Pomona College

Yes — Pomona is among the most selective colleges in the country, admitting about 7.1% of applicants in the most recent cycle. That is roughly 890 offers out of more than 12,400 applications, with about 421 students ultimately enrolling. Strong grades and scores are expected but not sufficient; Pomona weighs eight factors — including rigor of course load, GPA, class rank, recommendations, the essay, extracurriculars, talent, and character — as very important.

Pomona offers binding Early Decision I and II, and the early round is admitted at a noticeably higher rate than the overall pool. In the most recent cycle, the ED rounds drew 1,656 applications and produced 227 admits — roughly a 14% admit rate, compared with about 7.1% overall. ED is binding, so apply early only if Pomona is clearly your first choice.

Pomona does not publish an average admitted GPA, and its most recent Common Data Set no longer reports a class-rank distribution. Even so, admitted students sit at the very top of their high school cohort. There is no hard cutoff, but academic GPA, class rank, and the rigor of your course load are all weighed as very important factors, so a demanding schedule matters as much as the numbers themselves.

Yes, Pomona is test-optional, so you can apply without submitting SAT or ACT scores. Among enrolled students who did submit, the middle 50% scored 1490–1550 on the SAT and 32–34 on the ACT. Test scores are only 'considered' in the review rather than very important, so applying without them does not put you at a disadvantage.

Tuition and required fees are about $72,080 per year, with the total cost of attendance higher once on-campus housing and food (about $23,590) and transportation and personal expenses are added. Pomona meets 100% of demonstrated financial need and packages aid without loans. About 55% of first-years receive need-based grant or scholarship aid, with an average aid package near $71,955.

The social sciences are the single most popular area at about 21% of bachelor's degrees, followed by computer and information sciences (14%) and the biological sciences (12%). Mathematics and statistics (7%) and the physical sciences (7%) round out the most-conferred fields, reflecting Pomona's growing strength in computing alongside its long-standing depth in the sciences and social sciences.

Pomona is intentionally small: about 1,617 undergraduates with a 7-to-1 student-faculty ratio, which keeps classes small and discussion-based. As the founding member of the Claremont Colleges consortium, it pairs that intimate scale with the course and resource access of a much larger university. Nearly all students live on campus, and the first-year retention rate is about 95%, with a 6-year graduation rate near 92%.