<p>This whole thread is absurd. US News is just one ranking system. The Washington Post did a ranking of liberal arts colleges using different metrics, and Bryn Mawr College came out number one.</p>
<p>These are all great colleges, the question is, which one is the best fit for YOU?</p>
<p>
No, the question in this thread is why is Pomona ranked as low as it is in the 2007 USN&WR college rankings. I think it’s a perfectly valid question. Maybe you don’t like USN&WR, and maybe you think other things should be considered when deciding upon a college, but that’s not what this thread is about. It’s about trying to figure out why Pomona has been ranked as low as it has in the nation’s most popular college ranking survey. Do you have a guess as to why that is, or are you just going to stick to telling us that this thread is absurd and offering up tangential, irrelevant information?</p>
<p>A.E.----what is your analysis? You are right, it is not sufficient to simply say the rankings are the product of institutional gamesmanship or meaningless. Lots of people care about the rankings, whether they will admit it or not, and most schools play the rankings game.</p>
<p>So, Has Pomona gone down or is it that other schools have risen? </p>
<p>Is Pomona’s ranking fair, or is it the end result of gamesmanship by particular schools or all schools?</p>
<p>Is Reed the only school that has opted out of the rankings game?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It would be very helpful to find a historical listing of all USN&WR rankings since its inception, but I haven’t been able to find that anywhere, and I don’t know that such a compilation is even available to anyone who doesn’t have a copy of all the college ranking issues at his disposal. That said, it is my suspicion that USN&WR is more conservative than progressive when it comes to college rankings and, as such, a traditionalist stance is reflected in their rankings. If a Haverford or Bowdoin finds itself ranked higher than Pomona in any given year, it is a result of some random flux and an appeal to the tradition that Bowdoin and Haverford are perennial top fivers. To me, Pomona appears to at least be on par with AWS, but it is consistently intermixed with the second-stringers, like Haverford, Carleton, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and so on.</p>
<p>A.E. --Your belief that the rankings are the result of a conservative bias, an East Coast reverence for tradition, and preserving the authority and power of home base, is impossible to dispute.</p>
<p>A.E.
if you are so obsessed with this ranking thing, y did u go to Pomona college?
y couldnt u just go to Williams, Amherst, or Swarthmore?
We all know that those three colleges are almost always in the Top 3?</p>
<p>and stop bringing other colleges down (bowdoin where im going)</p>
<p>Pomona is an excellent school, but if i got into both pomona and bowdoin, after reading this thread, i would choose bowdoin :P</p>
<p>Were you admitted to both, I wouldn’t base your decision on a random thread on the internet. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>nah i didnt even apply to pomona college</p>
<p>
Not that it matters, but I didn’t go to Pomona. Nor did I go to Bowdoin. I will not stop “bringing other colleges down” if it means I have to refrain from stating my opinion or asking probing questions and, instead, restrict myself to saying insipid things like, “all colleges are great; what’s important is choosing the one that’s right for you.” I’m sure we’re all very familiar with that line of rhetoric, and we don’t really need to hear more of it, do we? I’m more interested in learning how USN&WR has the guff to keep sticking Pomona with a ranking lower than it seems to deserve and, if that’s not the case, why Pomona is not ranked in the top four, year after year when, as far as I can tell from all of the stats involved, it should be.</p>
<p>I know you are free to say whatever you want. But I dont understand why you said, “[Pomona] is clearly a cut above schools like Carleton or Bowdoin or Haverford.”
Because acceptance rate is the highest among LACs? Isn’t it partly because Pomona is located in California? Although its low acceptance rate, yield rate is only around 40% isnt it?
I know Pomona is a great great school. But come on. Being Top 10 is hard enough.</p>
<p>US News has some kind of deal with certain schools because that list is not right. Pomona is such an amazing school everyone knows that. I heard if you give money away and the school otherwise sucks the school still gets put at the top of the list. If the school doesn’t require SATs as entrance criteria they punish you and you get demoted. IN a word BS.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.pomona.edu/institutionalresearch/collegedata/CDS2006_2007.htm[/url]”>http://www.pomona.edu/institutionalresearch/collegedata/CDS2006_2007.htm</a> says that Pomona requires SAT and SAT Subject Tests or ACT. The same page shows the SAT and other numbers of the last entering class. So Pomona is not in the group being punished for not publishing SAT numbers.</p>
<p>A.E.</p>
<p>I’m a bit amused that you feel you can school me in anything other than what the most awesomest video game is. As pointed out, this discussion is an embarrassment… especially considering I just spent the morning surfing in Ventura with my good friend, a Pomona grad.</p>
<p>You made a general and obscure blanket statement of “a clear cut above”… above what, reputation? Sorry, but reputation is based more on what occurs during the limited life experience of an 18 yo kid. Institutional reputations are based on decades of achievement and history. In addition, a well grounded history and knowledge of a school’s heritage should not be dismissed because it often helps define the culture and values of the school and future directions taken. </p>
<p>Maybe I should be more explicit with my arguments. Of course… bringing up the Nobel thing wasn’t suppose to be a marker of anything other than the number of Nobel prize winners but rather to demonstrate that, depending on what markers you choose, you can argue in any direction you want. It was a fun fact and nothing more… I believe I tried to expand on that in a later response and it should be framed in the context of my overall point. Although pretty out there, it’s not too much more invalid than saying that one school is “clearly a cut above” another cause it’s #4 instead of #8 (out of 5000+ colleges), that endowment $ are an accurate marker of educational resources when not factoring in such things as a strong consortial arrangement and location, or that a few points higher on the SATs are a defining marker of superior intellectual ability. All of these are half truths.</p>
<p>A quick note about Pomona’s yield: It is generally between 40-45%, and I believe it was 42% this year. </p>
<p>Its yield isn’t 50% or higher because unlike Williams, Middlebury and some other similar colleges, Pomona refuses to take more that 30% of its freshman class via early decision. This results in a lower overall yield. However, Pomona regular decision admits yield at the same rate as those at AWS.</p>
<p>HC Alum, you seem to make a point about HC having a strong consortium with BMC, but Pomona is also part of a consortium itself, which include five undergraduate colleges and two graduate schools. The great thing is that the campuses are all adjacent to each other, and from what I hear (please correct me if I’m wrong), the LAC consortium in Philadelphia requires bus transportation. The Claremont Colleges are all contained in less than one square mile, making it easy to walk to the other schools, and synchronized schedules make it even easier to cross-enroll. Claremont Mckenna and Harvey Mudd are at least on par with BMC, and are recognized nationally as being top-notch in the areas in which they specialize.</p>
<p>
Thanks for the little glimpse into your life with that tidbit of anecdotal “evidence,” but I think we can go ahead and discard your personal experiences as being insignificant in the great scheme of things.</p>
<p>
So you admit the Nobel figure was completely irrelevant, and yet you still offer up no real argument. You think that my looking to higher SAT scores (by more than a few points, at that), a significantly higher endowment per student, and more selectivity in admissions as being useful metrics in comparing the caliber of students at two schools is me falling back on half-truths? Why? What other metrics would you prefer to choose for judging the caliber of the student bodies at two schools?</p>
<p>Your appeal again to history is pretty well useless. Who cares if one school has a longer, more distinguished history than another? What matters in comparing two schools for current and future students is the here and now, not which school produced a Nobel prize winner in 1914 or which was more esteemed in 1883. Such a conservative perspective, with an undue degree of prestige given to tradition, is anathema to the very spirit of a liberal arts college where, generally speaking, progressivism is much more in keeping with the social atmosphere. In terms of raw numbers, Pomona is more in line with Amherst. Maybe it didn’t used to be, but it is now, and I’m quite sure Haverford has never outranked Amherst in the USN&WR. Why should it outrank Pomona? Because that’s how it has historically been? Sounds like nonsense.</p>
<p>And, as rhsfreshflyguy pointed out, the consortium argument is also bogus. So Haverford has one of ASW in its consortium? Big deal. Pomona is part of a consortium which is far more convenient, and arguably just as strong overall. Haverford is very close to Bryn Mawr, but it’s a 20 minute drive from Swarthmore.</p>
<p>By all logical metrics one might choose to evaluate the level of the typical student at a college or the resources a college has available to the students, Pomona is clearly ahead of Haverford.</p>
<h2>… or asking probing questions and, instead, restrict myself to saying insipid things… I’m sure we’re all very familiar with that line of rhetoric, and we don’t really need to hear more of it, do we?</h2>
<p>I’m sorry, do you REALLY feel your line of inquiry is novel and “probing”?! I guarantee you that, if you use the search function here and do 5 minutes of looking, you will see that the issue of US NEWS methodology has been debated into the ground… probably within the 1st month of CC’s existence. What you are probing with your childlike curiosity and inexperience is a dead horse. Like carrion, this topic has already been picked apart… at this stage, your “probing” questions are as banal as the last fly to the feast.</p>
<p>I don’t admit to anything. Again, you are trying to find “evidence” when there is none. It was never intended for that purpose. If anything, it was meant to be “anti-evidence”. For example, perhaps I did it a little better here… </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=260301[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=260301</a></p>
<p>You asked a simple question, “Why is Pomona ranked so low?”. The answer is that the markers US NEWS uses are not perfect and that the differences between these schools are small. If you were in a class of 2000 kids and your friend was #8 and you were #3, would you really generalize that you are clearly a “cut above” them? I imagine the actual differences between you are small, and for most subjects, ability will depend on the particular day, and for many subjects, your friend may be better.</p>
<p>Finally, I agree with the Pomona/consortium comment. That’s my point. You can’t compare educational resources between colleges without factoring in such an important consideration. I don’t know the history of the 5Cs, but the bi-college was created to complement the other and simply looking just @ HC and saying that is what the students are limited to is half the picture… there is BMC, and Philly 15 miles away… and DC and NYC as well. My rebuttal wasn’t directed at Pomona but rather that AWS are “clearly a cut above” with educational resources when such schools don’t have a strong consortial arrangement as the bi-co and, for 2, close proximity to the resources of a large city. In that context, it’s hard to generalize that one has a clear educational advantage over another and personal preferences are more crucial. </p>
<p>Personally, I feel that, out of all the schools, Pomona probably has the best overall educational “package”… (endowment, consortium and location) but, even so, is still probably not the ideal for many applicants given how varied students can be with their interests and objectives.</p>
<p>… I’ve really had enough of this…</p>
<p>
Great. Nobody asked you to bombard this thread with your trivial contributions of “USN&WR is imperfect” and so forth. We’re aware of that. My question is aimed at the hows and whys that lie beneath that sentiment and, in particular, how that is played out in Pomona being underrated. It is clearly in league with AWS (or, more correctly, WASP), and has no business being relegated to the game of second-tier musical chairs with Haverford, Carleton, and so on. Is its reputation among its peers really to blame for this, because the peers give too much weight to tradition of east coast academic elitism? That seems to be one of the more popular theories, and you yourself seem to have fallen into that trap in your defense of Haverford as being on the same level as Pomona, which I don’t really think it is.</p>
<p>HYP have been in the top 3 since 1993. There was a brief break when Caltech took the #1 spot in 2000. Likewise, Stanford occupied the top spot in the first three years of the rankings but for some reason was eventually shut out. </p>
<p>Since the beginning of the rankings, Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore have fought for the top 3 places. In fact there has only been one break, in 1988, when Carleton was ranked #3 and Amherst #4. Apart from that, both with regards to universities and liberal arts colleges, the US News rankings like to create a “holy trinity” effect. </p>
<p>I bring up national unis as well because a comparison can be made. Pomona is similar to Stanford. Every bit as strong as the trinity and located on the opposite coast. However, the difference lies in PA scores. If there is an ‘east coast bias’ one should expect that to be reflected in the PA score, but HYPSM all have 4.9s, so that cannot be the case. Amherst and Williams both have a 4.7 whereas Swat has a 4.6 - Pomona has a 4.3. </p>
<p>In my mind, this is undoubtedly the reason for Pomona’s lower ranking. However, I don’t believe it reflects an east coast bias, but simply that Pomona is a school of great improvement (in the sense of US rankings). Whereas AWS have always been the top 3, Pomona started at #9 and has risen consistently, reaching a high of #4 in 2004. IMO, Pomona is going to have to become outright better than AWS to crack the top 3 because it faces a challenge, not due to an east coast bias, but simply due to the fact that old pecking orders die hard.</p>
<p>i cannot believe how superficial this thread is getting…</p>