<p>My son and I are going to attend the Claremont Colleges Fair up in San Francisco later this month, and I was wondering why Pomona does not attend these. </p>
<p>Thanks in Advance</p>
<p>I asked this question too when I went to one of these events and I got some answer along the line of how Pomona believes that the Claremonts should be associating themselves with other liberal arts colleges that are similar to the Claremont colleges instead of just staying within themselves.</p>
<p>For this reason Pomona generally travels in a group with other LAC's from around the country instead of traveling just with the other Claremont Colleges. There could be other reasons that I'm not aware of though.</p>
<p>Haha I'm going to the one in Santa Clara on the 20th! (even though Pomona is the only Claremont College I want to go to, i figured it would be a good experience for me and my family since we know nothing about the college process)</p>
<p>pomona seems to rarely if ever participate in these "fairs". Personally I think it is a bit of elitism on their part but maybe its just part of their "under the radar" approach. Pomona has historically taken a low key approach to everything and they want to stay small and personal and really don't need to attract anymore applicants then they already get and can't handle.</p>
<p>The school considers itself the "gem" of the Claremont consortium and tends to go its own way much of the time.</p>
<p>When my son was applying to colleges, he went to an info session where Carleton, Bowdoin and Swarthmore were also presenting. I think that Pomona has a lot in common with these schools, as they are all classic lac's, without a specific academic focus. They are much more alike than different, so it was interesting to see what the admissions people thought made them special and set them apart from the other three.</p>
<pre><code> The other colleges in the consortium have their own distinct strengths. Claremont McKenna's curricula is heavy on leadership and government , and Mudd is math/science, and Scripps of course, is only women. Pitzer is the only one that doesn't specialize in a certain area. In some ways, I believe these schools do better without Pomona in the mix. They are able to tout their strengths without having to compare themselves with one another, as they all have a unique niche that the others don't have.
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<p>I don't think it's elitism, as Claremont McKenna and Mudd are as selective as Pomona. I just think all of the colleges involved see advantages in doing it the way they do.</p>
<p>^ Pitzer is generally understood to emphasize social sciences and Scripps' emphasis is on the humanities (while being a women's college currently makes it unique within the consortium, it says little about the school's academic strengths...at least three of the Claremonts originally began as single-sex schools). That said, I know that Scripps' most popular majors are English, Politics, Biology, Psychology, and Studio Art, and Pitzer's are likely just as diverse. CMC and Mudd far surpass any of the other schools in the obviousness of their 'strong' areas (in quotes because it would be wrong to assume that the schools aren't strong even outside of their most popular departments). </p>
<p>Irrelevant to the original post...just wanted to clarify for ASAP. I'd also say that elitism is an attitude that doesn't necessarily stem straight from selectivity or other concrete info (though whether or not it plays any part here is a separate question). But all of the above posts seem viable in their explanations.</p>