Pomona v Yale v Brown in a STEM field

Until a few days ago, we were trying to decide between Pomona College, Amherst College, and UCLA Engineering School in CS. Leaning toward Pomona College and bought the Pomona hoodie to wear to school.

Then he got accepted by Yale and Brown as well as Berkeley (letters and science CS).

Any thoughts about Yale and Brown that might shed light for CA people not that familiar w these east coast schools?

He is a STEM type of kid, but not committed to any particular major at this point.

We love Pomona College and the consortium. He could take classes at Harvey Mudd (on waitlist there). But . . . . we actually live in Claremont. That has both upsides and downsides. He could come home and practice on his drum set, he would have a car, and have some local friends, and we could see him! But it is a bit disappointing in a way to not go “away” to college.

Pomona as well as Amherst gave us OK aid. The 2 ivies gave us very little.

If he goes east I am concerned about the much higher cost and whether he will fit in.

We are trying to arrange for him to go to admit days at Brown and Yale.

Any thoughts to mull over would be helpful, so thank you for any input.

If you are instate for Cal, that one jumps out at me…and I’m an east coaster.

Lots of good choices.

I vote against being so close to home if possible. Please, please do not encourage your son to have one foot at school and one at home if he ends up close. He needs to immerse himself in the college experience. I was lucky enough to live on campus instead of commuting- a different world. College students should branch out and not miss out because they are stuck in their HS social circle. Today there is Skype et al for visual, not just phone call communication. Many top tier schools do not have a car culture. Don’t worry about him fitting in at a school he chose- likeminded students from all over will be there.

Finances trump other factors. Consider travel costs in the mix- including that car with insurance et al.

Be sure to let go if he ends up close to home. Do NOT expect him for family gatherings et al- only vacations. He needs to have the freedoms of an adult without guilt for not coming home often.

Pomona parent here. We live in AZ so it’s nice to have her a one hour flight away, but given that you live in Claremont that’s just too close in my opinion. I think that if we lived in Claremont, my D would be home every weekend to do laundry, get me to help her run errands, problem solve, etc. So I’d encourage Yale or Brown.

However, if he picks Pomona I’m sure he’ll have a great experience. Keep in mind also that Pomona has a domestic exchange program and he could spend a semester or even a year at Swarthmore if he wanted some variety in his experience. You still pay Pomona so the COA is the same as Pomona.

My daughter went to Pomona, it was a great experience. Agree that money trumps everything here as well as it is good experience to spend college years away from home, but you also need to look at fit. For my daughter, her top pick was Amherst because she wanted an east coast school. Then she visited and she didn’t find the fit to her liking. On the other hand she liked Pomona and the consortium a lot and could envision spending four years there. Make sure he visits Amherst before making his final decision. Congrats, all excellent choices!

Congrats on such fine options! I’m looking forward to hearing how this plays out. Can you please summarize stats, etc.? Thanks and best luck!

I am not familiar with those schools but if the cost is a concern I would also consider additional expenses for travel for him home and for you to visit. It really adds up. Also you mentioned that he might consider CS major. I would actually check how strong CS is at Yale. I remember that when my DD was applying as a CS major it was one of her concerns.Also for Cal it is not direct admit to the major unlike UCLA.

At UCB, L&S CS is not direct admission to the major (must earn 3.3 GPA in the prerequisite CS courses). UCB applicants looking for direct admission to CS apply to the EECS major (but frosh admission is more difficult than for L&S).

Thank you for input. Yes, we researched the admit to major for UCB issue and almost applied to Engineering. But I think he can get the gpa needed, if that is the direction he decides for sure. Ucla is actually giving him a little merit aid. The issue of Yale maybe not being as STEM focused is a little concerning. We just bought flight for him to go out to the admit days at Brown and Yale. Hoping to learn more about each of these schools.

If he goes to Pomona he would live in dorm and we would not interfere. But it’s still hometown. We were thinking about the Swarthmore domestic exchange or the Cal Tech 3/2 plan, which gives you two bachelors in 5 years. You do have to apply and be accepted. Or study abroad.

Concern about UCs is that they are massive education and underfunded. I’m a Cal grad, so I know there are pluses and minuses. Like you can’t get into classes or classes are huge or you are in triple or quad for dorm. He also got Regents at UCSB engineering and at UCSC and got into engineering at UCSD warren. But I would think UCLA or Cal would be better. He also got a generous aid offer from Grinnell.

I just hope our appeal on aid at Brown and Yale works.

Good luck! If he ends up at Pomona and you eventually want feedback on the exchange with Swat, message me.

I have one at UCB and one at Pomona. For lots of Pomona kids it does come down to UCB, Pomona, Yale or Harvard. Yale is very ugly-urban, though it is a good academic bastion. Still, even if I were from Pomona, I would choose Pomona. At this point he should go where he feels he can do his best work. What’s his best opportunity? Where does he see himself? Can’t go wrong with any of these choices.

Amherst College allows one to take classes at any of three or four other nearby schools. Also, I believe that Amherst belongs to a domestic exchange group of colleges.

Amherst College 12 School Exchange Participants (for a semester or for an academic year):

  1. Amherst College

  2. Bowdoin College

  3. Connecticut College

  4. Dartmouth College

  5. Mount Holyoke

  6. Smith College

  7. Trinity College

  8. Vassar

  9. Wellesley College

  10. Wesleyan

  11. O’Neill National Theatre Institute

  12. Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies

Even if Yale and Brown can make FA competitive, they’re not better than Pomona for CS. And once you add in Harvey Mudd in the 5Cs, Pomona (or Harvey Mudd if he gets in off the wait list) should be your top choice. If Brown or Yale come in with better aid, or he likes one of the campuses better than Pomona, then you have a little tougher choice. Good luck!

I am very biased. I went to Brown–back when dinosaurs roamed the earth–and have a kid who graduated from Yale more than a decade ago. So I may be out of date.

That said…unless the financial difference is enormous…I would pick Brown in a heartbeat. Brown is very good in Computer Science. For graduate school in CS, it is ranked just below Yale https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings But for UG, I think Brown has a clear advantage.

I have to admit that I find @preppedparent 's comment that Yale is “ugly” beyond my comprehension. IMO, Yale is one of the most beautiful campuses in the US–if not the world. I love Brown and love its campus…but prettier? Advantage Yale. Location? Advantage, Brown. Providence’s East Side --again in the opinion of a NYC resident–just “feels” safer. I actually doubt it really IS safer than Yale, but it FEELS safer.

There are LOTS of Californians at both Yale and Brown, so I wouldn’t worry about fitting in. Yale and Brown are a bit different socially. And, of course, Yale has distributional requirements that Brown doesn’t have. IMO, one of the worst parts of my own kid’s experience at Yale was the distributional requirements. They really distorted my kid’s course selection.

Amherst, like Brown, has a pretty open curriculum. That’s a giant plus, IMO.

Pomona is on the West Coast and I admit I know a lot less about it. But one question I would ask is whether Pomona students really have equal access to classes at Harvey Mudd. One of my kid’s classmates–and see above , this was a long time ago–went to Claremont McKenna and couldn’t get into the classes he wanted to take at Harvey Mudd. Again, this was a LONG time ago and maybe now Pomona students can get into those classes, but back then they only had access to classes that weren’t filled in the first round of registration by Harvey Mudd student. So, I would REALLY investigate before going to Pomona as a student relying on taking classes a others in the consortium.

There is specific information on the HMC website about how non-HMC students are treated for purposes of CS classes. https://www.cs.hmc.edu/off-campus-students. As with most colleges, there is a huge demand for CS classes. Two things to note. First, HMC and Pomona both give priority to those who have declared a CS major over non-majors. Second, HMC treats CS majors from CMC, Pitzer and Scripps as “identical” to HMC CS majors in terms of course registration and advising services, but this is NOT true of Pomona CS majors taking courses at HMC. Basically this is because Pomona CS majors are considered to already have comparable resources at Pomona’s CS department.

As a general rule, cross-registration at the 5C’s really is easy and seamless. There are exceptions here and there. Pomona for example does not permit any “off-campus” majors. As a Pomona student it’s generally easy to take electives off-campus but you may also find that your major department imposes restrictions. My D is an Economics major at Pomona and the Econ department requires that you take your 6 core Econ courses at Pomona. So for example you can’t substitute the CMC intro microeconomics class for the Pomona intro microeconomics class.

Also @Publisher my reason for pointing out the Pomona/Swarthmore domestic exchange in this instance was to address the “problem” of Pomona being too close to home. The exchange would give the student an option to spend time away from the probably too familiar Claremont home environment. If he chooses Amherst then he’s across the country and there’s no need to do a domestic exchange to gain temporary distance from home.

I understood that. It is still good to know of options offered by other colleges & universities.

The buildings at Yale are okay, but when I say ugly, I really mean New Haven. You step off the campus and you’re in a real urban not so great area.

In terms of whether Pomona students can access classes at Mudd, the difficulty is in the reverse order. Pomona isthe jewel in the 5C crown. I think its harder for Mudd students to get into Pomona College classes.

I saw the comments regarding CS at Pomona and Mudd, and wanted to comment as a recent graduate (with friends who are in the department presently).

The majors at each school is specifically structured so that students get the bulk of their experiences at the home school with some amount of collaboration with the other school. The core CS courses of the Pomona major and Mudd major are different, and that represents about 70% of the major. Both schools have 3 electives which can be from either school, and a junior/senior colloquium they jointly sponsor for all majors. Mudd requires a capstone project called Clinic, while Pomona makes it optional (students can do either Clinic at Mudd or a research-based thesis with a Pomona professor if they want). Pomona is a much more flexible school all in all than Mudd is, even with it comes to liberal art requirements.

Most Pomona majors will go well beyond the requirements for the major, so they pile on a lot of CS electives. Mudd and Pomona have specifically formed an arrangement in which every single elective they offer will have a set number of classes for the other school. So in terms of access, yes, Pomona students get the full repertoire of Mudd CS electives and vice versa. They use a pre-assignment form where students list the electives they want to take, and match accordingly; if there are spots remaining, students can sign up accordingly in registration (CS majors at either school get priority assigned by seniority, and the registration database/process is the same). To illustrate what I mean, say Mudd has an elective course, CS 75, with 30 seats. They have pre-reserved 5 seats for Pomona students. 20 Mudd CS majors list they want to take it, as do 6 Pomona students; 26 students are pre-approved (since there is room for Mudd to take the extra Pomona student), but 4 spots still remain. Those 4 spots will be open to CS students from both schools equally during registration- priority is NOT given to Mudd CS majors over Pomona CS majors despite it being a Mudd elective. For another example, there is CS 82 which is highly popular, with 30 seats also. 5 seats are reserved for Pomona students. 100 Mudd CS majors want to take it, and 50 CS majors at Pomona want to take it. There is a lottery (assigned by seniority) with the 100 Mudd students deciding for their 25 spots and the 50 Pomona students deciding for their 5 spots. Now, these are just scenarios, and I don’t know the exact number of seats reserved. But it helps with understanding how it works and how the schools collaborate.

In terms of quality of teaching and education, both are great. Most Pomona CS majors have taken numerous Mudd CS courses as well. They don’t feel less prepared or that the education is a knockout over what they get at Pomona. Mudd is more industry focused while Pomona is more grad school focused, so it helps get a sense of both perspectives. There’s a research emphasis at both with plenty of opportunities (students often do research with a prof. at another school- note Mudd’s CS research page “Each summer the faculty organize a number of research projects which are open to students. Applications from both HMCers and off-campus students are considered.”). Mudd’s advantage is that they have considerably more faculty members and more resources devoted to the CS program (40% of their students major in it), but Pomona students get plenty of access to that.

I think the best way to think about it is that there’s this large university called “Claremont University”. Within it, Mudd is the engineering and CS college which offers a B.S. in Computer Science. Pomona is the arts, letters, and sciences college which offers a B.A. in Computer Science. The departments stand independently with their own emphasis, professors, and major structure, but allow students to take courses with each other for electives. Students can establish research mentors at either since each faculty member has their unique field of study. Employer events in tech are centered at Mudd since it’s the engineering and CS school, but open to the whole university- the B.A. Pomona students will go to the fairs and also be reviewed. Is there a difference in how Mudd and Pomona is considered? I don’t know. But from the successes I’ve seen with my Pomona friends in CS getting internships and jobs offers by all sorts of prominent tech companies (SpaceX, Twitter, Cisco, Intuit, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.), it doesn’t feel like it. I can’t think of anyone who isn’t working for a prominent company. Makes me wish I did a CS major so I could potentially have a 100K+ starting salary!

The point is: the schools have both independence and collaboration with CS. It’s definitely not 0% interaction or near that. If you look at the department pages of both schools, they make it a point to emphasize the sister departments of the other colleges. I forgot to mention that Pomona is the one which hosts the 5C Hackathon, and students from both win pretty equally! They are only 20 minutes maximum by walking, which is how long it could take to walk from a Yale quad to Yale Science Hill.

Not going to comment on the specifics of this particular comparison, but Pomona’s STEM is incredibly strong (ranked #12 for STEM PhD production per capita among all colleges & universities, a top producer of Goldwater/Churchill/NSF Graduate Award/Beckman Scholar Recipients, both absolutely and even more so relative to size). According to IR, Pomona has a higher percent of STEM majors than any Ivy, despite lacking engineering. CS is currently our 2nd most popular major, neck and neck with economics. One would think it less popular if it were a bad major. Having access to Mudd is a supplement for more courses and faculty members, not a substitute for “weak” opportunities (with one exception- engineering, which isn’t available at Pomona. It’s pretty easy to get into Mudd engineering courses). I was a STEM major (molecular biology), and I loved my experience at Pomona. Best wishes with the choice ahead.

If the student wants to get out of California and it comes down to Yale vs. Brown, here are some things to consider:

Yale advantages:

  • Yale has a lot more money than Brown. They spend more, or have the capacity to spend more, on each student’s education and experience.
  • Yale has the great residential college system, which generally receives rave reviews.
  • Yale has their “shopping period”, during which you can try out classes before committing to them.
  • Yale is generally regarded as being a bit stronger academically.

Brown advantages:

  • For those less interested in a broad US-style education, the open curriculum allows you to concentrate more on your major and less on breadth.
  • You can make your education as easy or as hard as you like. If you want rigor, you may pursue it. And if you want to take all your harder classes P/F, if you take hard classes at all, I’m pretty sure you can do that. Ace your easy classes and voila, a high GPA. (i am not a fan of this – and perhaps I am oversimplifying – but if you are, then Brown might be for you)
  • Brown is known as a happy place. that is not to say that Yale is not, but Brown is particularly known for it.

Neither is really known for CS, but both – especially Yale – have the resources to give a student one heck of a CS education. I remember a thread maybe a year ago that discussed recent Yale investments in STEM and CS in particular. The student/parent should confirm whether that is happening. If Yale is serious about STEM, look out.