<p>Hey I'm a member of Pomona's class of 2011...I've been doing research on grad school placement from LAC's like Pomona, Williams, Amherst, etc, and I noticed that despite the fact that Pomona is routinely compared to Williams/Amherst, that Pomona has a lower acceptance rate (16% vs. 17.4% from Williams, for example) and comparable if not higher avg SAT scores, it still fares poorly in grad school placement when compared to Amherst/Williams and even Swarthmore. For example, there are 2x as many Amherst and Williams grads in the entering class for Yale/Harvard Law school than there are Pomona grads; similarly, the WSJ ranks Williams #5 in grad school placement vs Pomona's 13. And while Pomona grads might simply prefer the west coast environment for grad school, it's not as if Stanford is being flooded by Pomona grads either. Is it a matter of prestige in terms of Pomona vs. the established eastern LAC's? Do East coast schools have better connections with elite institutions? Or is the student body just driven in a different intellectual direction? Hopefully someone can shed some light on this...</p>
<p>Both of your indicators aren't really that good. First, looking at Y/H law numbers isn't good because you don't know how many students from both Pomona and Williams/Amherst/Swarthmore applied, so you can't compare acceptance rates. Also, both Amherst and Williams are larger (slightly) than Pomona. Secondly, the WSJ rankings are poor because it only takes into account 5 or so of the top professional schools, not graduate schools. The list can be found on the WSJ site. I'm sure Pomona grads do fine with graduate placement, and law school doesn't emphasize undergraduate school.
However, it is general considered true that with LACs, it is often more difficult to get into graduate school because there isn't a significant quantity of research going on and often, undergradautes cannot take graduate level courses because they're not offered. So if you're looking into a Ph.D, you might find trouble. However, if you're looking for law school have a 3.7 and a 170 and hope for a few of the Top 14.</p>
<p>Hungryman, I'm a third year at Pomona. I don't think you should worry too much about what the class percentages are. Once you get here, you'll see that many many student do great things after college beyond law school. In any case, if you're looking to go to law school, it shouldn't matter what the percentages are anyways. Schools believe that Pomona is a prestigious school and that should be enough for you. Your part is to get as high a GPA and LSAT score as possible.</p>
<p>According to that 2003 WSJ article/ranking, <a href="http://www.legaled.com/feeder.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.legaled.com/feeder.htm</a> <a href="#13">quote</a> Pomona College in California ... sent a higher proportion of its kids to Harvard Law this fall than (#11) Columbia or (#6) Duke
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Regarding PhDs in general, LACs do better than you might expect. Thanks to this CC post (#30) by I-Dad, <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=343141&page=2&highlight=harvard%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=343141&page=2&highlight=harvard</a> (#15) Pomona does better than(#17) Williams, (#18) Amherst, or (#19) Stanford in PhDs per capita. And much better than (#35) Hopkins ;)</p>
<p>And it is true the student body might lean in a slightly different intellectual direction. From another CC post (#53): <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=4221442&highlight=fulbright#post4221442%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=4221442&highlight=fulbright#post4221442</a></p>
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In no way will your options be limited coming out of Pomona, 23 Fulbright Scholarships were awarded to Pomona students this year ALONE. That's more than almost any university (beat out Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Northwestern, UChicago, Dartmouth, Michigan Cornell and so on) </p>
<p>Also note that some of these universities are much bigger (Cornell is almost 10 times as big Michigan almost 20 times as large), yet Pomona still beat them out in ABSOLUTE numbers. (Not even to mention per capita)
Obviously, Pomona opens doors to let its students go on to do almost whatever they want.
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<p>"Regarding PhDs in general, LACs do better than you might expect. Thanks to this CC post (#30) by I-Dad, <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/</a>
...hlight=harvard (#15) Pomona does better than(#17) Williams, (#18) Amherst, or (#19) Stanford in PhDs per capita. And much better than (#35) Hopkins "</p>
<p>Just to clear something up, Pomona may place graduates better than Amherst or Williams in PhD programs, but a law degree is not a PhD degree. Amherst and Williams does a better job than Pomona in law school placement, although Pomona's law placement rate is nothing to scoff at.</p>
<p>also, i'd bet that a higher percentage of Amherst and Williams grads want to stay on the east coast and apply to Harvard and Yale law, while Pomona grads might prefer Stanford or Boalt.</p>
<p>I'm at Michigan Law and there are a bunch of Pomona students there. If you have good grades and LSAT scores, I don't think Pomona will put you at any disadvantage relative to Amherst/Williams/Swat etc at any law school.</p>
<p>If you're looking at the Wall Street Journal Listings, know that those favor schools in the Northeast, as almost all of the "top grad programs" they evaluated were in the Northeast, and people tend to stay where they are. </p>
<p>As for the Law Schools, I think can't remember exactly which 5 they used, but I think they omitted Stanford, which also indicates the weakness of the ranking (what list of top 5 law schools leaves out stanford)</p>