<p>What is it this year?</p>
<p>12.8% for RD. I don’t know the combined ED/RD rate, though.</p>
<p>12.8% actually is the overall rate, with ED and RD combined. There were 7,457 total applications and 956 total admits. The RD rate was obviously a little lower.</p>
<p>Here’s the link: [Ringing</a> the Bell: Pomona College Sends Admit Letters For the Class of 2016 - Pomona College](<a href=“http://www.pomona.edu/news/2012/03/20-admit-letters.aspx]Ringing”>http://www.pomona.edu/news/2012/03/20-admit-letters.aspx)</p>
<p>[Ivy</a> League colleges post record low acceptance rates - Mar. 30, 2012](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/30/pf/college/acceptance_rates_ivy_league/]Ivy”>Ivy League colleges post record low acceptance rates - Mar. 30, 2012)</p>
<p>Wow, Penn’s acceptance rate was 12.3%, so Pomona was pretty close to that…</p>
<p>Comparing U Penn’s acceptance rate and Pomona’s is like comparing apples and oranges. So fewer people know about or apply to Pomona in the first place that it makes successful admission into Pomona much more difficult than the 12.8 percent rate lets on.</p>
<p>Pretty sure Pomona will be third most selective LAC this year, after CMC(12.4%) and Amherst(expecting anywhere from 11-12.5%)</p>
<p>It’s true that Pomona seeks to round out a class with many elements of diversity taken into account: geographic, athletic, international, socio-economic, ethnic, special talent, etc. And when there are only 400 spots in a class, the figures do belie the actual difficulty of admission. That said 12.8% overall is quite low – and, in coming years, likely to get lower.</p>
<p>Re:nostalgicwisdom</p>
<p>where did you find the statistic on CMC’s acceptance rate?</p>
<p>Here’s one source: [Acceptance</a> Rates Tumble Across Most Of Ivy League](<a href=“http://www.businessinsider.com/university-acceptance-class-2016-2012-3]Acceptance”>Acceptance Rates Tumble Across Most of Ivy League)</p>
<p>Are the most selective liberal arts colleges the hardest to get into? With that being said, is it harder to get into Pomona than into Williams College?</p>
<p>Certainly, you’d expect acceptance rate and difficulty of admission to be highly correlated. It’s likely that some schools have a more self-selective applicant pool (Harvey Mudd), but I don’t see any compelling reason to think that this would be more true for Williams than Pomona.</p>
<p>Wait what?</p>
<p>lockn is saying that not all applicant pools are the same; however, Pomona’s and Williams’ are likely to be fairly similar. You can assume that selectivity numbers and difficulty of admission will be fairly well correlated for these two schools. If you check median SAT/ACT scores for admits, you might have a better sense of minor differences in the student populations.</p>
<p>Are you trying to decide between Williams and Pomona? They’re both great institutions and I think anyone with knowledge of them might hesitate to reduce a decision to a numbers game. That said, the Williams board is probably the best place to ask for specifics about their admissions process this year. Good luck!</p>
<p>He’s saying that yes, acceptance rates and the difficulty of admission are related. However, it’s not always the case, because some applicant pools might be more self-selecting. Although Harvey Mudd may have a higher acceptance rate than Pomona, that may be because there are merely fewer unqualified applicants (as Mudd is a very specialized school, and less well-known), and it is just as difficult to get into Mudd. Then, it’s reasonable to say that this correlation between acceptance rates and admission difficulty would apply to Williams, a similar school to Pomona.</p>
<p>I’d also like to point out the admission rates of CMC and Pomona this year. Although CMC has a slightly lower admission rate, it advertises itself a lot more than Pomona, and thus isn’t necessarily harder to get into.</p>
<p>CMC also had a bit of a housing crunch this year and because of this admitted a smaller class than usual</p>