City comparison--Riverside vs. Pomona

Mom2Engineers
Mon, 04 Dec 2017 23:58:54 +0000

We have visited both campuses. Riverside is in a remote area and it feels like a small town. The campus has a lot of space. Pomona is in a LA suburb and feels much more urban, although the campus itself is a bit of an oasis from that. It feels more crowded and I don’t think there is room to build more housing (which they need) while Riverside feels like it has lots of housing and space for more.

Riverside feels a bit more like a traditional college campus experience, and Pomona feels a bit more like an urban campus where a large percentage of students do not live there.

When we visited Riverside, we asked students why they went there. They all said, ‘I got accepted to Irvine, but Riverside offered me more scholarship money.’ When we asked the same question at Pomona, the answer was usually ‘I live nearby.’

These were our personal experiences when visiting the campuses. FWIW, while my daughter liked both campuses, she preferred Pomona because she loved the hands-on ‘learn by doing’ motto of Cal Poly, especially in her desired major of engineering.

I’m not sure you need a car in either place: both campuses are walkable. However, if you’re looking at ‘traveling home’, Riverside is pretty remote. For both schools you would fly in/out of Ontario (Southwest services that airport) but you’d have a much longer way to go to get to the airport from Riverside.