Columbia, Pomona, U'Chicago, or Rice?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>These were my top choices and I'm going to choose from them...not expecting to get in at Stanford. I got into all of them[Likely to Columbia!] so these are the four I'll most likely contemplate.</p>

<p>Pomona gave me a full ride with a 1.1K work study. For Rice, I need to pay around 1.5K a year. For U'Chicago, I have to pay 5K a year, and I haven't received a financial aid package from Columbia yet. My major choices are chemistry and economics.</p>

<p>I'm hinging on Pomona since I might be able to attend graduate school with the other schools, but I'd really appreciate your opinions :)</p>

2

<p>Wow you sound so similar to me when I was choosing. I also had to decide between Columbia (like you, got a likely) and Pomona with similar aid packages. I was also very interested in chemistry and economics (I am currently an economics major). I didn’t apply to Rice or UChicago so I’ll leave them out of my comparison. </p>

<p>I chose Pomona and think you should too.</p>

<p>I have experience in both major departments you’re looking at–I’m majoring in economics, I’ve taken chemistry at Pomona, and a lot of friends are chemistry majors–and in my opinion you will not find a better undergraduate education in either field at a different school. Don’t give too much weight to name brand/Nobel-winning professors…go read their books if it means that much. The quality of teaching matters far more, and at Pomona it’s as good as it gets. </p>

<p>Pomona is offering you a full ride. </p>

<p>In my opinion there is a palpable difference between the people at Pomona and Columbia. Pomona students are the friendliest people I have ever met. Columbia is on the East Coast…it’s a different vibe. More intense/Ivy League/preppy. </p>

<p>The Pomona community is small but expandable through the other 5C colleges. Columbia is considerably bigger and more impersonal. Your experience at Pomona will generally be campus-focused, and what a beautiful campus it is. And when you need to get out, thankfully the outdoors (beach AND mountains) are super close by. Columbia is city-centric. Manhattan is amazing, but it’ll be a totally different campus culture. This was the hardest area of comparison for me because I really do like Manhattan. </p>

<p>Pomona takes care of you. Freshman sponsor groups (I’m a junior and they’re still my best friends), Orientation Adventure, 47-Things Trips, School-sponsored parties and events, school-subsidized trips all over the place from Vegas to Venice Beach. Small offices in academic departments that know you by sight and name. Close relationships with not just faculty, but the administrators too. The school took care of all my study abroad expenses, including airfare, living expenses and incidentals. Pomona also paid for my airfare and hotel expenses during a career development trip around Silicon Valley this last winter break. You will have dinner as sponsor group with the Vice-President/Freshman Dean as a freshman, and dinner with the President as a senior. Columbia, on the other hand, is famous for its horribly inefficient and red tape-choked bureaucracy. Ask any student there (maybe they got better in the last 2-3 years, but there is no way it comes close to Pomona). </p>

<p>Now, the Ivy League and lay-person prestige of Columbia is not to be underestimated. But since being at Pomona, I don’t think it matters for much at all. You will have no trouble getting into the best grad schools coming out of Pomona. All that’s important is that the people who matter know how good of a school Pomona is. And they do. I got summer internship interviews at the most prestigious consulting firms on the planet in large part because I could put Pomona at the top of my resume. </p>

<p>Again, I don’t know much about UChicago or Rice, but my humble opinion is that you can easily eliminate Rice. It’s not quite in the same class as the others. I can also tell you that UChicago and Pomona have very different student bodies…Pomona students are probably just as intellectual, but they’re too laid back about it to reach UChicago levels of intensity. </p>

<p>If you come to Pomona (and you should) you won’t be the first or last to turn down such other great schools. But I feel pretty strongly about your choice since its pretty similar to the one I had to make three years ago. </p>

<p>MOST importantly. You just gotta visit. A visit is worth a thousand guidebooks or anonymous internet postings on a college forum.</p>

<p>Feel free to message me if you have more detailed questions about Pomona. If you decide to visit, let me know and I’d be happy to show you around. I’m doing the same for another prospective student in two days. And I’m always excited to meet one of my brother’s future classmates. (My brother applied ED and will also be a freshman this fall).</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

3

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<p>The wonderful thing about the University of Chicago is that you don’t have to give up world-class research activities to also get small classes and excellent teachers. Chicago’s philosophy has always been that teaching and research complement each other. Scholarship is enlightened by continual exposure to the kinds of basic questions that undergraduates ask; teaching is improved by continuous engagement in knowledge-discovery. This interdisciplinary balance of teaching and research is an important element of the intellectual energy for which Chicago is so well known. </p>

<p>Chicago can’t rival Southern California for beaches and sunshine. I don’t think Pomona can rival Chicago for sheer intellectual energy (neither in Chicago’s most respected departments such as economics, nor in Chicago’s approach to big interdisciplinary problems in the undergraduate Core). </p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, Pomona is excellent. You can do very well with an education from either school. So in my opinion, unless the cost difference is a deciding factor, you should try to visit both schools (and maybe the others) to decide which one has the atmosphere you prefer.</p>

4

<p>You need to visit them. I agree about Pomona and the 5C atmosphere. I do think you shouldn’t rule out Rice without a visit.</p>

5

<p>Well I’m from Houston and I really loved Rice. Quirky student body, awesome location, just all-around awesome. Loved the professors and loved the campus, and I met some grad schools who let me see their facilities, which are top notch. The problem is I’ve been living in Houston for so long I’m not sure if I want to be there for 4 years of my undergrad. </p>

<p>I also visited Pomona during the fall. Beautiful, beautiful campus. The weather was amazing, they took us out to tour SoCal to show how accessible everything was, really incredible and brilliant professor-student connections in the classes I was in, really friendly people who seemed to maintain a good balance between extracurriculars and school. Visited the consortium too and all of them were amazing schools. The only real problems are that no one knows about Pomona :confused: and it seems to have a bad alumni network, but it felt right at home when I visited.</p>

<p>Chicago, in my opinion, is the finest undergraduate education one could receive due to the intellectualism not just inside the class but outside as well. I really admire Chicago’s strengths in multiple disciplines and know the program will take me far. The problems I’m having are stress and Chicago’s weakness in the more subtle elements of college life, but I am open to change. Don’t think I can visit because I’m really low income and they said they won’t pay for me. </p>

<p>Haven’t visited Columbia and don’t think I can, but I love the Core, I am an active urban person who’ll probably visit NYC quite often, and they have top notch programs in economics.</p>