5 Things I Miss About College

"Urban Light" at LACMA
By Siena Swift ‘22 Since I filed for a leave of absence from Pomona College for the fall semester, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much I will miss my college community and Claremont itself during this time. I think most of us miss “normal” (i.e. pre-COVID) life: going out to restaurants, concerts, hugging people outside of your family, being able to be in a room without ...
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Two Years, Five Highlights

light show at concert
By Siena Swift ‘22 Since Pomona College announced we would be online only for the fall semester, I’ve been reflecting a lot about my time at college. I have a big decision ahead of me: should I take online classes or take a leave of absence from college and hope that I’ll be back on campus soon? Thinking about some of my favorite memories from my first two years at Pomona, a...
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Leaving the South

Darien with book in library
By Darien Corrales '22 Beyond being accepted at Pomona, getting the chance to visit campus remains one of my most personal and cherished experiences. I applied to Pomona through QuestBridge, a program for high-achieving, low-income students to apply to colleges where their full financial need will be met. As part of the QuestBridge application, I had to rank schools from a l...
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Coming Back Home

A trip to Little Tokyo, Los Angeles with my ID1 Class, Mirroring Japan/ese America
Hayeon Lee '23 I am originally from Los Angeles but attended a boarding high school in Connecticut for four years. Although I enjoyed the four years that I spent on the east coast for high school, I had always known that I wanted to come back to Los Angeles for college and that I felt most at home on the West Coast. However, after college decisions came out in March o...
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Summer Research: Finding Funding and Free Meals

lab lunch
By Calder Hollond ‘21 One of the most daunting aspects of a typical school year at Pomona can be weaving a summer internship search into an already busy schedule of classes, on-campus jobs, studying, and other extracurriculars. Many students at Pomona get some sort of summer internship, whether it’s part-time or full-time, at home or in a different city, paid or unpaid. Thes...
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Learning to Love Los Angeles

art in desert
By Elias van Emmerick ‘21 Pomona’s lack of name recognition is a bit of a running gag at the Claremont Colleges. Students love to joke about how their friends think they go to “Paloma,” “Panama,” or “Pavlova” College. We can point at the Forbes 2015 Best Colleges #1 ranking all we want, but Harvard we are not. Now imagine what “Pomona College” means to a 14-year old Belgi...
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Good Weather Is a Good Basis for Making Your College Decision

Sarah and Leah in the pool
By Sarah Binau '19 My personal weather-related nightmare: feeling my snot freeze into icy boogers inside my nose in the 7 a.m. darkness as I unsuccessfully scrape an inch of ice from the windshield of the car with my icicle fingers, exhaust fumes adding to the gray sky’s clouds, wondering how far away June is. Except this isn’t a nightmare; it was my reality growing up in th...
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Metrolink to Amtrak: Time on the Train

two friends on the train
By Becky Zhang ‘22 My first semester at Pomona was unforgettably fun and eye-opening. While my friends and I made ample use of the seven dining halls, five campuses, sunshine, cafés, and thrift stores in Claremont, we occasionally took the Metrolink train into L.A. in search of places and activities to explore outside the 5C bubble. We really made use of the city, a short an...
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Feeding Body and Soul

By Sarah Binau ‘19 As I look forward to my fourth and final year at Pomona, I realize how many wonderful, invigorating, and often strange adventures Los Angeles and its neighbors have offered me these past three years. I have been fed—literally and figuratively—in more ways than I can count. Here is a brief, by no means exhaustive, list of ways I’ve kept my body and soul ful...
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Exploring Beaches, Live Music and More Off Campus

By Sarah Binau '19 My three years at Pomona have given me the chance to enjoy the city, the coast, the desert, and the mountains in more ways than I could have imagined before coming here. Here is a summary of my favorites in the genres of beaches, improv, outdoor adventures and live music. Let’s go to the beach, beach, let’s go get away! Leo Carrillo State Park is the...
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