Reply to Why is Pomona so special?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Why is Pomona so special?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I went to Pomona in the 90s. Almost nobody showed up under the illusion that it was near the beach, the nightlife of LA, etc. There were however a ton of us who took advantage of hiking in the foothills, camping in Joshua Tree, or longer weekend trips to those other parts of LA/CA that were too far for a typical weeknight... but by and large there was plenty to do on-campus (and the broader 5-college campus). There were large weekend parties, and a touch of greek life, none of which I engaged in too heavily (I didn't drink in college, though most of my friends did).

I loved dorm life at Pomona, and yes there was a lot of focus on academics but it wasn't oppressive, plenty of sports and clubs and lectures and concerts and other activities of all stripes to engage in no matter your niche/preference. I was the type who wanted to sample a bit of everything so this worked great for me, I was always hopping about campus attending as many things as I could (and learned my Freshman year that I needed to dial back and couldn't do EVERYTHING... I went a bit overboard at first).

One weird thing was so many of my peers during the first week commenting they loved how "diverse" Pomona was, when I looked around I saw like 80% white kids, whereas I came from a high school that was more like 50% white, and also seemed most Pomona kids were from more affluent backgrounds compared to my HS. It does seem Pomona has diversified since (recent student body profiles looking much more like my HS experience).

I had good relationships with most of my professors, including a couple who I would dog-sit for, and one who taught me to drive stick-shift (so that I could drive his truck to pick him and his partner up from the airport when they returned home).

Contrast to a few classes I took at UCLA during 12th grade where I didn't ever have 1:1 time, two out of three of my TA-led study sessions (weekly supplement to prof lecture) where the TA's accent was so thick I really struggled to follow what they were saying, and one class I learned several months later that an acquaintance of mine (who was Freshman at UCLA) was in the same class, but we never saw each other (it was one of those intro-level multi-hundred student courses). Overall, I was just socially intimidated by the size/scope of the UCLA campus as an 18yo and realized a smaller community in the 1-8k student range was for me.

The linked blog about selecting your own criteria and ranking is good advice too IMO. It's not about which school is objectively "best", but which is best for a given student. Part of that is if you have a specific field you know you want to pursue, but also how much you value student experiences vs. academics vs. "door-opening" for jobs and/or grad school, etc. Do I think Scripps is a "better" school than Williams in some broad abstract sense? No. Williams is clearly the more prestigious and challenging school. But is Scripps a "better" option than Williams for _some_ students, where they will be more likely to thrive and go on to long-term career success? Yep, 100%.[/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