Pomona vs. Ivy/Stanford

nickgeeba
Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:30:27 +0000

I’ll start by saying I don’t have stats for you; I’m sure those can be found in a few minutes on Google or in a following post on this thread.

What I will tell you is that I’m from Illinois and spent last year’s spring break visiting colleges in California. I visited Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and three Claremonts (Pomona, Pitzer, and McKenna)… I only ended up applying to those three Claremonts. Does Stanford have amazing name recognition? Yeah. Will Stanford get you where you want to go? Most likely, yeah. Do you fit in at Stanford? That’s where you decide.

Aside from doubts of getting accepted in the first place, I chose not to apply because I didn’t feel “at home” there. Not to say I’m necessarily not smart enough to be at Stanford - I got into and will likely be attending Pomona, if that means anything - but I don’t buy into the whole let’s-all-get-straight-A’s-just-because-we-can attitude. I feel like at Stanford, I’d be under too much academic pressure - everyone spends their free-time at the library studying studying studying instead of taking some time to themselves and simply enjoying the day. But at Pomona, I expect a much better integration of work and play.

The whole point of this post: find where you fit, and go there.

All that said, I’d encourage you to post this same thread on Stanford and Harvard forums, because I - as well as other posters - am clearly biased toward Pomona.