Hello, this isn’t a chance thread, but I just wanted to know what type of students Pomona usually is looking for or accepts. I know they want a diverse class, I guess I’m just asking in general terms like characteristic and personality type. Thank you for whoever answers!
A paraphrase from Pomona’s website: we look for academically strong student who want to do something meaningful. Our location appeals to daring minds and adventurous spirits. We welcome applications from students who want to join a collaborative and creative community.
This was written to last year’s class so it may help a little:
“I do not know how to convey how difficult it is to be admitted here, and of the amount of thought that goes into shaping your class. It’s not enough to be an academic superstar, or we could fill your class several times over with the quality applicant pool we receive. You must have demonstrated something truly inspiring- be it related to your extracurricular passions, your potential, or your leadership. If you’re struggling to think about what that may be, there may be more subtle things that are just as important, if not more. Perhaps your LORs mentioned that you demonstrate compassion and kindness in the collaborative roles that you’re placed in. For all our insistence on bringing the “best”- it is also important to consider the traits and values needed in order to build a nurturing community.”
Pomona does seem to value personal character- they list it as most important in their weight of a variety of admission factors. In my experience, while it’s difficult to characterize an “average Pomona student” in terms of tangible interests and ambitions, the students seem to have a communal set of traits: intelligent, engaged, humble, charitable, passionate, friendly, supportive, and interdisciplinary. I would wager the admissions office looks for evidence for many of these traits in admitting Pomona students.
@nostalgicwisdom thank you! I was wondering because my test scores are really bad in comparison with Pomona’s averages, however, I think I showed a lot of passion in my application. It’s so hard to get into, so I have no expectations, but it’s nice to know Pomona has a holistic admissions process.
Don’t let test scores get you down-- its a very hollistic approach
@atl989 As an east Asian applicant, my test scores definitely did not help with my admission. What got me in, I believe, are the genuine and passionate PS, supplements, 4 references and all my ECs. So PLZ DO NOT LOSE HOPE! Fingers crossed for you! :))
@dbear33 THANK YOU for your uplifting comment! I’m Asian as well (South East Asian) and I know my ethnicity probably won’t help in admissions lol. I hope my EC’s on helping resettled refugees in Atlanta will make me unique, I tried to show as much as I could about my passion for working with refugees (wrote about Syrian refugees in my community). Thanks again!
The middle ACT range is a 31-34 with superscore. The 25th percentile SAT score is 2070, and the 75th percentile SAT score is 2320. As long as you fall between the mid 50, it doesn’t matter if your scores are “below their average;” if you are hooked, lower than 25th per. is fine.
@bubblepop12444 don’t want you spreading around erroneous information… according to Pomona’s most recent CDS, their middle 50 ACT is actually 30-34.
@ap012199 No it isn’t; check their 2016-2017 CDS. It’s a 31-34…
@bubblepop12444 oops… my bad. They just updated it a week ago. Prior to that (the November version of their 2016-2017 CDS) their middle 50 was displayed as 30-34… wonder why it changed. Could possibly have to do with this year’s applicants’ scores being imputed.
Their average is still 32 though, right?
You’re not wrong @ap012199 it definitely said 30-34 before! (I am compiling data on the LACs by selectivity) That’s really weird. Everything else in the document is exactly the same
The median score is a 32, average is a 31. Averages always tend to be lower for these top colleges since a 32 is on the higher end and students below the 25% can bring down the average quite a bit. For instance, say you have a class of 10 students, who scored a 24, 28, 31, 31, 32, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36. The median is a 32. The 30-80% range is a 31-34 . The average is a 31.6, brought down by that 24. As such, the median is a more telling statistic than the average.
Here’s the profile for the current senior class, where you can see the difference between average and median: https://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/enrolling_students_profile_2017.pdf
@nostalgicwisdom Your link is for the class of 2017. That was four years ago.
Obviously. I said current senior class.
He said it was the “current senior class.” He was illustrating the difference between the average and the median and telling you to pay more attention to the median.
@Corinthian Any 5th grader knows the difference between a median and an average. Nobody, not even the OP, asked for the difference between the class of 2017’s median and average…
The point wasn’t to define median/average (that’s just patronizing, I know people here know what those things mean), it was to contextualize it relative to the application process. I made a comment replying to @ap012199 saying that the median is a 32, but the average is lower. And then I elaborated it just to mention why the median is more telling, because the average can be weighed down by just one score on the lower end. That detail may not have been asked for, but 2 people did find it helpful, so…
The point of the link was just to illustrate that the mean is almost always lower than the median when it comes to test profiles. That’s it. I linked the 2017 Profile because Pomona’s current profile (https://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/pomona-college-admissions-2015-16-profile.pdf) doesn’t list those statistics.
Thanks @nostalgicwisdom for your helpful information. What would help contextualize it even further is information we don’t have, which would be the score distribution of the full applicant pool. But I think it’s safe to assume that there are a lot more low scorers than high scorers in the rejected pool. So statistically, the odds of getting in with a 30 are probably worse than the odds of getting in with a 34, holistic admissions or no holistic admissions. Even if a school isn’t score obsessed, it does care about the score range of the accepted class, which means that Pomona won’t want its mid-50 range to fall, for example, to 29-33. And there are going to be more applicants with 30’s than 34’s.
@Corinthian Amherst and Pomona have comparable student pools and admitted/enrolled SATs, but Amherst makes that data public.
I think Pomona’s will likely be similar: https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/669797
Thanks @nostalgicwisdom as always you provide interesting and enlightening data and observations.