Perspectives of a Freshman

EndOfTheWorld
Thu, 08 Nov 2012 20:40:11 +0000

Hello rhsinclair,
When we were asked to post where we came from on the Facebook, the guy who responded he was from England got the most likes. From me, included =)
http://i.imgur.com/naWFl.png

I personally really love internationals from all over the globe because they tend to be such interesting people, and I really commend Pomona for increasing international outreach- some 11% of the class is international. Most, if not all of my class would agree with me.

Pomona definitely considers international students, even those from the UK, as a diversity factor! It’s a really slight boost in admission though, nowhere near a guarantee, but it’s not disinterest at all.

As a freshmen, you sign up for classes when you arrive on campus. You have to talk to your faculty advisor to be cleared to register. You look through the course catalog for classes that are open and fit your time schedule, and register for them. If a class is full, you can do something known as a PERM request, which is an appeal to be in a class. You have a 2 week add period through which you can add new extra classes and remove the ones you don’t want, and you have a month drop period where you can drop any class you are taking.

If you’re an upperclassmen, you register before the freshmen at home. Don’t worry though, as a freshmen I got all the classes I wanted!

The only class where I have only freshmen is the Critical Inquiry class every freshmen is expected to take. Both my introduction to sociology and chemistry class have sophomores, my PE class has all our grade levels, and my math class has grade levels freshmen-junior. No one judges on the basis of class year- trust me. Usually it is not even apparent. In fact, I really love having other people in my classes because it lets me branch out to other years in terms of friendships.

That being said, most classes at Pomona, especially math, science, and languages, will not let you go onto the advanced classes until you take the necessary prerequisites. Every freshmen for example will have to start with General Chemistry even if they made a 5 on the AP chem exam, though there is an accelerated version of the class available (it is still only the first year chem though)- very rarely will they make exceptions to move straight to organic chemistry. For the humanities, you have to take a prerequisite class like Intro to Sociology before you can take upper level classes- AP credit will not serve as a prerequisite for most intro classes (exceptions include economics, statistics, and Calc I/II). After you take a prerequisite class, the humanity courses become varied- you can take any you want in no required order. Math and science tend to be more hierarchical in terms of the level of classes, so most intro math and science classes are predominantly freshmen/sophomores, and most advanced classes are predominantly juniors/seniors.

If you feel you are however exceptionally skilled in a class, talk to the professor and they can make exceptions for you! And you won’t be judged- a freshmen friend of mines has already started vector calculus and says no one even brings that point up beyond maybe a point of major respect.