Reply to Amherst or Pomona?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Amherst or Pomona? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Both great schools in very different settings. I don’t think there is any real similarity on the “5 college consortium” front. That’s a very loose consortium in the case of Amherst. Pomona and the other four Claremont consortium colleges border each other and kids are always on the others’ campuses for parties, or on the way to town, or for classes. There is a lot of cross-enrollment.

It’s also extremely difficult to get into Pomona from around here as an unhooked student. Your odds of acceptance are much lower than the already low acceptance rate would suggest. At Amherst, a significant portion of the students are athletes. This is not true a Pomona, though Pomona-Pitzer has some excellent teams. [/quote]
I don’t agree with this at all in terms of the 5-college consortium: there is a free bus system, UMass is on the other side of downtown Amherst (you can walk), and it is easy to get to Mount Holyoke and Smith. There are several 5 college majors and programs, and advanced Amherst students have the opportunity to even take graduate classes at UMass. Also think about the intellectual synergy created by 5 colleges all within 15 minutes of each other in terms of lectures, activities, movies — everything. We are talking, “which famous person can I see speak at which college this week.” I cannot speak to Pomona, but that consortium does not have nearly the same critical mass of students.

Amherst has a ton of athletes (35-40%) and a big athlete divide (problems with them living together exclusively etc.) It is also very big on recruiting URMs. Since athletes are disproportionately white, it creates a very polarized dynamic. (Amherst got rid of legacy, but athletic recruiting favors whites way more than legacy, both in terms of sheer numbers and the magnitude of the admissions boost, so there is just a tad of hypocrisy there.).

From an admissions standpoint, Amherst is probably a tougher admit for white, non-athlete applicants than is Pomona, for the reasons stated…[/quote]
I really doubt that if you are talking about white students from the DMV, even with the athletics factor taken into account. Amherst is slightly bigger, 1970 or so to Pomona’s 1700 or so, and Amherst is 51% white (https://www.amherst.edu/admission/diversity) to Pomona’s 34% (https://www.pomona.edu/administration/diversity-pomona/facts-glance).  Also, around 1/4 of each incoming class at Pomona is from California most years.[/quote]

Amherst has 40% white domestic students. It’s athletes (data is I think 2017) are 74% white. Pomona has a high proportion of Asian students — I was referring to URMs. [/quote]

Here's the data according to the recent CDS:

Amherst- 10% international, 15% Hispanic of any origin, 10% black, 39% white, 0.5% native american, 15% asian, 7.5% multiracial, 2% unknown
Pomona- 11% international, 16% Hispanic of any origin, 9% black, 34% white, 0.7% native american, 17% asian, 8% multiracial, 4% unknown

all in all, very much comparable in diversity if not indistinguishable. no major difference in Asians, URMs, etc. 
[/quote]
Interesting (surprised the Asian percentage, especially, at Pomona is so low), but here’s the overall point: 35% of Amherst students are athletes and 70% or so of athletes are white. Even taking into account that a very small percentage of athletes are international students, most of the white domestic students at Amherst are varsity athletes. That’s perverse. Couple that with very, very strong URM recruiting (think about what a relatively rural place like Amherst has to do to get the numbers Pomona has), first gen whites, and geographically diverse whites, and your typical high stats, non-athlete white kid has almost no chance of RD admission (competing for the remaining 10% of spots in the entire class, when this is by far the largest applicant pool). My gut tells me Pomona would be a slightly easier admit for that type of student, where he or she might not be quite as squeezed out by Amherst’s dual and contradictory institutional priorities of athletics and URM recruitment. But I could be wrong — maybe admission to either school is near impossible.

[/quote]

Facts.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics