles County is? And that descriptor isn't a positive anymore.

These are the “hills” PP is talking about, they include a 10,000 foot “hill.” My kid who is at one of the 5Cs spends a lot of time in the Angeles National Forest because it’s right nearby.

Around 5 miles from campus, according to googlemaps. Nice!

When I was there I never heard of anyone going to Mt Baldy. That photo is deceptive, a view of the mountains is very uncommon, mostly they are obscured by smog.

The way I would describe the area around campus for many miles is “boring suburbia” - somewhat like if you went to GMU.

There’s nothing like Claremont Village in the hellscape known as nova.

There is no Clairemont “Villagr”. Nice try. There isn’t even a google if Yelp on it. I know well. It’s a N/S street with some mom and pop stores on it in tge middle or sprawl. Old town Fairfax is much more interesting. Actually so is Alexandria, and so on