The new Forbes ranking is out and Pomona College is #1! Regardless of one’s opinion of these rankings, it’s presumably going to boost applications for the class of 2020. http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/
Wow! Thx for posting this…
Congratulations to Pomona College! In one of the videos on the Forbes site the narrator states that Pomona College is the least known of the top 10 schools. That sounds about right. Hopefully some day soon that might change.
I sometimes think that the lack of “big name” recognition is part of Pomona’s charm. My son felt a bit rebellious when he chose Pomona. He certainly made the best choice for him, and has loved his Pomona experience thus far. The opportunities available to students are truly exceptional, and we have seen tremendous personal growth.
And now, when we get the blank stares when someone asks us where he goes to college, we just smile and say “It is a small liberal arts college in southern California, and it is a great school”. 
My memory is that Pomona has been #1 on the Forbes ranking list before, within the last few years. Does anyone think that this current ranking will result in an incread number of applications this fall? If so, not so good for kids who already had Pomona on their radar.
And BTW, here’s another one (with all the caveats regarding rankings in mind):
https://colleges.niche.com/rankings/best-liberal-arts-colleges/
For those who are not familar with it, college.niche.com is a worthwhile site. It has good basic information/statistics for each school, e.g., the number of kids who choose each major at a school, and it also has a lot of interesting user-reviews from students. Some of the kids are pretty clever. My favorite review was by a ‘girl’ at Brandeis, reviewing the quality of the ‘guys’ there. It went something like, “The guys here break down into three ‘G’ categories – gay, got a girlfriend, and God, how drunk would I need to be to have anything to do with him!”
Yes Forbes ranked Pomona #1 in 2013. Here’s a link to a recent article from The Student Life about how after the last time, applications to Pomona made a record jump. http://www.tsl.pomona.edu/articles/2015/2/21/news/6005-after-forbes-ranking-pomona-yield-makes-record-jump. It says that applications increased by 8% but also yield increased from 40% to 47.7%.
@Corinthian – Was that the year where they ended up over-admitting and ended up w too large of a freshman class?
That was the Class of 2018. That’s referenced in the Class of 2019 profile. http://www.pomona.edu/news/2015/03/20-class-of-2019.aspx. Evidently they were surprised by the jump in yield, so they were more conservative with the class of 2019.
Correction to my post #5. Forbes ranked Pomona #2 in 2013.
There’s a pretty nice ABC profile of the news at http://t.co/yW7Bq8DOll/s/hf6i, including a sound bite from President Oxtoby.
Congrats to our kids for being so prescience!
Maybe fewer blank stares in the future when we mention Pomona. Sagehens now rule the roost!
Edit: Wrong thread
Ozzieville, I hear you on the blank stares- or strange comments (i.e. “Oh dear,you mean she has to go to California? Is she going to that Cal Poly school?” It was refreshing to able to share the Forbes link for people we know who’had never heard of Pomona.