Why is Pomona so special?
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Anonymous
I participated in an admissions webinar during which the AO discussed a recent visit by the dean of Harvard Law School who came out to discuss options at HLS with students. |
Anonymous
HLS visits all the tops LACs. But it is a good signal. There is no question Pomona has very high caliber students. |
Anonymous
Lol. People don't pick Pomona thinking it's prestigious. They pick it for a myriad of other great reasons. |
Anonymous
Exactly. This conversation seems to be people on one side of the country speculating with low information. At my large UMC high school in a Western state, the 5Cs were very much known and it wasn't about the beach or LA. NESCAC were not talked about, people who went East focused on Ivy's. No doubt that's changed. But 5Cs were the stealth wealth move, and came with same bragging rights and trappings as the Eastern SLACs would in the East. |
Anonymous
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I'm not 12:35 & I also went to Pomona in the 90s. I was deeply involved in Greek life, which doesn't exist anymore. Most of us who were there in the early 90s remember the point at which they flipped from admitting the spiky kids I knew (who were brilliant but typically had super strong interests) to the generally top of your class valedictorian types. There was a real shift that happened.
Agree with a lot of above posters: Pomona was not at all diverse when I attended so I am glad they've improved that. I also have noticed as an alum that this has gone hand in hand with equity initiatives like providing funding for summer internships internally from the college. That's appealing to me as a parent. My kid was not impressed with the Claremonts except for Harvey Mudd (STEM kid) & didn't end up applying bz they wanted a more urban experience & a bigger school. I loved going there & think for the right kid, having thhe 5 colleges & a tiny college home base with the option to cross register & expand your social network as you go can be very nice. Went hiking in the mountains & to Joshua Tree more than I went to the beach, but the warm weather was great. Small classes, teachers & fellow students who still have deep bonds 30 years later made it a special place. |
Anonymous
Know tons who've turned down ivies or equivalent for Pomona. Pomona decidedly attracts a distinct group of students who are focused but not prestige obsessed. |
Anonymous
1) Because the specific metrics might not be perfect ways to capture the thing you are hoping to measure. For example, one might look at "acceptance rate" as a measure of selectivity--but it is distorted by things like a large percentage of garbage international applications, yield control games and doesn't reflect quality of the applicants. I noted how diversity metrics could skew favorably towards west coast schools because of larger Asian and Hispanic populations but that might not really capture what the student is thinking. The devil is in the details with these metrics and as you noted some schools don't even report. Arbitrary cutoffs like 10% or 20% can be problematic. The fact that you are referecning some data set doesn't make the analysis higher quality--just provides a false sense of scientific precision. Common sense can tell you which schools have better or worse diversity, paired with a sensible interpretation of various metrics. I really think all these schools are aggressively committed to diversity for the most part, so it shouldn't be a variable. 2) I am indeed making an assumption that most grown up who live in the real world understand one school has a significantly stronger reputation and alumni network than the other. Ok, so maybe Scripps has a better Aztec pottery program than Williams. Who cares? 3) I am saying USNWR uses important variables that any sensible person would consider. I cant' get into an epistemological debate over the nature of truth. Folks can agree or disagree with my judgment call here. 4) I am all for kids using their own judgment. My advice to a kid would be to look at the best schools they can get into in a conventional sense such as USNWR and then within fairly wide bands pick the one that is most appealing to you. So if you are top 10 LAC kid, focus on the ones you like best. If you are 10-30, focus on those. 30-50 focus on those. But don't pick a 50th ranked school when you got into Amherst because you ran some goofy screen. You don't have to be a slave to the conventional perceptions but don't ignore them. You will regret having done so when you hit the real world 5-10 years later. In general, the conventionally higher ranked schools have stronger students, more resources, better networks and better reputations. All of which means they have more to offer everyone. This doesn't mean automatically favor school 11 over school 12 just because it is ranked higher. |
Anonymous
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. |
Anonymous
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. |
Anonymous
Nobody is showing up at these schools with a snorkel, this is a silly argument. Now my nephew is at a beach house in SD right now for spring break, which was easier to line up than if he were in another state, the sun *might* make an appearance, been a rainy month. |
Anonymous
| I’m a little concerned that Pomona is a recruiting ground for Antifa. More than one Antifa agitators arrested lately seem to have privileged backgrounds and Pomona on their resume. |
Anonymous
You can always ask if they will share some data on earnings by major with you. College-wide earning comparisons are truly idiotic. A CS major or Econ major at Pomona is going to do quite well but lots of students go into lower earning fields or choose less lucrative majors unlike at Harvey Mudd or MIT. I know multiple large tech companies recruit from Pomona (and other LACs like Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams). Remember that the founders of KKR (the top or one of the top few private equity firms) went to Claremont McKenna and Swarthmore for undergrad. |
Anonymous
They're 17-18, not 7, and hopefully a child who is considering Pomona has the good sense to look at a map before booking the tour or putting down the deposit. |
Anonymous
Swat is highly selective and has tended to win the head-to-head admissions "battles" against Amherst and Williams (pretty significantly on the imperfect Parchment site). I guess I'm probably off about Princeton being that way relative to Yale and Harvard though. Looking at Parchment, both are preferred to Princeton by a statistically significant margin. Swat might not like that comparison now other than the more southern location  . It was mostly that the primary names and rivalry in the Ivy League involve Harvard and Yale (and not Princeton), despite Princeton being a great school that many find at least on par with the other 2 for undergrads). It is like that for SLACs where Williams and Amherst have a huge rivalry (that carries on in sports today too) and many mention them if they only say two names and are asked about the best small schools.
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Anonymous
This can’t be true. 22-year old Accounting majors from JMU or Loyola make that. |