<p>Pizzagirl: I’ve never said Pomona is not a good college. I just said that for top students Pomona is a safety and not a match or reach. It is still match and reach for lots of applicants.</p>
<p>I also said that it is not HMSPY and it is not, not even close. It is not even close to JHU or U Chicago either.
It has not a single program that is better than any of the top university. The only good point about Pomona is that it has been used by large number of motion picture as shooting location.</p>
<p>It might provide an overall good undergraduate experience for those who want it but it is not even close to Amherst from academic standpoint.</p>
How can you say “it simply wasn’t meant to be”? That suggests that those who got in were “meant to be”, which sounds ridiculous.
The only explanation should be that there was too much competition and that one needs considerable luck to get into competitive schools.</p>
<p>Because nothing with an acceptance rate that low is a safety for anyone, POIH. Even the URM/legacy/2400SAT/4.0GPA/Intel winner/nationally ranked debater who helps little old ladies across the street. What part of holistic admissions do you not understand? It is a safety for NOBODY. Nobody.</p>
<p>Go on thinking that your idolization of HYPSM and dismissal of the top LAC’s as sloppy seconds makes you “elite.” It doesn’t. The people who are really in the know roll their eyes at your thinking.</p>
<p>POIH, I did read the post. You just said “last time I checked, Princeton was blahblah”. But no mention of what or where or when you checked. If you’re not citing something that the rest of us can verify, it doesn’t count. You may believe numbers; I believe in cited, supported, substantiated numbers. </p>
<p>Last time I checked*, the Pomona acceptance rate for SAT1 > 2300 was 21%.</p>
<p>*some random scribblings on a piece of scratch paper on my desk, because 69% of all statistics are made up.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: I don’t base my opinion on the basis of a college being a LAC or National University. I admire U Chicago or JHU because they have strong academics and I also admire Amherst because of strong academics.</p>
<p>I don’t find Pomona to be in the same boat academically.</p>
<p>Agree Mathmom. I recall a nice quote from an alumni magazine, an admissions director responding to tighter admissions/rejections: something like, “the kids can handle rejection just fine, it’s the parents who can’t handle rejection.”</p>
<p>And BTW, do we really need to keep taking the bait from POIH on this thread? It is not as if there is a reasoned dialogue to be had …</p>
<p>Based on what? It doesn’t impress people in your home country the way that HYPSM do? Seriously, what do you base your “not in the same boat academically” on?</p>
<p>Don’t you get that the academic differences between the top colleges and unis all fall under the classification of “dancing on the head of a pin”?</p>
<p>“The only good point about Pomona is that it has been used by large number of motion picture as shooting location.”
This kind of idiotic, nonsensical statement is why you are not taken seriously by other posters on CC, and never will be as long as you continue to make bombastic stupid pronouncements like the above… You simply don’t know that you don’t know what you are talking about.</p>
<p>I have never heard anyone say this, ever. I have always considered Pomona and Amherst to be on the same academic level. Their rates of acceptance have to be close.</p>
<p>No, I can’t, fabrizio. Because it’s a big, important driver for some people, and it needs to be called out for the foolishness that it is. It’s as foolish as the assertion that Pomona is a safety and/or that the only good thing about it is that it’s been used for movie settings. BTW: I have no dog in any Pomona fight. But for someone to claim it’s a “safety” is nonsensical.</p>
<p>That’s only because your school appears to have a mindset that the only schools worth applying to are HYPSM and a handful of others. That doesn’t mean that top students all over the country don’t apply to LAC’s. Just that Harker’s narrow in its definition of success. </p>
<p>Personally, for the money you presumably paid for a school like that, you’d expect there to be a more broadly defined and sophisticated mindset, not HYPSM or bust.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you make it a personal issue. It is a logical one. All the posters posting in favor of Pomona would question people sending children to Ivies over state flagships.</p>
<p>Instead of putting irrelevant comments posts something that is good about Pomona.
Sell or make the case why an applicant should go to Pomona, just put forward why? Let’s say over Stanford or UCB or UCLA. All in California.</p>