There are restrictions on majors in almost every field at almost every school. Love music but don't play an instrument or sing? Can't major in music performance in any competitive department. Want to major in bio but tanked your STEM courses freshman year? GPA won't be high enough to declare until you raise it. Undeclared rising junior who suddenly decided on French? Likely can't get proficiency fast enough to graduate on time. Want study business at school x but didn't make the bar for direct admit? Could be out of luck.

Where Pomona screwed up was in laying out a lottery system in writing for people to criticize. An objective application process would be preferable (and maybe they'll eventually go there), or even a direct admit process for freshmen.

Anonymous wrote:What other top colleges limit / restrict who can major in CS? My DC at a STEM magnet had pomona on their list. I don't think Pomona is very transparent about this with prospective applicants.

Middlebury has no restriction, but overenrollment and faculty retention have made it so much fewer classes are being offered. Swarthmore has had significant enrollment issues for years and currently caps the amount of CS classes you can take to 8, and you have to join a lottery to join another. Haverford has lotteries and course caps and also has been struggling with cs overcrowding and hiring issues for years.

I kind of respect Pomona faculty for putting its foot down and addressing that they will not stretch professors and class space thin for overcrowded classes, which is not the point of a 90k/year education

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Huge red flag

Yep. Any college that charges you private school fees MUST allow you to pick any major. Don't think Pomona is worth the $$ if one of their top majors is not guaranteed.

I can't imagine this won't become a growing issue at these liberal arts colleges. They've been able to hire armies of Econ faculty who can merge with political science, minority studies, and history departments, but CS faculty tend to do one role. When you're a liberal arts college and 1/4 of your graduating class is in CS, and with how slow hiring occurs in higher education, I can't imagine how many alternatives faculty tried before landing on this decision. There's also not many jobs a CS major can get that an applied math major can't, and their math major is handling demand fine as the third most popular major from knowledge.

Anonymous wrote:
Pomona isn't in Silicon Valley....

Can you get a bus to Pomona?

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Huge red flag

Yep. Any college that charges you private school fees MUST allow you to pick any major. Don't think Pomona is worth the $$ if one of their top majors is not guaranteed.

Anonymous wrote:If you were a good computer scientist and lived in silicon valley, why in the world would you teach for $150k a year at Pomona when you could pull $500k (or more, if youre really good or are part of a startup) in private industry.

This is the issue.

Pomona isn't in Silicon Valley....

What other top colleges limit / restrict who can major in CS? My DC at a STEM magnet had pomona on their list. I don't think Pomona is very transparent about this with prospective applicants.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've hired plenty of software developers; Pomona is highly regarded.

To me it's disappointing but not shocking that a school with even its resources has to cap the number of CS majors. That's been going on for decades at larger public universities, and it was probably always a matter of time before we saw it happening at well endowed privates.

What's more disturbing, frankly, is the description posted about who gets to major. As I understand things, it comes down to random luck regarding who gets to register for the overcrowded classes before the deadline to declare. That's not how it should work. The best students should be given priority. Those with a higher GPA in related courses should have some registration advantage over those who did worse. I would be livid if I had a 4.0 child lose a seat in the major to someone with, say, a 3.0 because of pure randomness. Hopefully I am misreading things.

Don't forget kids who can pre-register like athletes.

Athletes don't pre-register at Pomona. Never even knew colleges did that but sounds ridiculous. CS does have a pre-pre registration process however, and it's putting your name into the hat for lottery

Seriously this! Seven students are barred from the major and people are transferring out this year, because the college "can't handle" the influx of students interested. They were dumb enough to only hire 6 professors to teach Computer Science in a college in Southern California, how stupid! It's not even a liberal arts college or CS issue, since small colleges like Hamilton and Middlebury in the middle of nowhere don't experience this crisis. It's a Pomona crisis. No support for the professors who have to teach, research collaborate with, and advise 80 students with a small professor helper count. You can't even escape to Harvey Mudd, since they're dealing with their own crisis from their students, Scipps, Pitzer, and Claremont Mckenna. If your kid wants to come for Math/Applied math, the department is amazing and massive, while still having easy-to-enroll classes, but if you're at all interested in computer science, stay away.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh…not like Pomona is known for its CS. My guess is it is the typical kids all selecting a major that they are told makes them most marketable.

I don’t know many HS kids interested in CS that have Pomona on their list. Admittedly, the list may be different if you live on the West Coast.

This is all wrong. Google used to interview for entry software engineering positions/internships at Pomona. No idea if they still do, but they used to be super picky about schools. The Pomona CS program is well-regarded.

Yes, Pomona is well regarded at Google (and within big tech more generally). Kids can still take classes at Harvey Mudd and CMC, right? Skillset wise, I'd advise against being too narrowly focused on CS as an undergrad anyway.

They are trying to bar kids from the major by making it impossible to get the intro classes needed. Students should just take the same class at another school and declare the major. Their art history department has 6 professors- the same as CS even though almost a quarter of the students want to major in CS. It's not the kids' fault- it's the administration who don't know how to allocate resources

The problem is that Harvey Mudd is smart and knows that the students at the other schools want to take CS, so they make it difficult for Non-Harvey Mudd, and Pomona agreed that the Harvey Mudd courses won’t count towards your major (and you can’t do off-campus major at Pomona, because we let everyone mooch off of us and major here). The reason Pomona can’t get professors has little to do with the pay or the amount of students who’d be in the classes, it’s because Pomona requires a senior thesis for almost every major, including cs, which burdens professors.

Anonymous wrote:Can’t Pomona students cross register at Harvey Mudd?

Yes, but cs is near impossible to get into as an off campus student outside the first class

This makes me so angry I wish I had a kid in high school so I’d have a list off which I would scratch the name Pomona. 😃

Can’t Pomona students cross register at Harvey Mudd?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are HILARIOUS. "Inexcusable"..."Crossing off the list"..."what are AOs doing" Pomona has a 7% acceptance. Your sweetheart isn't going to be accepted anyway. Karen all you want, they don't need your kid's application.

It's not hilarious. It is an unreasonable risk to take if you know you want to study CS.

Then apply to one of the other 2,000 colleges in the U.S.

Anonymous wrote:These posts are HILARIOUS. "Inexcusable"..."Crossing off the list"..."what are AOs doing" Pomona has a 7% acceptance. Your sweetheart isn't going to be accepted anyway. Karen all you want, they don't need your kid's application.

It's not hilarious. It is an unreasonable risk to take if you know you want to study CS.