Some less satisfying aspects of attending Pomona College

Colleges and Universities A-Z Pomona College
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I’m an older user who used to post here occasionally. I took a year off and am on track to graduating from Pomona this year. My experience at Pomona has been on the whole meaningful, empowering, and rewarding, and I don’t regret coming here. However, I’ve heard far too often that there is nothing wrong with Pomona. I used to think this myself, and that romanticism really made parts of the experience challenging. I want to share my own experiences about some problems I think Pomona has, not to deter anyone from coming, but to rather enable students to make informed and conscientious decisions about their best fit school.

  1. The alumni network is frustratingly lackluster, especially compared to other LACs. This is my biggest problem with Pomona, and I have a lot to say about it. There are significant barriers between alums and students in their ability to interact and connect. There have been three alumni weekends through my time at Pomona, and another is coming up, and I don’t think I’ve ever found any way to connect with people as a student myself. Our alumni page is rife with two types of posts. In the first, alums post articles about incidents which happen at the colleges and paint all students as characteristic of leftist propaganda. This has created a huge division on the page. In the second are superficial references to Pomona, primarily revolving around pictures with the number 47. The silence on this page about supporting students and serving in capacities as advisers, mentors, and network builders is so different from other alumni groups. At Williams, for instance, there is a group of alumni who reach out to the incoming students and link them to summer internships before they even begin college! These relationships continue throughout the college experience, and according to the Class of 2016, 38% obtained jobs through their alumni networks. I’d be shocked if this number was higher than 10% at Pomona. I have no idea why we lag so far behind. Our alumni donations are falling each year and considerably behind our peers on the East Coast.

Pomona students desire heavily to interact with alums. According to a recent career department study, 90%+ of seniors would love for there to be an alumni panel for our winter break job programs in NYC/DC/Boston. No such thing exists. When we have the rare alumni-student event, there is always a full house of students who want to listen and engage.

One of the challenges is that there is some evidence of racial and socioeconomic tensions in alumni outreach. Pomona is one of the most socioeconomically diverse colleges in the country. Nearly 70% of admitted Class of 2021 students are not white. 22% will receive Pell Grants, and 20% are first-gen. Many of these groups face immense challenges in an inequitable job process and depend on established alumni links to make it through. But so many of my friends have had the experience of reaching out to alums and not receiving any response. There has been a noticeable trend that when students of color ask for help on the alumni page, their requests are largely ignored, whereas those who appear white or have normal names are generally responded to.

  1. Our full-time professors are outstanding. Our visiting and adjunct professors, not so much. Pomona hires 20-30 visiting professors and instructors each year who are generally far worse teachers and advisers than our full time faculty. Many of them are not particularly noteworthy in their accomplishments or graduate school reputation. They get bad reviews and don’t make it for the next year. The situation has gotten so notorious that students no longer want to risk taking any classes with a new professor. We’ve actually lost a net of 4 full time faculty members over six years, while the student body has increased by 50 students. Again, I look to Williams. Williams has a 7:1 faculty ratio compared to Pomona’s 8:1, hiring more full time faculty to provide the most robust academic experience possible. New faculty hires at Williams are so accomplished and interesting (there’s an article each year highlighting who’s new) that it excites even me- someone who doesn’t go there! What in the world is causing such a huge discrepancy? Pomona is the richest of its peer LACs on a per capita basis. It can and should have the resources to have outstanding, long-standing professors.

After talking to professors about the situation, the reason is that Pomona is not investing in full time positions. A lot of its funding is being put towards non-teaching administrative roles, cutting the funds available to invest in full time faculty. We don’t need yet another marketing director or diversity chair! We need professors. Anthropology, CS, math, GWS, and so many others need more faculty to meet the student demand. The problem is that Pomona relies on popularity to gauge where it should spend funding, without realizing that part of the reason GWS and Anthropology are so unpopular is because of how much they lack the incredible faculty of some of other departments. Investing in smaller departments will hopefully lead to increased demand by students to enroll in those courses and perhaps even major. We had one outstanding anthropology professor who ended up taking 52 students for an initial roster of just 15 spots. The demand is there. Hire outstanding professors, and students will take courses with them.

  1. Building on the above, there has been alarming trend of more science majors at Pomona. Pomona now has a higher percent of STEM majors than any Ivy. Only a few top schools- Stanford, Caltech, Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT- have a higher % of STEM majors. Computer science is now the most popular major on campus. 7 of the top 10 most popular majors are STEM disciplines. STEM classes are seldom under 20 students. The demand for research and summer experiences has increased so often that Pomona has now stopped with its guaranteed summer experience of research as it did in the past. There is more of a competitive edge because of the lack of resources for everyone. This is a national trend, but it disproportionately affects the LACs more than big universities, which have the room to expand and hire more faculty. Much of this, I’m aware, is contradictory to the situation pointed out above, leaving Pomona in a tough situation.

(continued in the next post)

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  1. Pomona used to stand out among its east coast peers for being laid-back and humble. The California attitude was one of the highlights. That culture is pretty much gone now. Ever since admissions launched a campaign to reform the “narrative of ease” attitude attributed to Pomona, and the administration has worked to cap the number of A’s being given out, there is now a more noticeably serious and competitive vibe at Pomona. The students don’t feel quite as happy, friendly, or inclusive. There’s a newly emerging culture of misery poker where students are faced with the pressure of leading immensely busy lives in every aspect, and our pre-professionalism has skyrocketed. In just one year, the demand for our internships programs have gone up by ~70%. Our athletics programs are now ranked top 25 in DIII, and they get better each year. The quirky reading rainbow logo has been replaced for a more corporate one, and derpy Cecil has been tossed aside for a more masculine one. All of these things honestly happened suddenly, but it is clear that Pomona is changing. The Forbes ranking played a huge role in this, as Pomona is now not just a hidden gem, but a supposed peer of the Ivies. I don’t have a problem with an institution becoming better. But I do worry that we’re losing some of our character. What distinguishes Pomona today? It’s hard to subjectively answer.

On the point about grade inflation, Pomona used to have a pretty serious case of it. Some 63% of grades given out were A’s or A-'s, the highest of our peers. The school now asks faculty to write explanations if they give out more than 50% A’s or give out any grades of an A+. Students now have to take a survey detailing the number of hours they put into a class Many faculty members have re-calibrated expectations in the last two year, leading to increased academic rigor. I think this on paper sounds like a good thing, but it has the effect of increasing competitiveness. I’ve heard rumors that hard caps may be coming, but I don’t know how accurate they are.

  1. This is a problem at every school everywhere, but for how much word you hear about Pomona’s administration supposedly “running like butter” or being so receptive/available, I’ve found myself -as a student leader on campus- to have a disappointing experience. There is a recent article on the student paper called “The Avatar Cycle and Institutional Knowledge”, which I think sums the situation well. In a nutshell, much of the activism and efforts to improve Pomona are led predominantly by students, who are not compensated for their efforts. Many of the administrators promise to listen, but there’s this sense you get that it’s just out of courtesy more than any serious effort to engage. Students know that not all of their demands will be met. They know that there are financial and administrative challenges to facilitating certain things. They know they may not have all the answers. However, they’re frustrated that the onus falls to them in building strategies to improve Pomona. What is the purpose of administrators earning hefty salaries each year if they’re not doing much of anything to support students on campus?

Much of the critique lies in the short term actions that administrators take, rather than the development of long term ones. For instance, there was a crisis in which our mental health facilities had a 5 week waiting period for appointments. Pomona, to its credit, worked to provide off-campus mental health support and fully fund co-pays. But the situation should never have gotten so awful in the first place. Nearly 20% of Pomona students book an appointment with the counseling center. This has been consistently the case (actually, the numbers have been increasing) for the last few years.

  1. Radical leftism by a vocal minority on campus has made the experience worse for everyone. I’m left leaning myself, and even I am turned off by the things that have happened. Just recently, Heather MacDonald was prevented from speaking at Claremont McKenna by a group of students who weren’t willing to let anyone into the talk. There are certain students at four of the schools- Pomona, Pitzer, Mudd, and Scripps- who have taken to calling students “shady people of color” and maintaining lists of people who don’t align with their political leanings. They are the most vocal and keen to constantly attack groups on campus, and they target the more inclusive/tolerant left leaning individuals as “traitors” or “anti-black” for not following their violent approaches. The great thing at Pomona and the other 5C’s is that the vast majority of students are willing to hear out dissenting arguments and engage with ideas without shutting them away, but those few students have stifled a lot of meaningful discourse from occurring. There is blatant white shaming on Facebook communities, and certain students disparage the challenges experienced by their peers simply because those peers are white or rich. It’s the same individuals who do this all the time, and no one holds them accountable. I’m a low income student of color. I think people from all walks of life can experience challenges anywhere they go, and as such deserve compassion and respect, not dismissal. Mental health in particular affects people from all walks of life. We’re all part of a residential community where we nurture and care for each other. Let’s work toward supporting and building ourselves up, not knocking others down. There’s an article to check out on this topic too: “Where Claremont Leftism Falls Short: We Need Action.”, which highlights some of the hypocrisy of student activism.

Sorry this has all gotten so long. I just thought to be as thorough as possible, though I’m aware it could be taken as rambling at some points. I realize many of these points are subjective and may be seen as positives by some people. I know many of these issues are affecting other schools. My points are not to draw comparatives, but to share my own experience, and some parts of the Pomona experience I found challenging. I’d be happy to elaborate or specify if something is unclear.

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My daughter will be making her decision on whether to attend Pomona within the week. Recent news coverage of students protesting the hiring of a sociology prof and the reaction to the college president’s statement on free speech is making the campus sound as though it is filled with angry students. How is the atmosphere? If it is a vocal minority who are speaking out, is their discontent making the college experience less pleasant for students who are not particularly interested in social activism? Thanks for your input.

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Thanks for your question.

The first thing I want to say is that the people I’m referencing in #6 are a tiny, tiny minority of the community: probably no more than 20 students in a school with 1650 students. They exist at every school in the country. The black student signatures totaled only 6 students from Pomona all in all.

I don’t find the concerns about the hiring particularly unfounded. The professor has received lengthy responses from the sociology community at large for not providing meeting standard measures for ethnographic study. There is a lengthy New York Times article about it which highlights why students are concerned: lack of willingness to abide by academic conforms for keeping data, inconsistencies in her accounting of narratives, and a patronizing view which holds black lives as outsiders. Students are also troubled that they were excluded from the hiring process when they normally are included. Many news articles have jumped to describing that it’s only because she’s white that students don’t want her, but this is not true. There have been many faculty hires at Pomona of white professors who have not received any criticism. The criticism to this specific professor stems from a decision made without transparency and without regard to some of the more troubling aspects of the professor’s work. As she will be teaching research methods, the implications of her work need to be addressed. I don’t think many people at Pomona are necessarily taking the stride of outright dismissing the professor (the petition got 128 signatures, including from many students not at Pomona or recent alums; I personally didn’t sign it as I didn’t agree with the first demand), but many want to understand why she was hired. That comes across as reasonable to me. The students want a timely response to their demands given that the school year is ending soon and it’ll be difficult to communicate over the summer.

The point of all this is that Pomona is filled with reasonable, rational, logical people far more than the shrill, intolerant, hateful people who draw a lot of attention to our community. You don’t get a newsworthy article without controversy and a scapegoat. This is true everywhere. Yale drew a lot of attention in the viral video in which the student screamed at the college master, but she was not representative of the whole community or even a noticeable subset of it.

This week and last week were admitted students weekend across the five colleges. There has been a noticeably hostile atmosphere at Scripps, where some students have said they will not lead tours or host admitted students, or will create an atmosphere such that no admitted student would want to come. I haven’t seen that bridge burning nature here in the slightest. Our admitted student days went smoothly without much, if any controversy, with the support of a large number of people who care about Pomona students and admitted students. A student posted a lengthy response on the Facebook 2021 admitted student page at Pomona in response to an outsider that I think your D should read. It highlights why Pomona, despite its problems, is ahead of its peers; if she’s not in the community, I can PM it to you.

To get back on track and to your last question- yes, it’s a minority of students rather than all of them who are the ones you might be worried about. No, you can’t simply ignore them because this is an intimately residential community where everyone will get to know everyone. But you don’t have to engage with them if you don’t want to, and this community is filled far more with level-headed, inclusive people who will have far more impact to your own experience. Our professors and most students here are bright, accommodating, compassionate, and nurturing. As pointed out in the very beginning, I don’t regret coming here in the slightest and wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. It’s just important for everyone’s sake to have a realistic understanding of what challenges to expect, and because Pomona is generally portrayed as this idealistic, perfect place, I really want to criticize that notion. In the end, I think it’s something that puts Pomona to a good light more than a bad one.

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@stndacy I’m the parent of a Pomona sophomore. One thing I would add to the comments by @EndOfTheWorld is that the reporting of the Claremont Independent shines a very bright spotlight on the events at the Claremont Consortium in a way that I don’t think is replicated elsewhere. The CI staff are extremely adept at getting their stories picked up by national media and especially conservatives news sites like Fox News, College Fix, College Reform, etc. If you follow them on twitter you will see that they tweet their stories at those websites, knowing that they’re on the lookout for more stories about college “snowflakes.” As EndoftheWorld said: “You don’t get a newsworthy article without controversy and a scapegoat.” The CI is always on the lookout for campus controversy and liberal students to make fun of.

There’s an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal written by a CI staffer who is a student at Scripps about the Scripps RA strike. (The writer omits the fact that the strike occurred after a Scripps RA committed suicide.) I’m not aware of any similar independent newspaper at a college campus that is as well funded and successful as the Claremont Independent seems to be at getting their stories picked up by national media. My point is that most campuses have various protests going on, but they get reported more frequently at the 5C’s than they would elsewhere and that makes it seem like the campus is “filled” with angry students. I’m sure the vast majority of Pomona students are busy studying for finals, finishing reports and research projects, attending mentor sessions, completing labs, checking on the status of their internship applications, etc. I know mine is.

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That is a really detailed and accurate list, in my view…I so strongly agree with essentially everything, but especially the distinction between full-time professors and visiting professors. I actually just brought this up with my advisor last week, and he said they are looking into it. Not sure if that was just an automatic reply or they’re actually trying to change it. The only thing I really disagree with you on is the grading/competition aspect, but people always debate that and Pomona I think gets it right for the most part.

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@EndOfTheWorld Thank you so much for your reply. It’s very reassuring to know that the majority of students are tolerant and respectful of others. I appreciate the time you took to compose such a thoughtful response. I think that this will reassure not only my daughter, but other admitted students who may have found the recent publicity somewhat troubling.

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@Corinthian Thank you for putting the reporting of recent events in perspective. Living at a distance from Pomona, and with limited sources of information, it’s very difficult to know what life is actually like on campus. My daughter had been excited by her visit on the admitted student day but troubled by recent publicity. The responses here are very reassuring.

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@stndacy My pleasure! I just saw your post on the W&L (a fantastic school, by the way) group. If your D wants to go to law or business, she may be interested in knowing Pomona is a top school in sending students to those programs: https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/infographics/top-feeders-mba-programs https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/top-lawyer-producer-schools-infographic/

It should come down to fit first and foremost; these school have vastly different cultures. Keep us updated for what she picks, and best wishes to her.

@Corinthian Yes, a good number of students are too busy with their commitments (I’d add to their social life with close friends too) to be engaged with the activism culture here. It’s pretty demanding, or at least the students make it that way.

@golfcashoahu Thanks! Yea, on second thought, I think the fear stems from the re-branding strategy Pomona did. Maybe I’ve let that color too much of my own view. Students still are kind, friendly, supportive, and humble. Maybe we’ve gotten a little bit more serious, but maybe it’s for the best.

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As a Five-College alumnus I would say that alumni attitudes are probably the results of the rather sudden appearance of radical progressives violating most liberal values wholesale.
The separate and independent characters of the 5 Colleges kept the social environment open and fluid. You could have any combination of interests, and most students had a dizzying variety in their friends.
If you attend any other four year institution in the country you will spend four years being stamped indelibly as a Yalie, or Trojan, or something. After four years at Claremont we came away with an education from Claremont, without a ton of egoistic dogma; embossed Hahvahd cuff links included.
In only two years we have seen all five campuses in the news because of outbreaks of Lunatic Leftist fascism attacking freedom of thought, expression, association and even a cringingly childish rant against the evil, white supremacist concept of objective truth.
I imagine not all of the Liberal alumni understand the power the SJW’s wield over public discourse. Students who disagree with the radically ridiculous ravings of self righteous, self-appointed thought police keep it to themselves lest they be demonized, denounced and probably brought up on charges of micro-aggressive racism and pathological Republicanism and expelled.

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I’d like to respond to the comment regarding the Alumni network. As a a 25 year alum who attended just at the start of th changes from regional excellence to national stature, I think it’s important to put the Alumni in context.

First, many of us are exactly like you–from low income, and various disadvantaged backgrounds. I never even knew the idea of alumni networks before attending. It’s not how I got to Pomona, it’s not what my family knew, or how they acted. I always expected to bootstrap my way into any opportunity. And having observed how those networks work at ivys (grad school), they make me uncomfortable. It’s not in my bones. And I have a little bit of expectation that good Pomona students can bootstrap too. Maybe that’s unfair, but it’s very Western. Plus I think many of us from those backgrounds have imposter syndrome, it takes a generation of 2 to feel entitled to those handouts so we don’t offer up without being asked. So the habit of alumni network handouts is different for people from the kind of diverse students that have been at Pomona for the last few decades.

Also, Pomona is on the west. I think that beyond Stanford no western school has the same expectations of alumni. Those cozy patterns I saw in the East just don’t work that way here. It could change, but that is part of the old laid back Pomona culture. It’s not had 100 years of back scratching baked in.

I personally answer and spend extensive time talking with any Pomona student who calls me. But I will not respond to a Facebook request To “anyone”. If you have an interest in government, or Bioethics happy to chat. But there are no internships to give in my business. You have to compete fully with others. And I wonder if what alums do for work, also limits what we can give. Not sure about that but I bet the career office could be mining that data.

Just a perspective from one alum.

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My son is finishing his freshman year at Pomona College and has been delighted, inspired and humbled by the nurturing atmosphere that Pomona College provides. The quality and quantity of faculty advisors, mentors and peer advisors available to him is truly remarkable. The alumni he has contacted have been responsive and helpful. He has multiple internship opportunities available to him. When I visited him on campus and met his friends, I was impressed by their down-to-earth character, modesty and curiosity. They were exceptionally well qualified. Both my spouse and I graduated from Ivy League schools and found the diverse and nurturing environment at Pomona College far more attractive. During our visit to our son on campus, we met with two of his professors and found them so incredibly accessible, available, and interesting. They referenced specific information about our son that reflected the amount of attention and care they devoted to their role as faculty. While not without flaws, Pomona College seems like an exceptional place for the development of character and capability in an intellectually stimulating, culturally diverse and socially vibrant environment.

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As a current student, I think @EndOfTheWorld brings up a lot of really good points. Given that folks are making decisions about where to attend, though, I want to highlight their point that, despite these things, “I don’t regret coming here in the slightest and wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.” From my knowledge of the higher education landscape, I’d say that Pomona has a strong claim to offering (to the extent that one can generalize about such things, which is admittedly very limited) the best overall undergraduate liberal arts education of any college or university in the world, and I’d hate for the effect of this post to be to dissuade someone from going here in favor of somewhere else that has flaws of its own (and probably much more substantial ones) but just isn’t as honest about acknowledging them.

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Also, with regard to point #4, here’s an article in the student newspaper, The Student Life, with more details about the rebranding initiative: http://tsl.news/news/5908/

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First, thank you for your thorough and insightful response. As a current first-year student (soon to be a rising sophomore) at Pomona, I can attest that your points, particularly those regarding the call-out culture of activism on campus, resonate very well with my nine months of experience on this campus.

I was the student (Michael Alvis, feel free to friend me on Facebook) who posted the lengthy response on the Class of 2021 page. Looking back on my response (which has since been deleted along with the conversation surrounding it, but I do have a copy of it if you’d care to consult it for future reference), I think I was a bit too adamant in defending Heather Mac Donald’s right to speak without the great disruption that surrounded her speech. My post came across as defending Mac Donald’s views, which I most certainly do not support. Additionally, I think I was too generous toward Alice Goffman despite her having considerable controversy attached to her methodology and ethnographic positionality.

Nonetheless, I do not think I or anyone else deserves the level of rancor that I received for my response, particularly since my primary aim was not to reinforce prejudicial views, but to institute and protect an environment of rigorous discourse for all on campus. I still stand by my thesis that David Oxtoby (Pomona’s president ) did not “side with racists” in proclaiming his support for a discourse on campus that is free of shaming, personal attacks, and countervailing speech that is designed to suppress rather than intelligently counter controversial arguments.

Regardless, I very much appreciate your post!

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I know it is a while since this was first posted but I want to sincerely thank you for this incredibly detailed and comprehensive post.

As an ED applicant, I long have thought about Pomona as “the perfect place” or “academic paradise”, etc. to convince myself to apply ED (I was very indecisive, haha). However, now that I was lucky enough to be accepted, I want to manage my expectations, especially from the idealized perception that I created for Pomona before.

I find so many of these points very poignant, especially the one about Alumni network, which was a major concern of mine before committing to applying ED to a LAC, in general. I did not have an alumni interview for Pomona because there was not one in my area or maybe there was, he/she/they just didn’t want to engage in it, while I have received several alumni interview assignments for other universities and colleges (only managed to do two before decisions came out, though). This does indicate the strength (or lack thereof) of the alumni network to an extent, which is even more important for Pomona due to its relative lack of name recognition.

Speaking of the lack of name recognition, that was probably my greatest concern when I was deciding to apply ED and boy, am I already experiencing this?! (So many people have asked me “Where/what is Pomona” that I have developed a systematic response to it). Although prestige has very little allure to me, I can’t help but wonder if attending Pomona instead of a higher brand recognition school will give me more career opportunities, especially in my early stages of career or working internationally (which I am sure I am going to pursue).

If any current students/ alumni/ parents/ people in the know can help expand on these points or address them, it’d be greatly appreciated. (@nostagiawisdom addressed part of this in the class of 2022 thread, which is very helpful)

Although I have not attended yet, I will still confidently say that despite these concerns, the attraction of Pomona far outweighs the potential disadvantages, and I cannot be happier about my ED choice, nor be more in love with Pomona than I already am!

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As the father of a Sagehen, I can share my perspective of Pomona College. Name recognition, or the lack thereof, seems to be an issue mainly in the social sphere, rather than academic and pre-professional. This means your neighbors may be ignorant of the school, but certainly not grad schools and employers. However, career development seems to be one of Pomona College’s biggest weaknesses.

This can be attributed in part of Pomona’s history/philosophy as a liberal arts institution devoted to freeing its students from the shackles of ignorance as liberal arts colleges are designed to do. While this philosophy is fantastic for cultivating curious, questioning, intellectually agile and flexible, young people, it can hinder the development of career pathways for its graduates. Pomona is spectacular in nurturing the development of young minds and in helping young people find their niches, especially those who not set on a particular career path.

“Undecided” is not viewed as a negative choice for a major for incoming freshman but rather as an invitation to explore, experiment and develop. However, for those students who have a specific career path in mind, they will likely find the career development resources at Pomona lagging those at institutions with a greater commitment to and longer history in cultivating college-to-career pathways. My Sagehen son has several anecdotal accounts of his equally qualified peers at USC, Northwestern, etc. gaining highly sought-after internships with big name consulting firms with greater ease than at Pomona.

But keep this negative in perspective, given the many many positives that Pomona has to offer. One of the biggest positives is the ease with which students can take classes from other Claremont Consortium colleges. My son will take at least two courses next semester from Scripps, the all-female member of the Claremont Consortium. It’s just a short walk from his dorm at Pomona. No other consortium in the country can match the ease with which students of consortium colleges make use of each other’s resources.

Another big positive is the culture of accessibility and approach-ability that pervades the campus at Pomona. Faculty, peers and facilities are all so inviting and welcoming. I have visited many of the SLACs on the East Coast, including Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Haverford and myself attended an East Coast institution. The feeling of inclusion, modesty and tolerance at Pomona is palpably more pronounced. Also, if you value the physical environment, the safety of the Claremont, California town, the warm and sunny and low-humidity weather there are enormously attractive. In fact, I visited the campus last week and enjoyed watching the Sagehen tennis team practicing in t-shirts and shorts, taking a nap on the warm grass near the outdoor Sontag theater, and watching fat squirrels chase each other outside Sumner Hall.

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@PeaceOfMind The Amherst/U Mass/Mount Holyoke/Hampshire/Smith consortium is very very strong as well.
Buses are used though, distances are bit greater. Still the U Mass Amherst research campus adds some very strong research options for science and engineering students, that are lacking in the fine Claremont consortium. Harvey Mudd students go to Caltech, to get into a lab. There is not PhD level projects inside the Claremont consortium, for undergrads to get well trained in the sciences, although summer REUs are the way to go at Pomona College, they are NSF funded projects at larger research universities, set up for undergrads from LACs or weaker research universities.

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@ColoradoMomof2 Very little of what you said is true with regards to the two schools.

I have never heard of a single Mudd student ever having to go to Caltech to do research. Mudd has its own research labs among every single faculty member there. I did research at Mudd myself one summer through the consortium wide research program and there were more than 150 students on campus doing so. I will let @intparent share her remarks as well, as a Harvey Mudd parent.

Pomona itself sponsors a summer undergraduate research program for nearly 250 of its own students each year, and some 53% of students have a research experience with a faculty mentor. Many students go onto be published and present their research in conferences. The work in labs in advanced science courses often is independent investigation, and in one class, we found significant results contradicting an established paper that led to an award at a research undergrad conference and two senior theses to replicate the results and dive deeper into the topic (one of which was published). I know there was a lot of excitement in the physics department recently because the research one team of undergrads and a professor did was shared across a lot of prominent media sources.

https://www.pomona.edu/research
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/science/hairyflower-wild-petunia-seeds.html

You might bring up that the average level of research isn’t PhD/major R1 university quality. And that’s true. But does it matter as much as you make it to be? We’re talking about undergraduate programs here, where most students have not gained a strong foundation in doing independent research, designing a proposal modeled from past research and sustainable within a given time frame/department limitations, and being able to tackle and write primary literature. You can’t jump to PhD level work until you can demonstrate you’re ready to do so, and that takes time. The education you get here to prepare you to become a scientist is in my opinion unbeatable if you’re starting from scratch or if you only have a little experience. There is so much mentorship and feedback from both faculty members (who teach all courses including labs) and advanced majors who have a passion for advising undergraduates. I have many friends who are doing their PhDs at major universities where they TA undergraduates, and so many have remarked that the Pomona science education stands out in preparing students. The individual attention, access to research experiences as early as a first semester student, and development of foundation skills are just not as prominent at their universities.

The outcomes of STEM majors from Pomona is impressive. The number of distinctive undergraduate STEM fellowships (in which substantial research experience and proficiency is required) won by graduates of Mudd and Pomona outpaces most universities on a size adjusted basis. Goldwater, NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, Churchill, Beckman Scholars- in several cases, those two schools have won more on an absolute scale than some seriously prominent research Us despite being 5-20 times smaller. Mudd ranks #2 in STEM degree production per capita after Caltech, and Pomona ranks #12, and I can think of friends currently attending pretty much all of the big name schools for graduate studies in STEM. These things don’t just “happen” by coincidence, nor do they come solely from outside experiences.

REUs are a great option for students who want specialized research experiences not available at their home school, or a sense of what life would be like at a major research university. They do not supplant the academic enrichment and foundation research experiences one gains in their home school. I would guess that about 50-100 Pomona students do a REU or comparable each summer at another university or research institute. That means there are still far more doing the Pomona sponsored research program. As someone who did an REU at a major research university, the experience I gained there was valuable and different, but in no way leaps and bounds above the research experiences I did at Pomona.

I was admitted to Amherst College. It’s a great school with the consortium set-up as you described, and they’re opening a beautiful science center. As someone who was explicitly interested in the science offerings of the school, I asked students what their bulk of experiences looked like. IIRC, I met only one student who did research in CS at UMass. All the traditional liberal art stem majors (bio, physics, chem, math) who had done research did so either at Amherst (during the school year or summer) or at a REU. Not to disparage UMass, which is a great school- just that it was easier to participate in the activities on the home base. I felt that the consortium was nowhere near as central of a factor for their students as the Claremont Colleges are to each other. Warm weather + walkability makes for a much easier dynamic than a bus system, and I’ve heard from friends attending Amherst that the shuttles can be unreliable in coming at the posted schedule and that there are plans to cut down the number of rides due to budget constraints.

The takeaway of this long post- it’s not the quantity of experiences which matters so much as the quality. There is no shortage of research opportunities, dedicated professors, and interesting and rigorous courses across the Claremont Colleges. Yes, the CCs have nowhere near the research funding or top caliber facilities of some prominent research Us, but that’s because they emphasize teaching and individual attention over churning out publications. Many present day and budding scientists at the nation’s leading research institutions did their bachelors’ from LACs like Mudd, Pomona, and Amherst- they are disproportionately represented relative to their size.

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My own opinion is that working with graduate students is invaluable and very different from working with a professor at a LAC. The reason is, a young student will experience a bit of the grad student struggles that way. The struggle is what you want to understand if you want a PhD. Research work at LACs may, some of the time, make the struggle look too easy, in my opinion. So it nurtures a bit too much. That means a few get through that may not belong in science, but it also means a few that would have dropped off get through and may succeed. It will even out and
those that want to stay in science, will find a way.

I do know Mudd students who went to Caltech for a research experience, and it was helpful to them. I know other Mudd students who went to MIT Lincoln Labs before embarking on a PhD do get some of that "struggle’ that they missed at Mudd.

Winning a fellowship is nice, but may not actually be the best way to get the most experience out of a PhD. The struggle of teaching will bring something to the grad student, who struggles to teach instead of the easier way out, with the fellowship. They may discover a talent there, or not, good to know!!

We dwell way too much on these types of awards, when actually, just plodding through may work well for many thousands of scientists, but I do see the value in trying for a Goldwater in particular, as it gets a younger undergraduate scientist to really think about their work. It IS very political today and gender balanced, of course.

NSFs are also gender balanced, so boys should not get discouraged, when a lot more of them apply and may not win, remember the political nature of these awards. And I do have a white son who won an NSF in physics, the three year graduate award. I see him missing out on teaching, in fact, as I stated above.