Top 10 Reasons to go to Pomona

<p>Pomona may be well known in some parts, but LAC's are practically a myth with the low levels of recognition they get at large.</p>

<p>A personal top 10 list to add to it:
1. Claremont McKenna
2. Scripps
3. Pitzer
4. Harvey Mudd
5. The 5-C's
(no really, the consortium is that awesome - classes, food, people, the 5-C challenge, 5-C Lax, etc.)</p>

<p>But if I had to call the consortium 1 answer?
2. High on Campus living rate
3. Sponsor program
4. People from all around the country (those three traits are what makes it so easy to like and fit in, IMO. You feel welcomed into a culture from day 1)
5. Skyspace - such a cool place to chill
6. Being able to get into classes with the best prof's even as a freshman
7. Claremont - it really offers a surprising amount for as tiny of a town as it is
8. Southern California location - you can easily get to LA, SB, SD, LV, and more
9. the people are awesome, period.
10, last but not least, Beer League</p>

<p>beer league? do explain</p>

<p>ah, beer league. it's pomona's most popular, unofficial sport. teams from various classes compete with each other. it's basically baseball turned into a drinking game. most participants are male, but I think that there are beerleader girls. I do not participate, but it's fun to watch the drunken revelry from the Lyon 2 balconies on a sunny saturday afternoon. maybe some of the guys would wish to elaborate?</p>

<p>(for you non-drinkers, Pomona is not nearly as alcoholic as this makes it sound. beer league is just one of our more hilarious and unspoken traditions)</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Your parents will (should) have complete peace of mind that you are safe, happy and learning.</p></li>
<li><p>You're at the best LAC in the country.</p></li>
<li><p>The administration CARES.</p></li>
<li><p>The people who get accepted are really smart, funny and nice (I swear it's like a requirement for acceptance).</p></li>
<li><p>CHOCOLATE...now really what other school can say they do this?</p></li>
<li><p>You can play in the fountains.</p></li>
<li><p>Sports and music - all those ECs to continue fine-tuning.</p></li>
<li><p>the 5-Cs Consortium - it's a small school and a big school at the same time! And not just any schools, but GREAT schools!</p></li>
<li><p>2009 Kiplinger #1 Best Value LAC!</p></li>
<li><p>It's beautiful - weather, architecture, landscaping, history - the school is over a 100 years old!</p></li>
<li><p>oh, I'm supposed to keep it at 10...</p></li>
<li><p>sorry, I just had to add the sushi and smoothies...oh! and the MILKSHAKES...</p></li>
<li><p>Anyone who is accepted must have the best karma in the universe!</p></li>
<li><p>Lest, I forget - Orientation Adventures - gah!! (in my next life, I'm going to Pomona! :)</p></li>
</ol>

<p>This is a rather awkward list of the rules/description, but here's a shot:</p>

<p>Beer League is basically baseball with beer, rather self-explanatory. 1 team per class, 7 players a side (although most teams have people on the bench who rotate in), 1 beer an inning, 9 inning games. 7 players because you pitch to your own team and there isn't a catcher. 2 outs per inning, 4 strikes though, but every pitch counts as a 'strike'. It is played on the softball field. You use a POS tiny bat in order to prevent an excessive amount of home runs. Chug a beer for a spectacular play or home run(regulating the skill of players a bit). For the 7th inning stretch you chug a beer and sing take me out to the ball game (important to remember there a <b>4</b> strikes and you're out). Arguments over calls are decided by a chug off, and if that fails a friendly(yes, friendly) brawl works too.</p>

<p>Thats the gist of it, but I'm certainly leaving bits out. It really just offers a great way to squander a saturday with a bunch of friends. People sit in the grass behind the outfield and study/sunbathe/chat/drink/bbq, people heckle from atop the dugouts, all sorts of good times.</p>

<p>I’m certain that the first rule of beerleague is that friendly brawls have no bearing whatsoever on the game. Also, the tie goes to the fielder; that’s more important than you think.</p>

<p>I am finishing up my freshman year at Pomona right now, and I feel that my top 10 reasons for attending are pretty close to my top 10 favorite things about the college thus far, maybe I have rearranged them a little. Here it goes</p>

<ol>
<li> Academic Quality - great classes and great prof.s are everywhere.<br></li>
<li> The Consortium - dining, friends, clubs and classes, all of it opens up the whole campus.<br></li>
<li> The people - People here are nice, easygoing and fun to work with and hang out with.<br></li>
<li> The weather - just perfect, almost all year round.<br></li>
<li> The campus - beautiful is an understatement, the only college on the west coast that comes close to it in beauty is Stanford.<br></li>
<li> Events - for such a small place we snag some pretty cool speakers, put on some good concerts, and have some really exciting sporting teams (Baseball is now No. 1 in Division III)</li>
<li> The rooms - it is so funny, people who get “screwed over” in room choice here still get what would be considered a great room at any other school in the country. If you have even a scrap of any luck to speak of (if you got in then certainly yes), your room will rock.<br></li>
<li> The village - not the best college town ever, but damn near close.<br></li>
<li> Los Angeles - concerts, museums and sporting events all within reach, not to mention my home.<br></li>
<li> Free time - we don’t waste it here, lot’s of fun things to do on the weekend.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>That constant, pressing feeling that you are at the best place ever. If you can throw the heat academically, this is literally the Disneyland of colleges.</p>

<p>I’m not going to Pomona, but I’m surprised no one mentioned that they featured your college on Top Chef Masters a few weeks ago. They had to cook in dorm rooms–it was really cool :)</p>

<p>according to the school’s website, pomona generously offers financial aids for students. Does that also include international students?
I’m an international student from vietnam and I’m gonna be a high school senior (i’ve been studying in the US for 2 years). Money is always my biggest concern when choosing colleges.</p>

<p>I have known international students who did receive generous finaid from Pomona but they were studying in their native countries. Good luck!</p>

<p>Financial Aid for international students works pretty similarly to non-international students, but I believe Pomona doesn’t give financial aid to international transfer students (or it’s very rare…).</p>

<p>i loveeeee the school ive visited four times now! im applying now. the campus is truly like harvard in a way. a bunch of movies have filmed at pomona and pretended it was an ivy league school. </p>

<p>the bad thing is everyone thinks im applying to CAL POLY pomona instead of the legit pomona, so i have to explain the entire consortium to them. not a big deal at all though.</p>

<p>“when they look it up to see what a dweeb you are, it gives them a major YOINK to find out it’s the #6 LAC, #2 in selectivity and #13 graduate feeder school”</p>

<p>Pomona is not #2 in selectivity. That would be Yale (Harvard #1). Pomona is ranked at #15 with 15.7%. Sorry, but Penn and Georgetown are both below it. :)</p>

<p>^ I think the original poster was referring to LAC selectivity. Pomona is usually around #2-#3 in selectivity for liberal arts colleges. Overall, Pomona is like 15th? Not completely sure on that count.</p>

<p>Here is my top ten list:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Location: Good proximity to LA, J-tree, and the beach. The school really tries to get its students off campus and puts on lots of trips.</p></li>
<li><p>Consortium: One of the main reasons I came to Pomona. It really makes a difference, for everything from number of classes offered to dining hall variety. </p></li>
<li><p>Financial Aid, School Resources: The financial aid here is phenomenal. Pomona was cheaper than attending my state school on its highest merit scholarship. And because I’m on financial aid, I get free private music lessons. Pomona also loves to financially support students in whatever they’re doing; I know someone who got Pomona to help pay for a bunch of people to go see RENT in LA.</p></li>
<li><p>Freshman Seminar: I really enjoyed my freshman seminar and my professor was awesome. That leads me to #6…</p></li>
<li><p>Awesome Professors: Zero complaints with my first-semester professors. I like how at Pomona it is easily possible to take classes with amazing professors in your freshman year–not the case at many of the schools my friends attend. </p></li>
<li><p>Campus: Pictures hardly do it justice. </p></li>
<li><p>Weather: It was almost in the 80s when I left campus for winter break…</p></li>
<li><p>Sponsor Groups: An instant group of friends from day one. My sponsor group is now like a second family to me. </p></li>
<li><p>Dorm Life: My roommate was a near-perfect match. I have made new best friends with people in my hall. </p></li>
<li><p>People: Most of the people I know are smart, funny, laid-back and athletic. There are some really good people here. Definitely one of the best reasons to go to Pomona and the reason I want to be back now.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Now that it is christmas break and I finally have 32579235 hours of free time…</p>

<p>1) The people - I was nervous that I would be spending all my time with people who would only want to talk about their perfect SAT scores, but everyone is actually pretty laid back and extremely friendly. And they’re from all over the place; lots of connections for future road trips.
2) Saturday and sunday omelets at Frank, stirfry at CMC, sushi and CMC and scripps, and most of all, scripps cookies. The food.
3) The weather… yup, finishing my last final in december and walking outside to 75º weather was pretty awesome.
4) The PE classes.
5) The random people they bring onto campus… Brian Greene at HMC, Girl Talk, Gym Class Heroes, etc.
6) Sponsor groups.
7) The rest of the consortium - makes the weekends a lot more interesting, the food, and pretty much everything else. I really havent met that many people from the other schools though, even though I have 1 class off campus.
8) Collaboration in the classes. Last semester I did physics homework in groups, math in groups, and we did peer reviews for each others papers in freshman seminar. No one is competitive toward their classmates. It’s rather awesome.
9) I would be lying if I didn’t mention the parties.
10) The amount that I learned in 1 semester. You spend an obscene amount of time doing homework (I’d never imagined that I would spend both saturday and sunday doing homework) but you learn a ton. </p>

<p>Some things I didn’t like that you might not realize during a college tour:

  • I’m biased cause I took some really hard classes, but there was just so much homework. Yeah, LA and the beach are near-ish, but if you have to spend every day doing homework you can’t actually enjoy any of that.
  • It really is kind of small</p>

<p>…might add more later.</p>

<p>Hey Charizzle, curious…which of your classes had the obscene workloads? merci</p>

<p>Charizzle, I"m curious how common it is that people spend both weekend days doing homework? Also, about how many hours of homework did you spend a night in high school? Just trying to get a sense of how typical your experience is for a Pomona freshman. Thanks!</p>

<p>^ It isn’t uncommon to spend a significant portion of Sunday studying. Most people I know did little to no work on Fridays/Saturdays (unless they had a major paper or midterm coming up), and then got caught up on Sundays. In my case, homework during the week was pretty moderate, with Fri/Sat kept free and Sundays being a little stressful because I would have midterms on Mondays/papers due. In terms of workload, my classes were on the heavier side compared to most freshmen (I took Accelerated Gen Chemistry, Elementary Chinese, Philosophy, and my ID1, which had more pages of reading and writing than any other freshman seminar I heard about).</p>

<p>I had a weekend similar to what lolcats described. Either Friday and Saturday were free and I did work all Sunday, or I put in four or five hours Fri+Sat and then had a more relaxed Sunday (going to bed on time, woohooo!)</p>

<p>But even without an obscene workload, getting out of Claremont still doesn’t happen much, partly because you have to work out plans ahead of time, and partly because if you take a day trip you are condemning most of the rest of your weekend to work. It’s just easier to stay on the campus. On the flip side, for me campus is a really fun place to be–if someone else really wanted to get away, they could definitely make that happen.</p>