Chris Meng – Voices

Life Happens Outside of Pomona Too

Posted on December 15, 2021September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

By Chris Meng ’23 tw: death This fall 2021 semester, Pomona College students finally returned to campus. Besides the initial COVID-19 anxiety, the first couple of weeks were a largely joyous occasion, filled with excitement for in-person experiences and joy over seeing friends again. However, this semester was my most difficult semester yet, and it wasn’t because my class...

How I Made My College Decision Without Visiting Pomona

Posted on April 8, 2021September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

illustration of Cecil the Sagehen with a Pomona parachute

By Chris Meng ’23 Getting a phone call telling me that I was admitted off the Pomona waitlist was incredibly exciting. The downside: I had just one week to make my decision, and I would not have the opportunity to visit campus in that week. Let me lay out my rough recollection of my actions that fateful week in mid-May in hopes that they will be helpful to you. Celebrat...

From Study at Home to Study Abroad

Posted on March 11, 2021September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

By Chris Meng ’23 When I returned home from campus in March 2020, little did I know that I would spend nearly every single hour of every day in my house for the next year. Having grown up in a small town, I had always valued experiencing different environments. So much for that. It’s no wonder I became interested in participating in Pomona’s domestic exchange program with Sw...

4+7 Things I Realized About Pomona as a Sophomore

Posted on February 9, 2021September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

By Chris Meng ’23 It’s hard to believe that I am starting my second semester of my sophomore year. At the end of May, I will be halfway done with college, and I will have somehow reached the age of 21. Over my nearly two-month winter break, I spent a lot of time with family and friends (mostly virtually), having conversations with them and myself that gave me a chance to ref...

Emergency!! There Are Too Many Interesting Classes

Posted on November 23, 2020September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

student working on problems with paper and pencil

By Chris Meng ’23 Help! It’s a new semester, which also signals the climax of uncertainty around class schedules. You would think that schedules are mostly set by the time classes start. For some students, that is the case. Major and general education requirements often shape the direction of some students’ semesters. However, in general, Pomona students have an amazing amou...

Everything Oldenborg

Posted on October 20, 2020September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

By Chris Meng '23 The Oldenborg Center for Modern Languages and International Relations is a handful to say, so most students just refer to it as Oldenborg or Oldie for short. Built in 1966, Oldenborg is incredibly unique to Pomona, especially because we are a small college, as it is one of the only buildings that combines an international student center and language center ...

Life as a Virtual Admissions Summer Fellow

Posted on September 15, 2020September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

By Chris Meng ’23 Dear Christopher, It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join the Office of Admissions at Pomona College as a Virtual Summer Fellow. All the way back in May, I accepted an offer to work with admissions this summer. I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to find a paid position that I was excited about pursuing. I literally didn’t know...

A Pitch for the Liberal Arts

Posted on August 10, 2020September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

students having dinner at a professor's house

By Chris Meng ‘23 “Why would you choose Pomona over a more well-known school?” As a tour guide and summer fellow for the admissions office, my peers and I discuss the most common questions we get during tours and other interactions with prospective students, and this is one of them. While my neighbors in Pennsylvania may not know Pomona, graduate schools and employers cer...

What’s in a Major?

Posted on July 13, 2020September 21, 2022 by Chris Meng

By Chris Meng ‘23 What are you studying in college? What do you want to be when you grow up? Those types of questions came flooding in during my senior year of high school, and I quickly learned it was easier to give a scripted answer than to reveal the honest truth that I simply didn’t know. To all my classmates who knew they wanted to be doctors or physical therapists or v...