seriously considering pomona college as an ED option, but the fact that i’m not 100% set in… well you see the problem. i’m a socal resident and don’t mind staying close to home. over my high school years i’ve changed from wanting to be an anesthesiologist, to an environmental engineer, to a marketing manager/business manager. i know for a fact my wants and needs will definitely change throughout the course of college, but strictly looking at what i hope to achieve at the moment, it is an mba.
although pomona college doesn’t have an undergraduate business school, i still like it because it focuses on pre-professionalism and career development which carries a little more weight when it comes to attaining job experience after graduation. i also know that most jobs go to ucla/usc graduates in the LA area, but that they’re still very accessible to pomona graduates as well.
i’m someone who is open minded, creative, and enthusiastic and would love to have various options open. perhaps double major in economics and biology? or take up a research opportunity over the summer w some professors? if pomona isn’t a good match for me, what would be? others im looking into are johns hopkins, boston college, usc, mckenna, brown, and a handful of uc’s including ucla, sd, and berkeley. let me know!!
If you’re not feeling absolute love for Pomona, it would be a very bad idea to apply ED. If anything, I’d peg you more as a potential CMC student. That’s not to say that you couldn’t flourish and do well at Pomona, which is a wonderful school (like CMC).
Have you visited both campuses? If you’re in SoCal, they’ll expect you to do so.
You can double major in bio and econ pretty much anywhere. You can find research opportunities pretty much anywhere. Most schools have creative open-minded students who arrive ‘undecided’ as to their majors and their futures.
Rather than jumping on Pomona ED, it sounds like you need to spend some time thinking through your other selection criteria - cost, size, weather, what part of the country you want to be in, what kind of ‘vibe’ you want. If a Pomona-type experience is what you are looking for, then check out other LACs or schools with LAC-like characteristics. If it’s the big state U experience, then expand that list. Right now, you’re all over the map so it’s hard to give you an constructive advice.
If you haven’t done so already, visit multiple times. Eat several meals in the cafeteria, talk with students and professors and sit in on at least a couple of upper level classes, if they’ll permit it.
Pomona is a good fit for a lot of people, but looking at what you’ve written, @levygvbby, I’d encourage you to look elsewhere. Pomona’s administration is trying to make us look like a more preprofessional place in their branding, but that’s mostly a reaction to the fact that, historically, we’ve been one of the least preprofessional colleges in the country, and many students want us to stay that way. The liberal arts mentality here is about learning for the sake of learning, not for the sake of getting a high-status, high-paying job. We don’t offer degrees in anesthesiology, environmental engineering (or any engineering, for that matter), marketing, business management, or business in general.
CMC is much more preprofessional (along with a number of other traits), so consider there. Also places like UPenn.
@sdkb01 – You act like “learning for the sake of learning” and being successful professionally are mutually exclusive. Or maybe your comment comes out of a mentality that anyone who strives for success is a future oppressor (member of the 1%). It appears that you’re applying a litmus test regarding the purity of one’s motives, and don’t want Pomona polluted by anyone who aspires to personal success.
I’m an anesthesiologist (one of the career choices that you mention pejoratively) who took enough semester courses of philosophy at a small LAC to graduate as a philosophy major. I took a year off in the middle of college to do community service, not to advance my career, but because I saw a cause that cried out for it. My hospital is the trauma center for a county of a million people, and I’ve done a lot of uncompensated care in the middle of the night for victims of drive-by shootings, drug-related robberies and assaults, etc. – members of the ‘community’ who are given the best of care under the worst of circumstances. So I feel like I’ve done some good. My wife and I are pretty philanthropic, including sizable donations to my old LAC, helping kids attend who otherwise couldn’t afford to. Or maybe you think that scholarship money for financial-need simply falls out of the sky.
So you might want to think a bit more before adopting what appears to be a holier-than-thou attitude about those who aspire to professional success. Some of us who went on to medical, law, and business schools did more ‘learning for the sake of learning’ than those who were there allegedly for that purpose, as they were too busy congratulating themselves on their intellectual and moral purity.
@sdkb01@AsleepAtTheWheel I agree that what I’ve said above can be perceived as selfish, but I think not! Of course, who doesn’t want their share in life’s stronghold of financial stability and success? I am all for learning for the sake of learning; I merely mentioned pre-professionalism because I do think as part of a college it’s important that students are able to write persuasively and think critically, but also be given the chance to exercise those skills outside of the classroom. I’m someone who is looking to pay for college myself as I’ve grown up in a hard neighborhood and my family isn’t all too well off, so the whole career-oriented aspect of a college and how well they will be able to prepare me for the future is something that retains heavy weight in my school choice. But, nevertheless, thank you for the input!