During the hectic university application process last autumn, I forgot to check whether my dream school would have a co-ed housing system. Right before I started at Pomona, I learned that boys and girls there would be sharing bathrooms, showers, the corridor space, laughter, and midnight snacks.
What would that mean? Immediately, I pictured embarrassing scenes where a teenag...
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Author: April Xiaoyi Xu
Pomona: My Home Away From Home
Slowly, the dark sky is gently rinsed by hints of blue. Dark blue, light blue, lighter… and gold wash. So emerge the silhouettes of pink coloured clouds, rejoicing at the dawn of a new day.
One of my very first blog entries after I started college was on the topic of nostalgia. It was an overwhelming emotion that accompanied the first-year curiosity in everything around me i...
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Semester 1 at Pomona: First-Year Impressions
From my time at Pomona College as a first semester first-year student, I have had so many memorable moments and have learned so much, not only from my classes (Macroeconomics, Calculus, First Year Seminar, and Intermediate Spanish), but from many occasions beyond the classroom.
As one of America’s foremost liberal arts institutions, Pomona College provides its students an ab...
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Contradance: Outside the Claremont Bubble
Having lived in Claremont for four months now, I find it easy to be “stuck” in our comfortable “Claremont bubble”, whose tranquil cafés, bakeries, and froyo shops have become lovely weekend escape spots. Luckily, I got to explore the surrounding communities, largely through contradance!
Contradance is a form of partnered folk dance whose origin can be traced back to 17-Cent...
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College Application Tips!
1. Brainstorm. We are still teenagers, but we have much experience to write about, both academic and non-academic. The brainstorming process can be very fun, since you get to picture different memories and dig them out from the past. Talk to your family and friends to get a more holistic view of your growth. Think about the moments that sparked your intellectual curiosity, ...
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Transitioning From High School to College
College vs. High School… What are the differences? What was the transitioning process like for me? What might it look like for you? Before we look into these questions, we need to (1) recognize that every human being is so different from each other, and (2) remember the principle ceteris paribus: holding certain aspects constant requires us to recognize some constants in this c...
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The Epic Economics Study Group
9:00 p.m. As the minute hand was set to rejoin the number “12” on my watch, I found myself speeding up on my way from the Quantitative Skills Center (QSC) to Carnegie Hall. I was in between my Maths appointment with a QSC tutor and my Macroeconomics Principles Study Group session, which goes from 9:00 till 10:30 on Tuesdays, on a voluntary basis.
The night sky looked bea...
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Pomona: My EdUtopia in Real Life!
I applied to Pomona College as an international ED1 (first round of Early Decision) applicant from China, where, arguably, Pomona and other liberal arts colleges are still in the process of gaining widespread public attention, compared to large research universities that generate more craze and hysteria across the country. Among so many fantastic higher education institutions t...
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