<p>No, it’s OK. I’m sure Tufts is fine. I don’t understand how it has risen in the rankings, but I don’t have to in order for it to be valid.</p>
<p>I’ve been in the industry for 30 years, and Tufts has been a prestigious school all that time. Even when I was looking at schools in the 70s, tufts was on the radar. Has it really had a significant rise?</p>
<p>Tufts may be a good school, but Pomona’s the LAC equivalent of HYPS.</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for the information! This is great! Thanks @jkeil911 for your very detailed information related to my potential fields of study!! I’d love to hear more!</p>
<p>I have a reading list, if you’d like. I cannot get to it for the next week or so because I’m about to start traveling and after that school’s about to start, but if you remind me in a week I’ll shoot you one.</p>
<p>Thank you so much!</p>
<p>Pomona has a better reputation than Tufts for academics. Tufts doesn’t have a lot of name recognition outside of the northeast. These are really apples and oranges though. I would visit each school and see where you’d rather live for four years. Also take cost of living into consideration. </p>
<p>Thanks informative! I’ve visited both schools and I could really see myself at both. </p>
<p>@informative </p>
<p>If you’re going to go the route of name recognition (and among whom, exactly?), Pomona has less than Tufts. Tufts is a known name among the East and West coasts, the Midwest and the South—not just in the Northeast. Pomona… more than once have I heard it confused with Pepperdine, both in Chicagoland and NYC environs. </p>
<p>Rankings might be higher for Pomona, but Tufts’ academics and reputation are nothing to sniff at, nor is its student body, which is of comparable strength to Pomona’s, reflecting the school’s appeal to bright, worldly, down-to-earth kids. </p>
<p><a href=“Top 100 SAT Scores Ranking: Which Colleges Have The Brightest Kids?”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/08/04/top-100-sat-scores-ranking-which-colleges-have-the-brightest-kids/</a></p>
<p><a href=“The 20 Colleges With The Smartest Students”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2013/12/28/the-20-colleges-with-the-smartest-students/</a></p>
<p>And if you’re interested in neuroscience and/ or bioengineering, Tufts is at the cutting edge as we speak (or type!):</p>
<p><a href=“Scientists Create a 3-D Model That Mimics Brain Function - The New York Times”>Scientists Create a 3-D Model That Mimics Brain Function - The New York Times;
<p>Tufts admit rate this year was just over 16%—not too far off the mark from Pomona’s on the selectivity scale.</p>
<p>The draw of not only Boston but downtown Somerville minutes away plus Cambridge and Boston… and embarrassment of riches. Students at Tufts manage a comfortable work/ fun balance, consistently placing on “happiest students” lists. Med school admit rates are very good, from what I’ve seen on the many med school threads here on CC. </p>
<p>You can’t go wrong with either school, so don’t let folks make you believe that the decision of one over the other is a “no-brainer”.</p>
<p>Cheers! </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s odd. The most obvious school that Pomona College would be mixed up with by name is California State Polytechnic University - Pomona.</p>
<p>Given its short history as a university, Tufts has done really well for itself. So what’s so surprising about the fact that it isn’t as famous as Yale or Cornell?</p>
<p>You don’t go to Pomona for name recognition. The HYPS equivalence to LACs is stupid unless impressing high school seniors familiar with LACs is high on your list (and if you want to go into finance/banking etc, Williams and Amherst – and maybe Wellesley – would serve you better).</p>
<p>The lumosity ranking never surveyed a Pomona student so I wouldn’t really trust that as a point of consideration.</p>
<p>Pomona is better known and better regarded than Tufts is in elite circles like competitive fellowships and graduate schools, if any of those interest you. However, Tufts, I’d agree, is more well known in a public setting. I would also agree that the objective difference in student bodies between Tufts and Pomona isn’t very high.</p>
<p>
Most people outside of California don’t have the faintest idea of what California publics exist besides Berkeley, UCLA, and maybe UCSD. People are much less likely to have heard of CSU Pomona than Pepperdine, which is a moderately well-known Christian university that frequently appears on those random lists of the most beautiful campuses.</p>
<p>In any case, it hardly matters. Neither Pomona nor Tufts is a household name, and those who have heard of them will hold them in esteem. Quibbling over differences in prestige is typically pointless in general and certainly in this case. </p>
<p>
As one of the perks of its location, Tufts offers cross-enrollment with other Boston colleges such as Boston College, Boston U, and Brandeis. Brandeis in particular is a neuroscience powerhouse. The geographic spread of the universities makes it much less convenient than the contiguous Claremont campuses, but it’s something to consider for a student with a car. </p>
<p>
No graduate program is going to be so wowed by Pomona that they give an applicant a leg up over a high performing applicant from Tufts. People in academia know that both are excellent schools – what the student did at either will matter far more than which college (s)he chose. </p>
<p>@International95</p>
<p>“The HYPS equivalence to LACs is stupid unless impressing high school seniors familiar with LACs is high on your list”</p>
<p>I didn’t mean that in terms of name recognition…more like in terms of education quality. Not just HYPS, but all HYPS peers too. The material may be the same everywhere at the undergrad level, but the amount of money/resources these schools have allow them to provide their students more opportunities (such as funded research for all, for example).</p>
<p>Colleges like Smith, Wellesley and Grinnell also massive resources and have outstanding academic programs. Are they “HYPS equivalents” too?</p>
<p>LACs may be focused on undergraduates, but the <em>potential</em> opportunities research universities can bring are in a different world. Funded research? Which LAC with a healthy endowment cannot offer funded research programs (particularly in the sciences)? Mount Holyoke, for instance, guarantees $3000 to ALL students to do something productive over one summer, including working for professors (you can do that at other times, too). Is MHC an “HYPS equivalent”? No?</p>
<p>The educational quality at certain schools is certainly complemented by the school’s money, but does it define it?</p>
<p>@lilliana
</p>
<p>This doesn’t make any sense either. </p>
<p>A research university takes in significant amounts of grant money which helps to fund resources. You cannot just compare endowments- especially when you cross the boundary between LACs and research universities.</p>
<p>Tufts has $156M in research spending, (which is focused primarily on the life sciences) and Pomona has $3.6M in research spending. </p>
<p>Tufts has significantly more money/resources for research than Pomona. The gap between research universities and LACs is huge and Pomona is only ranked 25th for research spending among LAC’s.</p>
<p>Here are two new interdisciplinary science labs (about 175,000 square feet) that relate to the OP’s area of interest being added to the Tufts Medford/Somerville campus.</p>
<p><a href=“http://operations.tufts.edu/sec/”>http://operations.tufts.edu/sec/</a>
<a href=“http://operations.tufts.edu/574-boston-avenue-redevelopment-project/”>http://operations.tufts.edu/574-boston-avenue-redevelopment-project/</a></p>
<p>@lilliana The reason your statement makes no sense is that you are attempting to make a false equivalence based on ill-defined terms and no data. </p>
<p>
To expand on this point, I would argue that schools are better defined by how they choose to spend their money, not how much they have. </p>
<p>As an example, Wheaton College in Norton, Mass does not have “massive resources” (it’s endowment is 1/10th the size of Pomona’s) yet it gives a research stipend to all its top applicants (you have to apply at Pomona).</p>
<p>If you choose to define competitive fellowships as a proxy for educational quality as @nostalgicwisdom appears to be doing, then Wheaton tops Pomona in educational quality as well.
---- In the last 15 years, Wheaton has produced 3 Rhodes Scholars while Pomona has produced one.
---- In the last 10 years, Wheaton has produced 5 Marshall Scholars while Pomona has produced one.
---- Wheaton has won the “Instititute of Honor” designation for Truman Scholarships and Pomona has not.
---- I could not find a list of Goldwater winners, but for 2014, Pomona had 3 winners, while Wheaton had 1 finalist.
---- Both schools have lots of Fulbright winners.</p>
<p>Another example is Mass Bay Community College in Wellesley, MA. It has produced 20 Goldwater Scholars since 1996. If you choose to define Goldwater winners as a proxy for educational quality in science, then Mass Bay probably ranks above most, if not all LACs. They have an endowment of $0 and a 100% acceptance rate. I can’t help but be impressed by that.</p>
<p>If you want to test the equivalence between HYPS and Pomona using Rhodes as a proxy for educational quality, then Harvard has produced 57 Rhodes Scholars in the last 15 years while Pomona has produced 1. If you open up the time window to the '60s or later, Harvard has produced 159 Rhodes scholars to Pomona’s 4.</p>
<p>If you moved Pomona to Massachusetts (where some people actually count these things), then Pomona would rank
6th in the state among private schools behind Harvard (159), MIT (26),Williams (18), Amherst (8), Wellesley (7),BU (7) and Holy Cross (5) tied with Tufts at 4 and just ahead of Wheaton (3), BC (2), Brandeis (2), Smith (1) and Mt. Holyoke (1). Of course, if you open up the geographic boundary to the Northeast, Pomona and Tufts would drop even further.</p>
<p>If you moved Tufts to California, then the ranking of private colleges for the entire west coast (CA+OR+WA) would be: Stanford (75), Reed (10), USC (5), Occidental, Pomona &Tufts (4), Cal Tech (2), CMC (2), HMudd (2), Whitman (2), Puget Sound (2), Pitzer (1) and Willamette (1). Tufts would be #3 in California (only 1 award away from second place) and #4 on the entire west coast.</p>
<p>The point here is that regional perceptions (if not backed up by data) can be very misleading and if both Pomona and Tufts are measured by “Northeast standards”, then neither is considered a top producer of the most competitive scholarships, and Stanford (maybe Reed) is the only school on the west coast that is.</p>
<p>You are getting some entirely baseless opinions regarding Tufts from someone who does not know what he is talking about.</p>
<p>I am a Tufts alum, as are two of my family members, and many of my friends. The vast majority of them are highly successful in many fields. I, for one, used my Tufts undergraduate degree to obtain a full scholarship to law school. </p>
<p>The reason why Tufts is not known for a discrete field of study is that it is, first and foremost, a liberal arts college. The school is not a prep course for any particular graduate program or field. Rather, it seeks to provide a broad based education that will allow its students to excel in a wide range of careers. I know people who have gone on to medicine, politics, education, law, business, the arts and engineering.</p>
<p>I’ll also say this to you… RANKINGS ARE OVERRATED. As I tell my own kids, there are far more important reasons to choose a particular college. What part of the country do you want to be in? Do you prefer an urban setting, a suburban setting or a college town? Do you know what you wish to study, or do you want to sample a few flavors before deciding? Where do you feel you’d fit in and be happy.</p>
<p>If the answers to those questions point you to Tufts, I am confident you’ll be very happy with your decision.</p>
<p>OP, my son is a swimmer and is looking at both schools too. He actually was more interested in CMC when we visited the Claremont schools six months ago. The coach at Pomona, however, has remained interested but there doesn’t appear to be any interest from CMC anymore.</p>
<p>When we visited the east coast and met a lot of the NESCAC coaches during spring break, he quickly fell in love with Tufts. That trip made him decide that he really wants to go to a school on the east coast (we live in California) and to Tufts in particular.</p>
<p>You really can’t go wrong deciding between the two. If you work hard you will be successful at either school and ready for a great career. Go where you want to and don’t look back. Good luck to you.</p>