Pomona College

Pomona College Introduction

I came to Pomona seeking an atmosphere that was ferociously intellectual, but at the same time, more open and friendly than colleges back East.

Pomona College is a coed, residential, nonsectarian liberal arts college located thirty-five miles east of Los Angeles. Its mission is “the pursuit of knowledge and understanding through study in the sciences and the humanities…[its curriculum prepares] students for lives of personal fulfillment and social responsibility in a global context.” (Pomona College Catalog) Like most things in life, students get out of a Pomona education exactly what they put into it. They can spend four years thinking hard, taking a broad variety of classes, and stretching their intellectual experiences and capabilities, surrounded by other highly motivated people in one of the world’s most pleasant climates.

Pomona was founded in 1887 by New Englanders affiliated with the Congregational Church. They named the school after the Roman goddess of the harvest, and conveniently forgot she was also a goddess of wine. The founders wanted to provide a liberal arts college “of the New England type” for the youth out West. They also took the then-radical step of making Pomona coeducational from the start. Today, students come from all over the country and some foreign countries as well, and the Congregational heritage survives only in some restriction of alcohol consumption on campus. People still have fun—they just do it without kegs. The educational goals have also been refined, most recently in 1994, when the college adopted new general education requirements aimed at giving students the skills “to live resiliently in a changing world.” Pomona is the founding and largest institution of The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five colleges and two graduate institutions. The Claremonts share some facilities and work together to provide students with expanded classroom and extracurricular opportunities.

Just looking at the beautiful campus, you could guess that Pomona offers a lot of resources to its students. The chemistry, biology, and physics labs are among the finest available to undergraduates anywhere. The Seaver Theatre complex has large and small stages, studios, and classrooms housing The Claremont Colleges’ theater program. It’s a stone’s throw from the Oldenborg Center, a combination international study center and residence hall, with its own dining room and international film and colloquia series. Three computer labs, one on north campus and two south, provide students with word processing, printers, on-line course materials, and candy: free e-mail, Internet access, and multi-user games. Pomona’s administration has housed itself in Alexander Hall, where students can walk in air-conditioned comfort from pleading for classes at the Registrar’s Office, to pleading for money in Financial Aid, to pleading for time at the Business Office, to pleading for mercy from the Dean of Students.

Pomona College is a coed, residential, nonsectarian liberal arts college located thirty-five miles east of Los Angeles. It is academically rigorous and attracts highly motivated people as students, staff, and faculty. Its location is both a blessing and a curse, with a great climate and easy access to mountains, beaches, and city life, but little activity in the surrounding town. The college is aware of this and outdoes itself providing on-campus activities and resources for students, funding student projects, building recreational facilities, and bringing distinguished performers and lecturers to campus. Graduates can rely on their skills to go anywhere they want and do whatever they dream.

Pomona College Academics

Before applying, students should know some of the demands Pomona will place on their time. Students at Pomona need to pass thirty-two courses to receive the Bachelor of Arts, the only degree Pomona confers. (Even science majors are BAs here. Then again, at Harvard, computer science majors receive the Bachelor of Arts, too.) The classic student will complete courses in four years, taking four courses each semester. Pomona doesn’t count credit hours, but some nonacademic classes, such as foreign language conversation and physical education, count only as half a course. Time demands vary from subject to subject, instructor to instructor, but most students won’t want to take much more than four courses at a time. There’s extensive lab time for science classes, hours of language lab each week for introductory foreign language classes, and huge amounts of reading and writing (and rewriting) in almost every class. Classes are kept small so everyone gets plenty of attention from the instructor. After freshman year, most classes have ten or twelve students, the biggest classes having about twenty-five students.

General Education

Most colleges and universities require all of their students to demonstrate basic knowledge of a few academic subjects, and the choice of subjects and the level of achievement demanded varies from school to school. Some call it breadth of study, others general education. The Pomona faculty in 1994 defined a common core of intellectual experiences and skills their students should have. Supposedly, these skills in perception, analysis, and communication will enable students to explore ideas, evaluate evidence, draw balanced conclusions, and communicate their findings throughout their college career and in their life afterward. The ten skills are

• read literature critically.
• use and understand the scientific method.
• use and understand formal reasoning.
• understand and analyze data.
• analyze creative art critically.
• perform or produce creative art.
• explore and understand human behavior.
• explore and understand an historical culture.
• compare and contrast contemporary cultures.
• think critically about values and rationality.

Students are required to take one course in each of these areas: creative expression; history; values; ethics; cultural studies; the natural and biological sciences; mathematical reasoning; and social institutions and human behavior. Some of these courses will fall within their field of concentration, but they’ll have to broaden their intellectual pursuits for others, at least for the four and one-half months it takes to complete the course.

Writing

Every Pomona student has to complete at least two writing-intensive courses, in which several drafts of every paper are submitted to the instructor for comment before a final grade is given. The required Critical Inquiry seminar every student takes in the first semester at Pomona counts for one of these.

My second writing-intensive course was Economic History with Professor Hans Palmer. There were only eight students in the class. Professor Palmer required us to turn in four drafts of every paper, and he reserved the right to require more revisions when necessary. I was in the second semester of my senior year, so I had plenty on my mind besides my courses and was a little taken aback when I got the first draft of my first paper back with three pages of comments and suggestions, in red ink. When the second draft came back with just as much red ink, I was downright dismayed. But my writing improved, and while I was rethinking my written ideas over and over, I was also sharpening my analysis of what I learned.

Foreign Language Proficiency

Another requirement for a Pomona degree is proficiency in a foreign language, defined as speaking and writing the language at the level of a third-semester course. Pomona is serious about this requirement, and it has even kept a few bright people from graduating on time. Plan ahead. Students can test out of this requirement by scoring a 650 or better on a language SATSubject test, or by scoring a 4 or 5 on an Advanced Placement exam. Students are also required to complete one course defined as “speaking-intensive.” This is a new requirement; the catalog defines it as “frequent, extemporaneous oral presentations, discussion, or debate that are carefully evaluated by instructors.” With all these requirements, it would seem that there isn’t much room to do your own thing, but in truth, a single course can often satisfy more than one graduation requirement. An advanced language class can also be writing- or speaking-intensive. A philosophy class can also involve learning about a modern or historical culture.

Majors

On admission, students are asked what academic subject they intend to study, and they may be assigned to a faculty advisor based on this initial concentration, or major. Don’t worry too much about your initial choice. Pomona has a number of great academic programs, and you can change your mind a lot later in your college career than you think. If the introductory courses in a subject don’t light your fire, you’ll be taking classes in other subjects that might. No one will look back at your admissions essay when you declare an English concentration and say no, you can’t do this, because you said you wanted to be a diplomat. Honest!

When you decide which subject you’re interested in, choose a permanent faculty advisor who teaches in that concentration. Pomona offers top-notch courses in forty-one concentrations, in the natural and laboratory sciences, mathematics, social sciences, and humanities. Read the catalog for complete listings and course descriptions. The foreign language concentrations are also extremely demanding, so, as mentioned, plan to start studying the language in high school.

Studying Off Campus

Students can take up to eleven courses at the other Claremont Colleges during their four years, though in order to graduate there are a few courses they absolutely must take at Pomona. Some concentrations are offered jointly among all Claremont Colleges. If you choose to pursue Neuroscience, Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Asian American Studies, Media Studies, or Science, Technology, and Society, you’ll automatically be taking a number of your courses at other campuses. You’ll become acquainted with new professors, new students, and new ways of thinking by doing so, and with any luck, your social life will also be enhanced.

If the Claremont Colleges don’t offer enough variety of experience, students can also study as exchange students at Colby, Spelman, Smith, and Swarthmore colleges. Students can pursue five-year joint engineering degree programs with Caltech and Washington University in St. Louis. Every year, about twenty juniors and seniors spend a semester in Washington, D.C., where they serve as interns in government or national organization offices, write research papers, and attend seminars. There’s also a semester internship with the California state government in Sacramento.

About half of Pomona’s students choose to study abroad during their undergraduate years, for one or two semesters. The college strongly encourages study abroad, sponsoring forty programs in thirty-seven cities located in twenty-six foreign countries. At each of these sites, there’s a program director who acts as an advisor to the students and a liaison between the foreign school and Pomona.

I went to Strasbourg, France, for a semester in a Pomona-sponsored program run jointly with Brethren Colleges Abroad. The American and French staff associated with BCA helped me register for classes, found housing for me, sent my friends to doctors and dentists who spoke English, held get-togethers that supplemented my pitiful food budget, and generally made integration into a new culture much easier. My Pomona liaison took us out to dinners, the opera, and local museums, all on Pomona’s dime! I had a great experience studying abroad although it was tiring speaking another language all the time, and I had to think really hard about the business of everyday life. It wasn’t just because of cultural differences, but also because I wasn’t living on campus anymore, so I was doing a lot more on my own. I learned a lot.

In general, people have had a much easier time on study abroad by going on Pomona-sponsored programs. They don’t require people to set up their own living arrangements; they usually involve taking real classes at real universities, and Pomona makes sure they’re reputable. Truly adventurous students have found independent programs in places like the Dominican Republic, South Africa, and Indonesia, with widely varying results.

While I was studying abroad, I took a vacation in Ireland, and I stayed in a youth hostel in Limerick where I met up with a group of unlucky young Midwesterners whose study abroad program had promised them housing with local families, but hadn’t delivered. For three months, they’d been staying in a dingy building, sleeping dormitory-style with total strangers every night, with no on-site laundry facilities. Every night, five or six of them would sit in the hostel lounge, tune the TV into Baywatch, and talk about how they couldn’t wait to get home. What a waste!

Pomona College Admissions

If this sounds good so far, start planning for the application process. Applicants are required to submit an application form, recommendations, a transcript, and either ACT or SAT results. The admissions staff is interested in people who have done strong academic work, and have stretched themselves in some way. The high school transcript shows academic strength. Pomona expects applicants to have spent four years in high school English, three each in mathematics and foreign languages (but four is better), and two years each in laboratory sciences and social sciences. This doesn’t leave much room for electives. Those nonacademic courses show that applicants have lots of interests, but grades from electives don’t count in helping determine if they will do well at a demanding college. Admissions officers also consider whether they took Advanced Placement or honors courses if available.

The application form asks some basic demographic information, a few more personal questions, and requires two or three essays that indicate to the admissions staff the special things the applicant has done. They are looking for applicants who took on challenges, acted in a play, did community service, edited a publication—anything that asked the applicant to take on a new project and see it through. Not all Pomona students were valedictorians, but the vast majority of them played sports, participated in student government or community service, or were performing or studio artists in high school. Applicants can use the common application if they don’t have Pomona’s own, which is available on Pomona’s Web site.

Recommendations

Three recommendations are also required, one from the applicant’s high school principal or guidance counselor, and two from teachers in core academic subjects. Core academics are English, math, social sciences like history and anthropology, languages, and laboratory sciences like biology, chemistry, or physics. Applicants need recommendations stating that they are the most outstanding students ever encountered, because that’s the caliber of the competition. The SAT or ACT is also required. The average incoming Pomona student had a verbal SAT I score of 730 and a math score of 730. Students submitting the SAT must also submit the results of two SAT Subject Tests.

Other things that are recommended, but not required, for applicants include interviews, visits to the campus, and supplemental application materials. Applicants can inter- view either with admissions officers on campus or with a Pomona alum in their area. In addition, applicants can send samples of what makes them special along with their applications. Videotapes of their performances, clippings of news stories they wrote, slides or photographs of their paintings or sculptures will all stand out and help the admissions staff see the applicant as unique.

Pomona College Financial Aid

If you are wise in the ways of the world, you have been asking yourself how much a college with so much to offer will cost. The budget (tuition, fees, room and board, and personal expenses) was about $43,000 a year in a recent year, which is comparable with costs at other private schools of its caliber. If you can afford this out of pocket, great! Skip ahead. For the rest of the population, the Financial Aid Office will be a significant part of your college life. The Financial Aid Office at Pomona is extremely knowledgeable and helpful. Pomona is committed to meeting the financial need of all enrolled candidates, so applying for financial aid has no effect on admissions decisions.

Financial aid applicants file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to determine their eligibility for federal programs such as Pell Grants and Perkins and Stafford loans, as well as Federal Work-Study funds. They also file the College Scholarship Service’s Profile application to determine their eligibility for funds administered by Pomona. Pomona gives away or loans a lot of its own money every year to students who have financial need, which is a big help because there isn’t much money available from the federal government. California residents also file the Cal Grant GPA Verification form. Students with divorced parents will be asked to send a Non-Custodial Parent’s statement, giving financial information about the parent they do not live with, along with their Profile application.

The information gathered on all these forms shows how much money your family can contribute toward the costs of your education. If there is anything on any of these forms that confuses you (most likely, there will be), or if the picture of your family’s finances that comes out of the form doesn’t look right, contact the Financial Aid Office and ask them about it. They have seen thousands of students and awarded millions of dollars in aid. Chances are they will know exactly how to help you, as long as you keep them informed.

Pomona College Students

Life in a Pomona residence hall is nothing like a youth hostel. It’s more like an elite summer camp. Everyone there was a high achiever in high school. Everyone wants to do something important in the world upon graduation. Almost no one is there because “Oh, well, Mommy and Daddy went here, and it’s something to do between prep school and joining the family firm.” People really think and talk about what they’re learning, and are active in the community, on campus and off.

Housing

Everyone lives in residence halls as a first-year student. The first-year students are placed with a sponsor group of twelve to sixteen other first-year students and two sponsors, one male and one female, who are sophomores or juniors. The members of a sponsor group live in neighboring rooms, or adjoining hallways but men and women have separate bathrooms. Upperclassmen can always spot first-year students because they travel in packs. Entire sponsor groups arrive together at the dining halls, swimming pools, concerts, even dances.

My sponsor group lived in Oldenborg, the foreign language dorm. We had a great mix of people who had lived abroad, were first-generation Americans, spoke English as a second language, or were just interested in languages and international studies. My sponsors were great people. They spent a lot of time with us, clueing us in to all kinds of essential Pomona facts, and making the transition to a new lifestyle a lot easier.

There are a few important facts to know about the residence halls. Of course, they have developed personalities over the years. Oldenborg in particular has a reputation for being very insular. People enter “the Borg” and don’t often come out, since it has its own dining hall, a library, and a movie theater in the basement. Walker residents live the closest to what most people imagine the Southern California college lifestyle is. They tend to be laid back, playing a lot of Frisbee in the day and partying hard into the night. Lots of stressed-out first-year students and sophomores choose to live in Mudd-Blaisdell because there’s a computer lab in the courtyard; they can work late into the night and have a short walk back to their rooms.

Students can apply for permission to live off campus in their sophomore, junior, and senior years, but only a few students are permitted to go every year, and it’s hard to stay involved with campus life if you do. However, there are a few good reasons to move off campus. If you live in the residence halls, you have to eat at the cafeterias, or at least pay for the meal plan, whether or not you eat there. Alcohol consumption in the residence halls is regulated. Private parties can have alcohol only in single servings—no kegs. So, if you want to throw wild parties, you can either move off campus, or register your event with the Office of Campus Life and hold it in one of the six designated social rooms on campus.

Student Union

Pomona opened a new Campus Center in fall 1999, which provides a centrally located space for student activities both organized and disorganized. The college has a full complement of performing arts, political, cultural, and community service groups, honor societies, and any other activities that you’d expect from an extremely wealthy small college. The Smith Campus Center also houses restaurants, a ballroom, and a 200-seat movie theater.

Clubs and Organizations

The hosts of clubs and organizations spend lots of time recruiting new members in the first few weeks of every semester. Most announce their activities to the wider community in The Student Life, Pomona’s student-run newspaper; Collage, the five-college paper; online; and various flyers and posters around campus. KSPC, Pomona’s student-run independent FM radio station, is also a good source of information about things to do.

Performances and Socials

Almost everyone joins at least one significant extracurricular activity, but there are plenty of other ways to pass time on campus. The Committee on Campus Life and Activities, made up of elected student representatives and staff from the Office of Campus Life, has a huge budget dedicated to making sure that students have a good time and occasionally expand their minds when they’re outside class. They help sponsor performances on campus from such acts as The Dave Matthews Band, No Doubt, Indigo Girls, and the Kodo Drummers. They sponsor screenings of second-run films, parties and dances in the residence halls, the spring formal dance, the spring carnival, and even a few lectures here and there. Individual residence halls also sponsor their own activities, such as ice cream socials and movie nights.

There are six social rooms scattered among the residence halls that can be reserved in advance for any social event. There are a few social fraternities to join, but no sororities, although some of the fraternities are coed. No recognized Greek organizations are allowed to maintain houses for their members, so fraternity parties are also held in the social rooms, or off campus. Greek parties in the social rooms are subject to the same regulation as everyone else’s, including a requirement to have security officers for events with more than fifty people.

Pomona College Athletics

The administration realizes the limits placed on their students by the suburban location, so to keep them from stagnating in their personal development, any number of activities to keep them occupied outside of class have been organized. Pomona fields nineteen men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports teams. The sports facilities are really first-rate. The twenty-five-yard recreational pool behind Mudd-Blaisdell residence hall is a favorite spot for unofficial late-night visits, as are the Scripps and Harvey Mudd pools to the north. There’s also an eight-lane all-weather track anyone can use and the Rains Center, a $16 million facility built in 1992 that houses the weight room and CV equipment, squash, racquetball, basketball, and volleyball courts, aerobics studio, and locker rooms and coaches’ offices. The dance department has its studio on south campus, and students can cross-register for any physical education class at the other Claremont Colleges as well.

Pomona College Local Community

It is a good idea to cultivate friendships with people who own cars, because the sidewalks roll up at 9:00 P.M. in the village of Claremont. There is no movie theater, fast food, late-night restaurant, or shopping mall in the village, though there are a few smart little clothing boutiques and a video store or two within walking distance, and the Rhino Records store and Starbucks, source of all good things. Anybody can have a car at Pomona, although registration is required and parking areas are restricted.

Getting Away

If the attractions of Claremont wear thin, there are always the Pacific beaches, about an hour away by car. The San Bernardino mountains are an hour in the opposite direction, with camping, hiking, and even skiing at Big Bear. Adventures in downtown Los Angeles are also an hour’s drive away, and Disneyland is just forty-five minutes away. L.A. has a wide variety of cultural, shopping, and entertainment experiences to offer, what you’d expect from a huge city filled with hundreds of ethnic and cultural groups.

Pomona College Alumni

Pomona graduates often go into public service—teaching, government, nonprofits, congressional internships—right after graduation. Then, when the thrill of working long hours for poverty-level wages wears off, they pursue advanced degrees and move into more lucrative fields, such as management consulting, medicine, and the law. Pomona is well represented in scientific research, publishing, and business marketing as well.

Prominent Grads

• Roy Disney, ’51, Former Vice Chairman of Disney
• Richard Chamberlain, ’56, Actor
• Kris Kristofferson, ’58, Songwriter, Singer
• Myrlie Evers Williams, ’68, Former NAACP Chair
• Bill Keller, ’70, NY Times Columnist, Pulitzer Prize Winner

Carnegie Foundation Classification

Baccalaureate Colleges — Arts & Sciences

General Characteristics

Highest offering	Bachelor's degree
Calendar System	Semester
Years of college work required	N/A
Variable Tuition

Special Learning Opportunities

Distance Learning
ROTC — Army / Navy / Air Force	— / /
Study Abroad
Weekend College
Teacher Certification