<p>Harvard or Brown w/ RISD. Brand names matter.</p>
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<p>That’s what they all say…until the acceptance e-mail arrives.</p>
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<p>Princeton is a big name school that focuses on its undergrads.</p>
<p>Do I win the thread?</p>
<p>Go to Harvard for a year. If you are dissatisfied, you can transfer anywhere, coming from Harvard!</p>
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<p>This is not true, espeically if you don’t do well. I actually know a girl who went to Harvard for the prestige, hated it, got somewhat depressed, didn’t do well, and now feels stuck there because her grades aren’t good enough to let her transfer to anywhere near as good a school.</p>
<p>OP has already decided to go to Pomona.</p>
<p>And no, you can’t transfer easily to Pomona. They accept only a few transfers per year, and coming from Harvard would not guarantee admission.</p>
<p>99% of the freshman return for their sophomore year (essentially, all but 3-5), so it’s tough to get in as a transfer no matter where you’re coming from. </p>
<p>I think the transfer admit rate is ~10%</p>
<p>You turned down 103% aid from harvard? Ehhh…your life.</p>
<p>i hope you do great at Pomona, OP!!</p>
<p>:) </p>
<p>it’s such a great school! i hope i can get in next year!</p>
<p>Amherst, Pomona, and Brown undergrad are all arguably superior to Harvard undergrad.</p>
<p>The OP was brave enough to see this in a practical and unbiased manner, and she should be applauded for thinking clearly and looking past the few silly things that Harvard would have had to offer her: prestige and connections.</p>
<p>Thankfully, there are many rational souls this year.</p>
<p>Harvard has to pull 200 people from their waitlist. 200: that’s 12.1 percent of their class. Embarrassing, really.</p>
<p>quick quesiton, what does LAC stand for?</p>
<p>Liberal Arts College</p>
<p>OP: Congrats on your decision to attend Pomona! I hope you enjoy next year! =]</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I heard Liberal Arts college were the only colleges which actually “produced scientists, inventors, and leaders” and that “Harvard is failed to do so”. This is said by Loren Pope of his book “Looking Beyond the Ivy Leagues”.</p>
<p>Or maybe the OP is like “hehehe I actually went to Harvard…”</p>
<p>Have a friend here at school who turned down Harvard 2 years ago.</p>
<p>Still, 103% is hard to argue against…and what’s wrong with having waitlisted people in a freshman class. No one cares how you got in once you’re there in September…</p>
<p>I’d choose cultural Cambridge anyday over the hot, smoggy, sleepy suburb of Claremont…</p>
<p>UCBChemEGrad –</p>
<p>Funny you should mention smog. Our first house in 1989 was in north San Gabriel, with similar weather/smog to Claremont. Smog through the seventies and eighties had gotten worse every year, until 1989, when I was pleased to read in the LA Times that actions taken by the AQMD and other factors (such as unleaded gas, catalytic converters, etc.) led to the first imporovement in measured Smog in over twenty years.</p>
<p>The air quality has progressively improved since that time, to the point that it does not affect quality of life like it once did.</p>
<p>I think your “smoggy Claremont” point is not the case any more.</p>
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<p>on this board, and esp in this thread, many seem to argue that top LACs and other undergrad focused schools are superior to H at undergrad level. I would venture to say that it would depend on the individual. I know from several visits that H is a very intellectual, ambitious, and kind of “motivating” place socially, academically, politically, etc. There are many intangible social and academic benefits that come with H that are unique. H may not be as undergrad focused as the LACs who specialize in those things, but c’on. Saying that schools like Amherst or Pomona are superior to H is just laughable. Maybe that may hold true for certain kinds of individuals with certain learning tastes, but H wins in many other aspects. (immense research opportunities, superior placement into grad school/jobs, the “H” reputation/fame, much more diversity in terms of representation of different geography from student body, access/interaction to the most renowned faculty, location in the historic backgound of Cambridge, MA, and other unique social/academic atmospheres at H)</p>
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Despite the air being much cleaner, inland San Gabriel Valley/Inland Empire still have some of worse smog in the region.</p>