The reasons I came to Pomona - the small size and the rigorous academics - are both the best and worst things about Pomona.

Sometimes it feels very small, like everyone knows your business, and once you make your friends freshman year, you're done branching out. But on the other hand, sometimes I think I have way more friends than I would at a bigger school, because we all kind of know each other, which is fun. And, the 5Cs give you the chance to "get out" if that's really what you want to do. Our sports teams are shared with Pitzer, which has been a great way to meet friends from other campuses, and lots of other clubs operate between the 5Cs.

Our campus is almost completely disconnected from the Claremont community, both literally and figuratively. We have a lot of fun in our "Pomona bubble", but sometimes it would be nice to go out to bars, work, or play in the town.

The academics are really great - you get lots of opportunities to learn from and work with professors and other students - just remember that it's going to be hard. People take their work very seriously, and while there are plenty of kids who go out many times a week, there are also people who never seem to go out. People tend to play it cool, but as chill as they are on the outside you know they are probably pretty stressed out. If you want to take academics really seriously, come here, if you want to have lots of free time, go to CMC or Pitzer!

The Econ department is one of the most popular, with over 40 senior majors. I am one of the few female majors, which doesn't really bother me but I think is wierd.

Though I've never gotten engaged in outside research, I've seen plenty of opportunities to work with professors in the department.

Students are not overtly competitive, which is really nice - you can always find a study group, and people almost never talk about grades. That said, you know that most people are working their butts off to do well, so you'd better also. There is a fair amount of grade inflation outside of the science departments, so in the end, kids usually do fine in classes.

Pomona students, and classes, are largely geared towards learning for its own sake, which is a great environment to be in for four years. I really feel like I've learned how to think, not how to memorize and repeat information on a test. We could use a few more practical classes, but if you really want to learn advanced accounting or finance, there's always CMC for that (if they let you in!) And, I think employers really respect the experience of Pomona grads, so it's really not a disadvantage in the job market. In the last year, I've scored an internship at a top investment bank and a full-time position at a top consulting firm, as have many of my friends.

Pomona students are predominantly liberal, blue-state, upper-middle class kids who went to nice public schools or fancy private schools.

They were the kids in high school who took lots of AP classes, overloaded themselves with extracurriculars, and were a little nerdy but well-liked. They dressa little preppy and a little crunchy - different but not too different.

Pomona prides itself on recruiting students from more diverse backgrounds, but that really is the dominant culture here.

Four tables of students in the dining hall might consist of the jocks (since we're so small, a high proportion of students are varsity athletes), nerdier sub-free kids (a relatively high contingency doesn't drink), outdoorsy kids (our outdoors club is huge), and the party-goers (there are some who go out most nights a week). It really is pretty fluid though - it's not too scary to show up at the dining hall alone, since you can usually find some friends to sit with.

The women's lacrosse team is going through a transition period. Two years ago the team was club, with no recruiting power and a less hard-core attitude. Since becoming a varsity program we have the challenge of playing some really good teams, while staffing a roster made up of students who came to school to do other things besides lacrosse. As we get more recruiting classes, the level of play should rise to be more and more competitive with East Coast lacrosse - we know it'll happen because right now CMS's program is only a few years older than ours (the other 3 colleges have a separate set of varsity teams) and can compete with any East Coast team out there. However, teams at Pomona face the constant problem of finding recruits who can get in, since admissions is pretty strict about who it lets in.

Pretentious, nerdy, and friendly. These are the kids who were always raising their hands in class in high school. Everyone's very PC - beware if you've got conservative beliefs.

Yes, pretty much! Kids know they're smart and like to engage in academic debates. When I first came to Pomona, I was intimidated by how smart everyone seemed, but soon I realized that everyone was just trying to show off how witty and interesting they were. Once that behavior calmed down, you could really tell that people were genuinely interested in talking about things and were really smart, but also pretty down-to-earth.