Welcome to the Class of 2023!
“It is an honor to work alongside the Admissions Committee, selecting the next generation of extraordinary students for Pomona College,” said Seth Allen, vice president for strategy & dean of admissions and financial aid. “We are so excited to include the new Class of 2023’s diversity of backgrounds, experiences and talents into the College’s DNA.”
Pomona will offer admission to 726 students who come from 49 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Students admitted to the Class of 2023 hail from 47 countries, with international students comprising 13.5 percent of the class.
Eleven students were admitted in a previous year and deferred enrollment until this year. A Pomona College-Cambridge University Downing Scholar will also join the class.
In addition, the College admitted 26 transfer students. Ten of the admitted transfer students currently attend a community college. A total of nine military veterans were admitted this year, three as first-year students and another six who were admitted in the transfer round. Admitted military veterans represent three branches of the armed forces: Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.
The admitted group is 51 percent female and 49 percent male.
Domestic students of color make up the majority of the admitted class at 57.9 percent. Admitted students are 17.9 percent Asian American, 13.6 percent Black, 19.8 percent Latino, 5.1 percent multiracial, 25.9 percent white and 2.8 percent declined to state. Five American Indian/Native Alaskan and five Native Hawaiian students, along with an additional 32 students who note Native heritage as part of a multiracial identity, have also been admitted.
First-generation college students – meaning neither parent has a four-year college degree – comprise 20.3 percent of those admitted to the Class of 2023. Additionally, five percent attend a rural high school.
One of the College’s three application essay questions asked students to add a fourth quality to Pomona’s iconic entry gates, welcoming the “eager, thoughtful and reverent.” Admitted students were most likely to add “open-minded,” “resilient,” “bold” and “compassionate” to describe students who are entering Pomona today.
Students admitted to the Class of 2023 are academically exceptional. Ninety-four percent of those who attend high schools that rank are in the top decile. The median SAT scores are 730 for Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) and 760 for Math. The median ACT score is 34.
Students identified a broad range of academic interests, with 20.1 percent of admitted students indicating a first major choice in the humanities, 19.8 percent in the social sciences, 28.9 percent in the natural sciences, 22.5 percent in interdisciplinary fields and 8.8 percent undecided about their field of study.
The top U.S. states that students come from are California (188), New York (46), Illinois (44), Texas (36), Washington (28), Florida (27), Oregon (18), Colorado (15) and Massachusetts (14). Admitted international students hail from 46 countries, with the largest representation from China (17); the United Kingdom (8); Canada, India, and Turkey (6 each); Singapore (5); Hong Kong (4); and Australia, Brazil, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, Pakistan, and Vietnam (3 each).
In all, admitted students come from 603 schools worldwide.