If you're white, good luck getting into Pomona

[Anonymous]

I saw this on a College Confidential thread, Pomona's profile for admitted students of this year: https://www.pomona.edu/news/2017/03/17-pomona-college-receives-record-breaking-number-applications-class-2021 It certainly is impressive- 40% valedictorian or salutatorian, 2200 median SAT, 33 ACT, but I found one statistic particularly harrowing:

Only 32% of admitted students are domestic white students. More than 56% are domestic students of color, and an additional 11.4% international students. The U.S. census reports that 63% of U.S. residents were non-Hispanic white, and I'd be extremely surprised if the % of white applicants was much lower than that. Pomona is an elite LAC as well that draws applications from boarding schools, which are even more white than the US census.

This clearly means that AA and the like are happening at schools like Pomona to the extent where white applicants are getting rejected in favor of students of color. See that 8.2% admit rate? It's 4.1% for white students. Don't waste your application if you're a white candidate.

[Anonymous]

If you read the link you posted, the most "non-white" students that were admitted were Asian. The state with the highest number of applicants by far was California. The racial makeup is pretty similar to the population of young people in California.

Nothing to see here..

[Anonymous]

yawn - who cares - enough about this school .

[Anonymous]

Why do you find this "harrowing?" It's a private college, they can admit whoever they like. Maybe the white students weren't up to snuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do you find this "harrowing?" It's a private college, they can admit whoever they like. Maybe the white students weren't up to snuff.

lol yeah right, tell yourself that to justify this sort of thing!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you read the link you posted, the most "non-white" students that were admitted were Asian. The state with the highest number of applicants by far was California. The racial makeup is pretty similar to the population of young people in California.

Nothing to see here..

actually, it was Hispanic, and California admits made up less than 25% of admitted students (less than any other California institution, and that includes Stanford/Caltech). 16.5% of Harvard students come from New England, even though New England only represents 4.7% of the US population. So what does that really mean, even? Most schools, even the ivies, draw students primarily from their home base. Those areas are over-represented relative to the overall population. Does that mean we shouldn't question them?

[Anonymous]

Harrowing! Nobody else can appreciate the kind of discrimination white Americans must face

[Anonymous]

Where were you for all the years that students of color couldn't get accepted to these schools? Were you outraged then? Did you object to the unfair practices?

Get over yourself. White students are doing just fine in the acceptance area for schools throughout the US. Just walk virtually any college campus - plenty of white students.

- Signed a white middle-aged mother of college students who did just fine.

[Anonymous]

Now you know how Asian kids feel...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do you find this "harrowing?" It's a private college, they can admit whoever they like. Maybe the white students weren't up to snuff.

lol yeah right, tell yourself that to justify this sort of thing!!

There is some truth to this. I interview applicants for entry-level jobs that require a bachelor's degree. I'm in Montgomery County. From the pool of applicants I see, women and people of color almost always have MUCH more impressive skill sets and life experiences on their resumes than white men do. (Remember, I'm talking very young recent college grads.) Typically, the recently-graduated white male candidate has a decent GPA in college and has done a semester or a summer internship in some important person's office. That's great. But minority candidates and women bring things like that same GPA, same major, AND being multi-lingual (not just bi-lingual); have created, run, and maintained non-profits; were in the Peace Corps; have much better IT skills than just the generic Microsoft suite; and so on.

It would not surprise me at all if the high schoolers applying for these colleges had similarly-unbalanced applications. I say this as a 50 year old white woman. I've watched the demographics change over the past 30 years, when men used to have the better credentials, to women coming up as equals, and then surpassing them educationally. I'm now exposed to a much larger pool of minority applicants, and see how much more qualified they are.

I'm not saying that's happening at Pomona. I'm saying those of us who are raising white children need to realize the education and employment landscapes are changing. And we can't rest on what our parents did, or what we did.

[Anonymous]

Ahhhh, the smell and sounds of springtime. Robins, cherry blossoms and parents & students complaining about why their student did not get into the school of their choice.

[Anonymous]

Wow you really don't understand statistics.

Maybe you should have paid more attention in college? For that matter you should have paid more attention to your history classes too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do you find this "harrowing?" It's a private college, they can admit whoever they like. Maybe the white students weren't up to snuff.

lol yeah right, tell yourself that to justify this sort of thing!!

There is some truth to this. I interview applicants for entry-level jobs that require a bachelor's degree. I'm in Montgomery County. From the pool of applicants I see, women and people of color almost always have MUCH more impressive skill sets and life experiences on their resumes than white men do. (Remember, I'm talking very young recent college grads.) Typically, the recently-graduated white male candidate has a decent GPA in college and has done a semester or a summer internship in some important person's office. That's great. But minority candidates and women bring things like that same GPA, same major, AND being multi-lingual (not just bi-lingual); have created, run, and maintained non-profits; were in the Peace Corps; have much better IT skills than just the generic Microsoft suite; and so on.

It would not surprise me at all if the high schoolers applying for these colleges had similarly-unbalanced applications. I say this as a 50 year old white woman. I've watched the demographics change over the past 30 years, when men used to have the better credentials, to women coming up as equals, and then surpassing them educationally. I'm now exposed to a much larger pool of minority applicants, and see how much more qualified they are.

I'm not saying that's happening at Pomona. I'm saying those of us who are raising white children need to realize the education and employment landscapes are changing. And we can't rest on what our parents did, or what we did.

+1 - I'm cosigning on this as an African-American tiger mom who pushes her kids to over excel because of past injustice and misconceptions.

All the Pomona stats prove is that there are many well-qualified minority students that can land at a school like Pomona.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow you really don't understand statistics.

Maybe you should have paid more attention in college? For that matter you should have paid more attention to your history classes too.

By the tone of her post she feels her children should be entitled to a spot at a LAC just by virtue of being white. She probably sent them to "good" schools and is terribly upset that other kids are more qualified than hers. That these kids happen to be minoritiesjust adds fuel to the fire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now you know how Asian kids feel...

+1 Some of you white people are completely tone deaf. You want "holistic" approach when it applies to white vs asian, but only want test scores and gpa as factors when it comes to white vs latino/black.