What did you turn down for Pomona?

<p>We also have several people turning down Georgetown and Carleton. I turned down Rice and Berkeley Regents for Pomona.</p>

<p>My good friend turned down Columbia and Princeton because Pomona just “felt like home”. :)</p>

<p>Wow, thread is still going aftee 5 years? Well might as well add that Pomona ranks #2 in the lastest Forbes rankings right behind Stanford. Although, i think rankings are superficial, its still saying something ranking it 6 places above Harvard.</p>

<p>I’m turning down Stanford, Amherst, and Bowdoin, among others that weren’t as close contenders for me personally. Between visiting and my research, Pomona has become a clear choice and I could not be more confident.</p>

<p>I’ve turned down Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Vanderbilt, and NYU!</p>

<p>Daughter turned down Dartmouth, Wash U, Oberlin, Vassar, and several others. Truthfully, she would have gone to Stanford if she had gotten in. She likes what she sees so far, but is a little uncertain about things. She seldom dives into anything without dipping her toe first, so it is part of her personality. After a month there, I’m sure she’ll be very happy.</p>

I was admitted to Harvard early action. I just visited Pomona over the weekend, and now the pressure is setting in. My mom has bought all sorts of Harvard gear already. When I told my coach I was visiting a college on west coast, he told me, “I thought you got into Harvard.” It’s like Harvard is the end all be all, and I’m not sure if I am willing to just throw in that towel. I feel like I would thoroughly enjoy my time at Pomona, but the benefits of going to Harvard are so immense, especially in the job market. I don’t know. I don’t want to make the wrong decision for myself.

On the other hand, I haven’t even head back from Pomona, and I also applied to Yale. so really, I should relax and see what happens.

oxox, what’s your intended field of study? If it’s finance, go to Harvard. Anything else, Pomona won’t hold you back in the job market.

I do not think I will be majoring in finance. I do not like math very much
 But I am still undecided. I would really like to speak to someone who has turned down HPYS for Pomona, but I felt rude asking about that on my visit. Would you happen to know someone? Or did you turn down a top ivy for the school?
I just want to weigh the pros and cons.

@mamabear1234

You may find the following link helpful.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/l-jay-lemons/the-gold-standard-the-powerful-impact-of-residential_b_4633443.html

Wow seeing all the great places people have turned down for pomona is making me loose so much hope!!

PC2019Dad, thank you so much for that link. It really reflects what DD has experienced these past 3 years at Pomona (and what DS is experiencing at another small residential LAC back east), vs what their friends are dealing with at larger well-known research universities. From your name, I’m guessing your kid got in ED. Congrats!

oxox, No, my daughter did not apply to any Ivies, and I’m glad she didn’t, because she would face the same issue - should she go to Harvard because it’s Harvard, or go where she feels the fit is better? I’m sure you will do well and be happy wherever you go, but she is having a fantastic experience at Pomona. Several professors have taken an interest in her progression, with advice and research opportunities. I believe the future will be wide open for whatever she wants to do after college.

@oxoxhawja3xoxo‌ You may well find that Yale is the perfect choice, offering the same prestige/future job benefits as Harvard but with a Pomona-like close-knit community because of the residential colleges and very happy students. Happiness ratings are very important, and there’s another site that provides data on the percentage of students who would attend the same school if they were making the choice again. Pomona and Yale do extremely well on that measure. You may also want to watch the Harvard student-produced “Ivy” episodes on YouTube. There are two of them now, each slightly more than 20 minutes long, and supposedly they give a good fictionalized feel for what life as a Harvard student is like. Then compare that to what you’d likely experience as a student at Pomona or Yale.

@Planner Oh that is interesting. Might you happen to have the link tot he website that shows if students would make the same college choice again? I’d love to see it!

@oxoxhawja3xoxo‌ I have it, but when I tried to link to it in another post some time ago, it got deleted! Just Google “Students” and “Review” and “colleges” and it should be the first result. It’s a site that supposedly has more than 189,000 reviews—whew!

found it, thanks! @planner

Just saw this and thought I’d add my choice. I just committed to Pomona over UChicago, Columbia, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and WashU. I just really think it provides one of the best (if not THE best) undergraduate experiences in the world. Big research universities are super prestigious for graduate school, but they don’t focus at all on their undergrads.

I turned down Stanford, Rice ,Wesleyan, Colorado College, UCSD and Reed

I would love to hear from people who turned down Yale for Pomona! I was just taken off the pomona waitlist and am having a very hard time deciding.