302: Behind the Scenes of an Admission Office with Tom Campbell of Pomona (Part 1)

Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
Hey, friends. Ethan Sawyer, College Essay Guy here. My goal is to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. Welcome to the College Essay Guy podcast, where I interview brilliant and beautiful minds in the college admissions world analyze what they have to say and break it down for you into actionable, practical steps that you can take, whether you're applying to college or you're helping somebody else apply. So here's another episode in our series that goes behind the scenes of an admission office to let you know what happens after you click Submit on your application. Like, where does it actually go who reads this? What are they thinking? How do they make these decisions? My guest this time is Tom Campbell, who, at the time of this recording, was Assistant Dean of Admissions at Pomona College. He has since become a college counselor, interestingly, but Tom was formerly the Assistant Director of Admissions at College of the Holy Cross, which was his alma mater, and he serves as a group leader, essay specialist and faculty member at the very awesome college horizons. Now this was a unique episode in that we originally recorded it as a webinar, and it went so well, and we had so many questions from the audience that we decided to meet up and record a part two. So on this episode, part one, we cover a bunch of stuff. The first question I asked him, and this was, I loved the way he did this. He walks us through what happens from when you hit submit, through when you actually receive your decision, and it's one of the most clear and specific descriptions of that I've ever heard. I got the same feedback from other counselors. Tom also talks about how the test optional policy impacted admission decisions at Pomona this year, and how colleges like Pomona are able to create a class without standardized tests. Finally, we got into essays, and I asked Tom, what does Tom look for in a great personal statement, we talked about how much essays really matter in the process, and are there ever situations in which they could hurt your chances? And what he said might surprise you, all this and more starting now. So I'm Ethan. I'm the College Essay Guy. If you've never met me before, I spend a lot of my day sitting in a room thinking about college essays and admissions and writing about it, and I do a bunch of free resources and stuff. And my guest today, and this is we're recording this as a podcast. This is kind of a special event. We're recording this as a podcast. My guest today is Tom Campbell from Pomona, and I'll say how we met in just a minute. But Tom, will you just give your sort of bullet point bio, or how you got into admissions or whatever sort of short intro you want to give the folks Absolutely.


Tom Campbell  2:37  
First of all, Ethan, thank you so much for having me on this, this webinar podcast moment, very, very exciting for me. I love talking about college admissions, and, you know, especially doing a lot of debunking of what I see out there in terms of misinformation and misconception. So this opportunity is really exciting for me. So hello to everyone else who has tuned in as well. So excited to see so many of you joining us today. So my name is Tom Campbell. I use he, him pronouns. I'm a current Assistant Dean of Admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, California. It's one of the Claremont Colleges, if you've heard of the consortium before, and I got my start in college admissions actually working at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is my alma mater. Go purple. You know, believe purple is kind of the motto there. Dr Anthony Fauci is an alum of Holy Cross. So huge shout out to him for just really repping the charge with COVID 19 and being such an incredible, inspiring person to watch from afar. So if I can be anything like Fauci, my man, I have socks actually, that my mom got me that are Anthony Fauci. So he's definitely an inspiration to me. But yeah, my mom also says that I was born a star because my birth was filmed for an educational purposes, for a nursing class. So And yes, I have seen the film. So that's another one of my fun facts in my intro, I love it. I love it. We're going to talk today


Ethan Sawyer  4:02  
about a bunch of different things. Some of the things we're going to talk about just so folks who are aware we had, by the way, like, 100 questions submitted. We're not going to get to all 100 but we've done, I think, a decent job of synthesizing and hitting on some of the big themes. So we're going to talk about, you know, the sort of theme for today was, like, behind the scenes of an admissions office, like, what is it like? What is Tom's job? Like? What happens once you hit submit on an application? We're going to talk about testing and test optional things. We're going to get into COVID, and what was the season like reading for you. We're going to talk about essays, and what does Tom look for? What does Pomona look for? And we're going to talk about something called demonstrated interest, which some of you have maybe heard of, some of you haven't. And then we're going to spend some time getting into the questions that y'all submit. So feel free to throw questions into the chat box. We've got Ashley standing by, who's going to grab those and throw them onto a Google Doc that Tom and I are sharing. I want to start with, what is life? What is your job like right now? It's April, you know? What do you. Doing right now. What's life like in the admissions office at Pomona?


Speaker 1  5:02  
You know, the engine is a roller end. Best way to describe it going 47 miles a minute. That's a Pomona reference. It's our special number, which I guess, doesn't really sound that fast, but it does feel very fast. So, yeah, during April, that is the primary month that us in admissions are working to put on programming for students who are admitted to the college, you know, right? So we had we released admissions decisions at Pomona around the third week of March. So around like March, 20, I want to say, was when we released so at that point onwards, it's kind of just a race against the clock until May 1 to basically tell students why Pomona might be a good fit for them, and put on different open houses, virtually different opportunities for students to engage with the college I do a lot of work with that. That's actually one of my primary responsibilities. So putting on our virtual open houses, we have like four different themes for them. One's all about academics and outcomes. One is all about social and community life. One is about the Claremont Colleges and the chances for all the admitted students across all five schools to get to know each other and bond and learn more about clubs, organizations, resources. And the first one that we did was just kind of like an introduction, kind of all the big buckets were covered in that event. We also do a lot of stuff. I run Pomona admissions, which is, unlike Ashley, you should plug it in the chat. It is our admissions Instagram account, happy to provide the link. So we do a lot of like videos on there, takeovers from both alumni, current students, lots of different groups to talk about the Pomona experience and, yeah, just trying to be as accessible and as welcoming as possible to these students who put in so much time and work and effort, and oftentimes finances, you know, paying to apply to the college, and so honoring that, and just barely hyping them up and letting them know that this is a huge deal to be admitted to a place that is so selective and is really looking for the students who are the best fit. So that's a big part of kind of what my job looks like right now. It's lots of weekend work, you know, it's lots of sessions, kind of beyond the nine to five and but they're the most exciting sessions, you know. And it's the most exciting part of the year for me, because you actually get to meet the real people behind the stories that you read about, and behind, of course, the stats and all the kind of pieces that go into admissions as well. So yeah, it's definitely one of the most satisfying but also time consuming parts of the year. And it seems


Ethan Sawyer  7:27  
like there's an interesting shift at this time of year where students have spent the better part of a year working on their applications and in some sense, trying to convince the college, Hey, pick me. And now it seems like Pomona is in the position of saying, Hey, pick us, right? And that seems to be related to yield. A little bit. Will you say for folks, what is yield? And why is this such a you know, how is that dynamic shifted? And, like, what's going on in that sense? Yes,


Speaker 1  7:53  
the tables have turned, right? You know, the gatekeepers have done their job. Students have been informed, and at this point now, you know, we are just waiting to hear back from students as to whether or not we're the place they want to enroll at. And usually, most, the vast majority of, students, end up letting us know, like right before May 1, or the day before or Day of. So it's kind of, it's one of those things that's really hard to predict, but we have a wonderful data person. Shout out to Chris Turan. He's awesome, who does a lot of work in terms of, like, projecting those numbers and looking at previous, past experiences and cycles to get a sense for mathematically an estimate of how many students will end up, you know, saying yes to our offer of admission,


Ethan Sawyer  8:34  
yeah. And just to be explicit for some folks who may not know what yield is like, basically, Pomona has accepted X number of students, but they can only, you know, Pomona can only enroll y number of students. So part of all this work that Tom is doing is to try to make sure that they come as close to that number as possible. And then right there's, like, this wait list, the sort of like, okay, we can, we've got some number of folks who and if enough students say no, then we can kind of move to that wait list and start to put the class together. I want to talk more about wait lists in just a minute. But back even before, like, walk us through what happens from the moment a student clicks submit on their common app, they've hit, you know, enter, they've done a sigh of relief. And then what happens between then and when they get an email back from Pomona, or whatever they get back from Pomona, saying, congratulations, you're in, or sorry you didn't make it, or, Hey, you're on the wait list,


Speaker 1  9:23  
right? Yes, the the evolution of the application along the quick the months do go by really quickly when you think about it. But I know for those on the waiting end, it's, it's, it doesn't feel hooked at all. It feels endless. So, yeah, once the students submit their application to Pomona, the very first step is kind of just, you know, making sure that we're training ourselves to, you know, make sure that we're reading the applications as comprehensively as possible. A term that many folks may be may have heard of before, but some might not have, is holistic review. So that's a lot about basically, the fact that we are. Are considering multiple different aspects of an application, both quantitative, you know, information, grades, you know, GPA, your rigor of classes. In this case, this year, we were test optional. So testing for some students, about half the students who applied, was a factor of the conversation. The other half it was not. And we're going to talk about testing in a little bit as well, which I love to talk about. I sincerely mean that. And


Unknown Speaker  10:25  
Said no one ever I like


Speaker 1  10:28  
to talk about it because I like to talk about the reality of how it plays out in college admissions. But anyway, the other side is gonna be qualitative things, right? You know, writing samples, essays, of course, College Essay Guy, right? Like, that's a big part of kind of how we are gathering whether or not a student is a good fit for us. But yeah, so once, once the application is submitted, basically it gets farmed out to our admissions officers. So at Pomona, we have 15 admissions officers, I want to say, who read for a different part of the world. So each of us has a geographic territory that we are in charge of in terms of, you know, in the fall, a big part of our job is, you know, recruiting students and also going to do events and sessions and meeting with students and families to tell them more about the college. So my particular territories, for example, are Washington state. So shout out for anyone who's tuning in from Washington state, as well as Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. And this particular application cycle, I was also reading students who applied from the continent of Africa while my colleague Ashley was on maternity leave. So that was another kind of added application queue into my mix, and it was definitely a big increase in terms of volume of applications I was reading, because I think in wake up the test optional move for many colleges, we saw a surge in applications from Africa in particular. So that was definitely, it was a lot, but really, really satisfying. And it's actually how we got connected, which hopefully we have time to share that story a little bit. But yeah, so, so basically, in my queue is what it's called. In our, like, Application Management reading system, we start to move into reading the applications once, when everyone has submitted. And the way that Pomona reads applications and evaluates them is through a process that we call CBE, which stands for committee based evaluation Ethan. You may have heard of this before. Some folks on the call may have heard of it. For those who have not, essentially, what it means is that the file is being read by two admissions officers at the same time, and that is a way for us to be able to have a dialog and conversation about each file that we're reviewing in that moment in time, and lean on, you know, the two partners, the two of us, as opposed to one person exclusively making the decision. So in this first phase, the CVE, you know, reading phase is what we call it. This usually is happening, you know, all throughout the month of January, and a decent amount of February as well. Actually, really kind of pushing into February. So it's a long time, and we do it all over zoom right now, currently. So you're reading applications, and you just have, like a zoom, chat open and video with one of my colleagues. And the way that we divide it up is that in CVE, one person takes on the role of the driver and one person takes on the role of what we call the passenger, and the driver is someone who is the territory manager, who's kind of like the one who's the expert in the region, who understands the particular curriculum that's offered in that state or country or area within a state, right? If the you know this school system, for example, in Washington State, there's a program called Running Start, which is basically an early college, community college classes while you're still a high school student. So it's like my job as a territory manager to understand the school context that the student is coming from. So I'm reading for the application, and I'm spending a lot of time focusing on the transcript, on the rigor of classes that the student has taken. I'm pointing out, you know what, and the questions I'm asking myself are, okay, what did the student take? And what did the student leave on the table based on their school's offerings? That's a big way, good way to kind of think about what myself, as someone who's reviewing an application is asking myself, it's not, is the student taking APs? Because at some of the schools, they don't have APS, and that's not to the detriment of the student. That is their school. That's their curriculum. We honor. What the individual high schools have chosen is best for their students, to help them learn and to grow as intellectuals. And it's not our job to be like, well, you should have gone to the IB school down the road. Like that is not how we view that. So we don't have a preference between AB, AP or IB or other advanced rigor, or none of that at all, or community college classes. We really honor kind of the process and the availability of courses based on that particular high school. I'll also be looking at things such as the school profile and a little bit of information about, you know, how many students, for example, from that school are going to four year colleges. That gives a lot of us, on the admission side of things, a sense for preparedness for the rigors of a highly selective school, and other information that's really helpful from that school profile is something that I'm taking into consideration. I'm evaluating. As I'm going through these files. And typically we read in what we call school groups. So we usually read the same school all at the same time to be able to understand and look and see, okay, like, here's what the school is sending to us, and we have historical data. Usually it's actually at this point about eight years back of applicants from the school in the past. So we see, like, what types of classes at the school, like our rigorous curriculum for that particular school, and that's kind of how we're making that quantitative assessment. By and large, the passenger, on the other hand, is going to be kind of like the celebrity guest, you know, they're there just go face. They are there to just be kind of that second opinion, and to really spend a lot of time, like, being like, hey, like, this essay is, like, really blowing it out of the water. It's so interesting. It's very, you know, poignantly written. Or I'm like, crying laughing at this, you know, like, they'll just kind of fill in, kind of a lot of their just overall thoughts on the file, and their sense and instances where they're finding, oh, like, this student's really doing this amazing work with refugee advocacy. Like, that's such a great part of their file. You can find it, you know, on the Activities page, or you can find it on their Pomona supplement. They're making highlights and notes so that myself as the driver, I'm the one like taking the notes on the file and preparing myself for the next phase, which is the prep phase, which we'll talk about in a second, to understand that a little more comprehensively, the whole picture of the students file. And of course, I'm not always driving all the time, like I take turn to passenger for other people. So it's nice that we all kind of during this process. In the reading phase of that two months or so, we're taking on different roles, and we're seeing different areas of the world and reading different stories from different parts of the world, because of the way that we kind of divide up the application review. The middle phase is usually in February slash early March. Yeah, mostly like February, and that is what we call the prep phase. So that is the intermediary phase where we've reviewed, in the reading initial phase, all the files that we have in our queue. And now it's up to the territory managers to funnel that number even further, as painful as it is, because at that point, we still are too excited about too many students. And the reality of Pomona admissions process is that we have to get that number down in order to provide what students want for Pomona, which is guaranteed housing, access to resources, small classes, right? Like we need to continue that on. So we have to whittle the number down further in order to bring in the class that we need to bring in, which is 415 students at Pomona. I know super small. Some of you are coming from high schools where you're like, that's like the size of my homeroom. Anyway, the prep phase is where I take the notes from that initial review conversation, that committee based evaluation conversation, and I have to create kind of like a prep statement, which is, I describe it like a legal opening statement, as if I was, like, Your Honor. This is, this is Ethan. And let me tell you about why he should be admitted. I have to write a write up about each student that I'm advocating for an admit or a wait list recommendation for, and that has highlighted quotes from their recommendations, specific quotes from essays. It has instances that I'm referencing particular qualities that Pomona is looking for so intellectual curiosity, investment in community, a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and a mindfulness of the importance of that. There's different things that like. We're going through the file and finding evidence of for me to be able to articulate, yes, quantitatively, the student's a good fit. But beyond that, here are all the qualitative pieces that also signal that the students should be admitted or waitlisted to the college, and that then gets it into the third phase and final phase, which is the committee review. So that is where myself and my colleagues come together in a larger setting this year, virtual and talk about all the different files that we have the admit and waitlist recommendations on. And that's for our chance to read our press, to advocate for our students, and to see kind of how it shakes out before the final few weeks before decision release. At that point, we do a process that's called shaping, that's a really hard process, because that's even students who've made it all the different rounds. They've made a past committee. They were in the admin bin, and still at that point, we still have too many students to be comfortable sending out acceptance letters to, so we have to whittle it down even further, and that's a really tough week in the office, because it's the students that you really were super in on, and just have to, unfortunately, at that point, usually end up moving to the wait list. But there's always hope. There's a lot of students that I love on campus who made it through the waitlist process at Pomona, and sometimes they're some of my favorites. And yeah, I tell people to keep optimistic about that, but that was a long answer, but hopefully it was one of the


Ethan Sawyer  19:28  
most complete answers I've heard to that question, and I so appreciate the detail. So let's talk testing. Pomona just extended its test optional policy for another year, and I'm just curious, what was, what went into the decision make in terms of, you know, the test optional, you know, the decision, why was that decision made? Explain for folks what test optional means. And then, you know, I'm curious, is that a for real? Thing, like, is that a, you know, is test optional for real? You know, is it because what I imagine that folks. Here and think is like, yeah, they're saying test optional, but really they're looking so what are your thoughts?


Speaker 1  20:04  
Yeah, I feel very passionate, passionately about this topic, and I'm very glad you gave me a platform to speak about it. I first want to just, really, just like, take the elephant out of the room and just acknowledge that, like, I completely understand that there is a lot of mistrust, understandably. So on your end students and families for college admissions, and there's precedent for that, right? We've seen national scandals on, you know, played out in news reels about the varsity blue scandal, and just many instances where colleges have broken trust with families and not been transparent about this process. So I completely understand, understand and see why there is so much skepticism around test optional as a concept and a policy that colleges are rolling out. But I know you don't really know me, and I know that you know I'm just someone here on this webinar. I'm really speaking this from the bottom of my heart and from the truth of my perspective, and working in highly selected admissions for six years, it truly does mean optional. And I know, you know, directors and vice presidents at all these different colleges and universities signed this, you know, joint agreement through what's called Mac Act, as the National Association for college admissions counseling, saying that test and optional truly means optional. And really trying to be as explicit and upfront with families and students about that. But I still recognize that there is a lot of skepticism about it, and I definitely want to talk a lot about that, because I actually used to work for a test optional institution. So prior to working at Pomona College, I worked at College of the lacrosse my alma mater, and it was a test optional school. It has been for quite some time, and that was how I was used to reading files. Was reading them, you know, about half with testing and half without. And if the testing wasn't there, we just didn't talk about it. It was not a topic of conversation. There was not speculation as to how good or bad the scores were that the student honored. We honor that process. We honor the fact that they don't want to use that as a particular part of their application process. And that is what test optional is you having the choice as to whether or not this particular form of your quantitative preparedness for college is something that you feel comfortable submitting and you feel demonstrates you in the best light possible, that decision in this test optional world is completely up to you as a student as to how comfortable you're feeling with that, a good rule of thumb with that is, honestly, if you look at a middle 50% of test scores for a particular school by and large, if you're anywhere in that middle 50% range, you should feel comfortable sending in your scores. I i Go on Reddit. I know about college confidential like, I see all these kind of students. And I was actually, I was really alarming, actually, a few weeks ago, because I saw a student who was writing this post, and she was devastated about how, you know, she was like, I know that the reason I was denied and waitlisted at all these schools is because I sent him my scores, and I was such a fool. I should have not done that, you know. And the score that she listed in terms of what she was beating herself up for and crying over in her sleep was a score that was completely admissible, completely within range would have not, like made her an uncompetitive application whatsoever. And I think what's really, what I really try to drill on with this point, is that the the over emphasis on what so many of us in us, society in particular, and recognizing that there's a lot of international students on this as well, the obsession with merit and the narrow scope of merit only being defined by quantitative success is really not serving students the way that they need to be served. I pulled some data just out of trail, written on this yellow notepad that in the most recent testing cycle, 2019, prior to the pandemic, which you know off. Lift these stats a little bit, 6000 students in the world received a perfect score on either the AC T or the SAT. If all those 6000 students decide to apply to Harvard University, only 25% would be admitted, right like so I think just really understanding kind of the math behind this and that, like, perfect scores does not equal shoe in for any of these selective colleges and universities. There's so much more to the conversation, so much more that we are factoring into why students should be admitted, and interest scores are, yeah, again, remotely kind of in that middle 50% if they're below that 25% below that 25% you know, percentile in the score ranges. So most schools will publish a range of, say, the middle 50% so between 25% to 75% of students. These are scores that you know, usually have been admitted. If it's below that, it might be worth thinking about not submitting those scores because they're below profile, and you don't need to feel like you need to be pressured to submit them to make yourself more competitive. And then, of course, obviously, if they're above the 75% you're showing that you are surpassing what the vast majority of applicants demonstrate for that particular part of the application. But I want to emphasize it's one particular part at Pomona, we've done studies. Said, about 75% of the students who apply are academically admissible and viable based on grades, testing and coursework that they do. Our acceptance rate is not 70% we are making decisions largely based on fit for the school, but mostly institutional priorities, which is a conversation that I feel like does not happen a lot in college admissions, and there's a lot of a lot of people downplay just how significant these priorities can play when it comes to highly selective admissions. And that's the other piece too. Is that I'm clarifying highly selective admissions, that is schools that admit, you know, less than 10% of their applicant pool. That is not the vast majority of schools in the United States. So I have a lot of other, you know, thoughts about that, but hopefully that's, I guess, a good it's great.


Ethan Sawyer  25:45  
There are two things I want to click on. One is, I'd love for you to go just a little bit deeper on. Okay, so then absent test scores, how does Pomona put together a class? And then as specific as you're willing to be, what are some of Pomona institutional priorities? So that we can use that we can use that sort of as a lens into looking at what institutional priorities even look like. Yeah,


Speaker 1  26:06  
absolutely, yeah. Very happy to be upfront about both these things. So in terms of the reading process for for understanding quantitative success and the foundation to do well at Pomona, that's, I mean, the primary reason that we look into that is that schools don't want to have what we call a retention rate that is low, and it's basically what that signals. If you look at college retention rates, it's an S, it's a good indicator that students are staying at the school. They're graduating on time. You know, you can look at four year graduation rates as well. Retention rates and graduation rates are a great form of whether or not a school is doing a good job of admitting students who are a good fit for their school. So that's something I think is just a good takeaway for all of you listening to look really closely at retention rates and provide four or six year graduation rates. And that's why, you know, we look at the quantitative background of students, and we're not just doing it to be an easy way to we keep we people out like, it's not like, Let's float it into the Excel file and just filter by GPA and call it a day, like those two months that Tom talked about. No, we don't need to do that. We absolutely do need to do that, because otherwise the class can look really stale or just like, not be the exciting dynamic all the different passions and interests and backgrounds and experiences and forms of merit that Pomona brings into the class would not be possible without the review that we do, because these instances come up in lots of different areas, beyond exclusively, something that can be filtered or an algorithm can find right like maybe given 10 years, 20 years, maybe that's the possibility. But right now, it's not so in terms of how we're identifying a student's preparedness academically, like it has always been their transcript and their rigor of classes, and how they've done that. I know a lot of people ask, you know, is it better to have a B in a rigorous class or an A in a standard, you know, standard college prep class? And it really the answer, as with everything in college admissions, is, usually it depends, right? I'm speaking on behalf of Pomona in our process, and that's the tricky part for you all as students and families, is just knowing that, like what I'm saying is definitely parallels a lot of what other similar selective schools experience with their application review processes, but that I'm not speaking on behalf of every single college and university, but in terms of kind of how we got ourselves to be ready to evaluate without testing as a form of metric, it wasn't that much of a calibration, to be completely honest. And I was doing a lot of reassuring of my stuff that that was going to be the reality, because I had worked at a test optional school before. So I was actually put on what's called an the academic viability committee, so that was myself and a few other admissions folks who we were looking at how we can build a class that has those quantitative venture benchmarks that the college feels comfortable with in terms of students doing well in their classes here, staying, not failing. Out. How are we doing that without testing? So a lot of it is, you know, looking at the school profile, looking at the rigor of classes, like, like, the things I mentioned before, doing that deep look at a student's writing, you know. So for example, if a student did not submit testing, and their grades are great, but there's multiple concerning errors on the writing side of their application. Like, we kind of have to really factor that in and be like, okay, in the absence of, you know, reading scores or kind of any other demonstration like this, needs to be a concern that is addressed in committee, that, you know, we don't feel super comfortable, comfortable or super confident in a student that has an application riddled with errors or kind of things that are just not cohesively written, or the train of thought is not kind of following a singular path. So that was another big thing that we did a lot of training on. And we got, like, our writing center, a staff member from the Writing Center at Pomona, to come in and talk about, like, what's fixable in terms of writing, and like, what's admissible, essentially, and what is. It's harder to to unlearn for a student, or harder for students to calibrate, to to be able to jump into the Pomona experience and not feel overwhelmed, or not feel like I don't have the foundation to do well here. So that's like a lot of kind of how we we did the evaluation process. And again, as it always has, the transcript and the rigor and the grades have been the biggest piece for me, for me, for our office. And then that second point of your question, how do we get to the decision to go test optional and prolong our test optional? What we had like a temporary policy for two years, it now is four years. So anyone who's applying for the next four years will not have to submit testing. And that was a joint conversation and dialog with the admissions staff, with faculty and students. We have this thing that's called the it's called affect, not Affleck, the insurance company, but it is the admissions and financial aid committee. And I guess our mascot is still a bird, because sage hens, that's the Pomona mascot. Our beloved Cecil, is hm, and this committee meets regularly throughout the throughout the year to talk about issues in our admissions process and different policies that we're advocating for that the college move into. So a lot of it was, you know, I was there in the meetings being like, we don't need the testing. Like, it's not essential for us to build a class, and we've made that possible by this particular application cycle, and given the barriers that testing has historically presented for so many students in our in our pipeline and in our pool in terms of accessing the test, being able to do the test safely, especially right now during the COVID 19 pandemic, I've heard horror stories of students, you know, feeling like they need to go and fly on private jets to certain places of the world where the test was being offered, when that is absolutely not what we want students to be doing. That is not our our


Ethan Sawyer  31:47  
goal. Yeah. How does that land for you? When you, when you read in an additional information section that a student flew, as we were talking about, before you got on, flew from New York to Nebraska to take a test like, how does that land for you?


Speaker 1  31:59  
It's disheartening, and it's, it's, it's hard for me to see that and to know that. Again, as I mentioned before, I understand why people are doing this. Because they think that this is what the tipping point for them. They think that this is the point that's going to get them, you know, to be secure their spot at these highly, highly COVID places that only admit so few students, right? This, this statistic that I I love to give out, because I think it just really helps reframe the hysteria around this entire conversation. Only 3% of 18 year olds in the United States end up going to selective colleges, and a selective college in this case is a college that admits 50% of their students or less. Yeah, so 97% of students are attending colleges with an acceptance rate of more than 50% and the way that this Derek Talbot isn't as he's a journalist actually, for the Atlantic, and the way that he phrased this in one of his 2011 articles, was that this college admissions hysteria of selective schools is a crisis of the 3% I really like to emphasize that because another equally alarming 3% or actually, I'd say that's not a percentage that alarms me or surprises me, because I know you know how much the hyper focus on the US, News and World Report schools is, and the rankings and only these schools, people think that they're the only ones that matter. And it's absolutely not true. The other 3% stat that I think is actually, for me, disheartening, just as it is disheartening to hear about students who are flying to places to take an SAT in an era when we promised that that does not need to be part of an application, is that only three this is a Gallup poll from 2014 only 3% of college Graduates from this Gallup poll said that basically they felt like their college experience was, I forget the recordings that they wrote down, 3% have the kind of transformative experience in college that fosters personal success and happiness. Only 3% reported that that is how they felt after college. That, to me, is a signal that prestige is taking, you know, that is driving the bus and not purpose, and that is something that I think students really, and students and families really need to start thinking more critically about and not feeling like these schools that I represent, like I work at one of those schools, right? I see and look at statistics of graduation outcomes for schools that are not as selective as Pomona. There are a lot of similarities. Pomona has a lot of great resources. Is it a great location? It's a wonderful school. We only have so many, so much space for so many people. But there are, like, Holy Cross, you know where I went? Like, it's not, you know, like a place where people, yeah, like, it is a school where the acceptance rate is not as selective as Pomona is, but like, the med school acceptance rate is higher than Pomona. Like, there's a lot of things I'm like, there's a lot that students are doing at these schools that are not the top top schools. And Holy Cross is very It has a great reputation. Like, I'm not trying to say that, but it does it. Strike me as something that just really needs to be explicitly discussed more. Because, again, like, I'm not here as a sales rep for Pomona, like, I'm not here to be like, this is the only place where you'll find personal success and happiness, and that is absolutely not true. In fact, some students would not find that at Pomona, but I think really reframing that conversation is really important for those who are listening today.


Ethan Sawyer  35:21  
Well, thank you. So I want to talk we might get the, by the way, the institutional priorities thing we might get to, like, at the end,


Speaker 1  35:27  
I totally just didn't answer, Yes, you, but you went back and answered


Ethan Sawyer  35:31  
the second thing that you forgot about, which is awesome. So pause on institutional priorities for now, I want to get into COVID and talk about that a little bit, because we had some questions that come in around that come in around that I'm curious. I'm just gonna give you, like, a few questions, and you pick and choose. You know, one of them was maybe talk a little bit about how reading this year was different. And then a student came in with a question in particular she writes, or, you know, they write because of COVID. I didn't do anything exemplary last summer, and I'm not sure of my plans this summer. How should we be spending our time? So I'm gonna let you pick and choose in terms of like, basically, the topic is COVID. Go


Speaker 1  36:08  
COVID. Okay? COVID is real, like, and the impacts of COVID and how those have shaken, how in our process, and how those have been demonstrated to us, is very poignant and very real, and honestly, it's very humbling, and I it was yet another demonstration of for me as someone with so many privileges, to recognize that that is the reality of my life right now, like I'm able to work safely, I'm still employed, I am able to do This webinar with you all, and so many students that I read this year were not as are not as fortunate, and their families are not in that situation. So COVID really, I think in our application process really did highlight the sincere inequities in the US society and the world really. So, for example, I had a student who applied this year, who wrote about how both of his parents and grandparents all passed away in the two week span from COVID 19. He's living alone with his sister in an apartment at age eight. She's 18 years old, and he is finishing up high school, or he's she's over 18. He is 18 years old, just finishing high school. They're living independently, and all their closest relatives passed away in the span of a few weeks, and he wrote this really fiery essay about how frustrated he gets when people are not, you know, adhering to public health guidelines, and how he they people think that this is not real, or that this is not impacting people. And he's like, it's absolutely real, like, and I'm living breathing proof of that. He actually wrote his essay about kind of how he struggled with his faith, his ardent Christian really struggled with his faith during that time, which was completely understandable. And then, of course, you have other students who are, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, who are, you know, revealing to us that they're disappointed, of course, that, you know, maybe some travel trips, travel abroad experiences that they were hoping to go to were canceled and their sports season was canceled. And of course, like, I'm not here to to to discredit, like, how hard that is. Like as someone who, as a student who is, you know, going throughout high school, you're pursuing things that you're excited about, you have these great plans. It's devastating to have that just be cut short with no notice and with no autonomy and control. So when it comes to COVID and admissions, like we are human beings. Like I teared up reading the essay about the student who had lost his parents and grandparents. Like, as anyone would like for that student to be so vulnerable and to be so honest about that. Like, it's understandable if they're not captaining every club, if their sports team, you know, sports, wasn't able to continue on, if they're not able to do their major recital that they've been working for like we understand that, and I do encourage students not to write about that unnecessarily. I think with this particular student, it made 100% sense for why he decided to write it for his essay. But for those of you listening, there is a section in the application that will allow you to it's called a COVID response, COVID 19 response. And that was an open, open real estate in the Common Application or coalition or quest for job application, or however you're applying to your various schools. That's a base for you to talk about how COVID impacted your particular situation. But that's you have to take on extra jobs to provide for your family. We saw that a lot with students who are low income. You had to and there's a student, actually, I remember this. She was during the summer, like both her parents, got COVID. She had to take on more hours at work. She was opting into a community college class to get ahead for senior year. Didn't do well in the class, understandably, because all this is happening all the same time. And you know, we had a conversation in committee. You know, the student got a C in the class. Pomona is not a school that is usually admitting lots of students with lots of C's, right? We had a conversation as a staff about like, Okay, this is what we warned ourselves for, and this is what Tom and the academic viability committee told us it possibly might happen. You know, in this, in this world, and in this process of COVID, like, we prepared for the worst. We were like, hey, some schools might only have past Bill grades. Is some school, and then in that case, we were like, we're going to do what's called benefit of the doubting, if a school only is able to do pass, fail, and that's and the only grades that we have are, you know, pre junior year or first semester, junior year, sophomore first year. That's what we have, you know, and we're going to honor that the student most likely would have continued to do well in these classes, because there's no precedent. I don't know like legal terms, but there's no like, there's no probable cause that the student would not have continued on that trajectory. Of course, we actually saw a lot of schools actually giving grades, but we did see a lot of schools like having to shift their schedules and like not being able to offer all the courses that they typically offer on their profile because of cuts or because of interruptions, things like that. So yeah, that's a big part of kind of how we calibrated our expectations for for this particular What do


Ethan Sawyer  40:45  
you say to this is, what do you say to the student, for example, who's like, what do I do the you know, what do I do in my application? You know, what? What do you what advice do you get to students?


Speaker 1  40:53  
Yeah, my advice is to, you know, students, right? In the COVID response, there have been students have written like, I haven't been as close to my family in years. And like, I, you know, was so busy with life and piling on so many things that the student was like, to be quite frank, like, I wasn't that excited about I was doing this because I thought that more meant more, and that colleges were going to be impressed with more. And that's absolutely not the case. I see lots of students who are like, I need to, you know, log 1000s of hours of volunteer service to show schools that I care about other people. There are a lot of other ways that you can show that you care about other people than logging hours in something that you don't truly feel is making an impact that you want to make. You can host webinars or provide services to community members to get them excited about a certain topic. You can understand and meet students at the moment, younger students who are struggling with learning and calibrate this pandemic, try to find ways and get other people to be more excited about virtual learning, or to try and like, generate that enthusiasm for students, if you're a tutor, right? Like, that's something you can do. There's students who've like organized letter drives, card drives who've taught themselves new skills and written in their, you know, Activities page about like, self taught baking, self taught coding, self taught Adobe, you know, Creative Suite, right? Like, there's so many things that right now, during and during this time that you can do a lot of independent moments of intellectual curiosity to really demonstrate to colleges that you you like to engage this noggin, right? Like you like to get the wheels turning. You like to think about things. And even if those standard activities that everyone thinks like, Oh, I gotta be the president of T club. I gotta be president of NHS, like, Captain soccer team. We see a lot of students who do that, like, that's something that is, it's like, harsh to say, like, it's it's more commonplace in our process than I think people think, and it truly is quality over quantity when it comes to reflecting on what these activities and initiatives, what has the takeaway been for you? Like, what have you learned? What have How have you grown? That is more helpful to us in admissions than a laundry list of accolades? That, to be quite frank, like a lot of people don't really care about as much. Like it's not that we don't care, but we see very evidently that a student was doing things because they thought it was looking impressive, and not out of sincere desire. So let's


Ethan Sawyer  43:16  
talk essays for a few minutes. Yes, what are some of those common topics that come in come across your desk all the time,


Speaker 1  43:22  
the ACL tear, or around the world, or some form of sports injury. Paul Revere like he wants to be in that belt. No, like it's it's not to say that. Again, my sister is was a college athlete. She played soccer all throughout high school. The Vegan Athlete teachers do so much about teamwork, about resilience, about pushing past challenges, but like that is just an essay that I've read so many times that it's really hard for me to go in and be like, I'm excited to read this essay. I mean, take them off. Like,


Ethan Sawyer  43:52  
give us. Can you give us? Like a top five? So that's the sports injury. What are your other top five?


Speaker 1  43:57  
Another one is grandparents, or like people who are inspiring to you, and 75% of it is about those people and not about the student, right? Different, if you talk about you know, how they inspired you to do things with your life, or what that inspiration has played out for your own life, but it has to be about you, right? That's one service essays only, because oftentimes students write them from the from the point of wow, I went to this place, the people, I looked at them, and even though they were poor, they were still so happy. And it was very inspiring. And I realized how grateful I am for my own life. And then that's the end of the essay. And honestly, the way that a lot of people interpret that in admissions is like you're noticing an injustice, and rather than writing about how that injustice motivated you into action, and you thought about what you can actually do to address inequities in the world, you kind of just wrote about how it was interesting for you to see that, and only about kind of your world, recognizing your privilege Exactly. So that was, that's, that's one that definitely can be really tricky for students to do well. And again, if. You can write about that topic, but the follow through about how it prompted action needs to be present for that narrative to hold to bear fruit and to hold weight in our process. So they're the three losing a big game, or, like, kind of, like that kind of goes along with, like, sports injury essays, like, down to the wire two seconds left on the clock, like we lost the score, but we wanted friendship. Like that is not going to really knock myself off or, like, really make me be like, I need this student here. Like, so those are a few that come immediately.


Ethan Sawyer  45:33  
The only one that in my brain is the the big performance essay, where it's like they're getting ready to go on stage and, you know, there's like, give the speech or sort of, you know, that's the one I tend to see the last nervous, but I was able to do it, and, you know, other things too. So what talk to us about two, two part question, what do you look for in a personal statement? And how much do essays matter?


Speaker 1  45:57  
I look for vulnerability, and I look for honesty. And I think that I hope that, you know, the essays and the students who are being admitted are coming from a sincere place, and often you can really feel that, and just the way that they're talking about their story and and revealing to us what they've overcome, what they want to achieve, how they want to get there, excitability, that's also something that, like, I love to see, I love to see, like, quirkiness, like, so we always bring up, we do this workshop at Pomona where we show people like, what we and actually, I forgot permission from the student. His name is also Ethan, to show like, basically like an Activities page that we were like. This student did this incredibly well, and his activities, again, were not like mind blowing, Nobel Prize, you know, doing all these, you know, things that are just, like, Lifetime movie story moments, right? He just wrote. He was like, yeah, like, I'm not the star pitcher on the baseball team, but like, I was there on the bench cheering him on, like he was so good about, like, really owning what he was good at, and being like, yeah. Like, I'm a great like, writing is my thing. I love tutoring. Like, it's been so inspiring to help get people to a place where they see themselves as great writers too, and really kind of celebrating and being like, yeah, like, this is something I love. This something I'm good at, I excel in, and I love to get back and use the talent for a greater purpose than myself. It's great to see also people being, like, vulnerable and self deprecating and honest and being real and human. Because again, like reading 1000s of applications, there is a lot of similar verbiage and wording and just really dry presentation that just does not really make the student stand out. So I think those are definitely things that I look for in terms of a personal statement and by and loving this is cliche advice, but just needs to be reiterated, is about you. It has to be about you. And I think so many students still write essays that are a topic that they love from school, and it reads like a school paper, or it reads like a biography of someone else, and it shouldn't the reader. The admissions officer should not leave that essay being like, I didn't really learn much about the student. I also tell students, think of your application. Of your application as a book, and if you read reading the same chapter over and over again as an AO like, those are wasted opportunities in a chapter to reveal more about yourself that wasn't revealed in other parts of the application. So that's something to think about as well. There's a second part to your


Unknown Speaker  48:16  
question. It was, it was, how much do essays matter? They


Speaker 1  48:18  
do people, I think, don't think that they matter. And I think, to be completely honest, like, I think that it depends on the volume of application and the school and the size that you are. Okay, I have the luxury at Pomona, we have, we have a lot of applications, but we have a team and a way of dividing up the applications where I actually am able to really do a thorough deep dive, line by line read to make that prep of mine, you know, with those quotes and recommendations and highlights to really go through and to honor these stories that are being told to us. Some schools mean just with the volume of applications they receive, and especially this past year, you know, with test optional, and then the rise in so many rates of applications. Like, there in order to get the decisions out on time. Like, there has to be a sense of expediency with that. So it depends on the school. And some, you know, schools are hopefully going to be honest with you about how much they evaluate their essays. Some schools don't, you know, require essays at all. It's just not a part of the process. I know a lot of international schools in particular, like our US process with essays and writing samples and college specific supplements like really doesn't it's not a part of many other countries admissions processes that they do. So for Pomona, it matters again. I can't speak on behalf of other schools quite as


Ethan Sawyer  49:29  
much, so I want to just actually jump into some questions and grab some some of the questions from the chat box, and so maybe we can both sort of skim it and see which ones really, really jump out at us. Let's see, especially stuff that hasn't. Oh, this is a good one. How does a student's ability to pay tuition impact their acceptance decision at Pomona?


Speaker 1  49:52  
Good question. At Pomona, we are need blind for all students who are graduate or applying from us high school. I. So that includes students who are undocumented, students who are international students who are studying in the United States for their college or their high school degree. What that means is that we're need blind. We are not looking at financial affordability as a factor in the admissions conversation. I don't have access to the documents. I don't know the assets that this family possesses. We are need aware for international students who are applying from an international high school, US citizens abroad are also counted under the domestic policy, but international students with a non US citizenship who are studying outside of the United States, we do factor in affordability into the conversation there, and half of our admitted students, roughly half, typically at Pomona, are receiving financial aid, and we meet 100% of demonstrated need. There were some folks were


Ethan Sawyer  50:44  
interested in talking to you earlier, especially earlier on, before we got to essays. Were interested in essay related questions. You know, actually, this might be a good chance to segue a little bit to talk about this, because maybe we could speak a little bit about the application of the student that we both know, because we could, you could maybe speak specifically, because it seems like there were a bunch of folks asking about particular applications, and this actually would segue to our sort of institutional priorities. So in terms of Pomona institutional priorities, and this is a very narrow thing, but maybe you can give the context for the student that we're talking about and and talk about based on how you read that particular application, what did that student do well, and how did it fit Pomona institutional priorities? Great


Speaker 1  51:26  
question, and a great two birds of one stone moment. Love to see it. Genius. So yes, the student that actually got Ethan and myself connected, we did. We have known each other actually peripherally from another program that we had done at a great school in downtown LA called Downtown magnets High


Speaker 2  51:42  
School. Shout out, shout out. Linda McGee, she's she's


Speaker 1  51:45  
on it, man. But so the students who I read was a student who came from a rural area of Ethiopia called Gambella. And this particular student wrote in his application, and I mean, the recommendations were as if the student was a prophet who was just such an anomaly for his area, and just so motivated and driven. And I remember one of the closest recommendation was like this student, let's call him Tony. Like Tony was, you know, Tony says that he's going to come back after studying, you know, at in the US at a selective school with a politics and computer science degree. And so many people in our town say that he's crazy. But you know what, I he's not like, I know this is going to happen. I have no doubt in my mind that he's going to come back here have achieved these goals, because that is the type of person he is. And I mean, these wrecks were just like, on another level of superlative, and just like, clearly this student is just far surpassing his context in terms of what he's achieved and how he's how he's motivated himself to do so. So he wrote his application about, you know, escaping genocide and escaping political turmoil and violence and horrible atrocities, like as a child and now is in a place where his family is, you know, able to he's able to go to school. He's able to kind of track our God, a better life for himself. And he wrote about taking, you know, multiple day bus rides to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, three days away from where he lives on the border with Sudan, Sudan, to go to college presentations that were being offered by these selective schools to get that face time, to meet with them, to be like, Hey, I'm excited about your school. I will do what it takes to get there and and I believe in myself and like, I'm not going to stop until this, this dream of mine, becomes a reality that I mean, just like really speaks to grit, it speaks to resilience. It speaks to and in terms of institutional priorities and kind of, you know, how the student fit into our process. Like, you know, there's things about the students application that I can't really say, you know, on this call for the sake of confidentiality, that were priorities that Pomona was particularly looking for in the cycle. So institutional priorities at Pomona and many other schools take lots of different shapes. So at some schools, there are certain academic programs that just too many students are applying or interested in, and because they want an academically balanced class, not all the students who are interested in Q, most popular major or Q, most popular topic are going to be admitted. Just mathematically, it is not possible to give all of our departments equal love in terms of students who are interested and an exciting student experience with students who have different academic interests, which is what Pomona is all about. So that's a part of it. There's also, you know, athletes, about 10 to 15% of our student body at Pomona are recruited varsity athletes who typically apply through early decision rounds. And there are also students who have coach support forums that are basically like validation of their athletic talent in later rounds of our process that we have definitely more leeway with, like hope support forms than we do for students who are recruits. Admission still makes the final say. We still have to be academically admissible. They still have to meet what we're looking for and complete their application. We've had students who have not fully completed the application. They did, like a one sentence essay, and we were like, No, you got to do this again. That's not admissible music talent, you know, like the orchestra, they're losing two star bassoonists one year. We need to fulfill those spots. So a student needs to fit all Pomona intangible qualities and kind of ethos, but also needs to have this talent and needs to have, like, a submitted supplement that is documenting that they can contribute to the bassoon in the orchestra. So it does get that detailed and that granular and that micro, especially for small schools like Pomona, where, again, the class that's coming in is 415 students, and I'm not saying everyone go home and find an instrument that is really obscure, start taking up the French horn and become like an expert, do things that you love. And other schools are flush with bassoonists and like that, fact that you did that is going to be like, Oh, you're a dime a dozen. But like at a Pomona in a certain application year, some academic programs might be more attractive, some instruments might be more attractive, some positions on an athletic team might be more attractive. And that luck of the draw, kind of situational year by year. Piece is a real part of


Ethan Sawyer  56:01  
this. Yeah, yeah. This student, by the way, I just want to attest to this was a student who took one of my online courses, found it, you know, I don't know, online or something. Two years ago, applied to a bunch of schools, didn't get into any of them, and then reapplied. So this was the second year that the student was applying, and anyway, it worked out really well. But what I want to say, and this is relevant to another question that I wanted to get into, but I don't know, we have a ton of time too. But how tough is it? Let's talk about international full need students. As the student was a full need means that the student needed maximum financial aid. How tough is it for for students who are international and full need to get in, you know? And I don't know what's how specific you can get with the numbers, but I curious. You curious get as specific as you can


Speaker 1  56:45  
with that. Yeah, and that's a you know, of course, relief leaving this webinar on a heavier topic, because I understand, especially after reading files from Africa this year, I understand how many high need international students are interested in college in college in the United States and are hoping to make this happen. And the unfortunate reality is that at the vast majority of colleges and universities, the financial aid budget for that particular population is more limited. There are some schools that are able to have policies that are more generous, but at Pomona, for example, we very financially sound institution. We have lots of great resources that part of our process is definitely more of a it's a harder part of our process because there are just far more talented high need international students than we can take in. And the percentage is very small. I don't have I can't really provide an exact


Ethan Sawyer  57:33  
number, but that's fine. So I'm going to ask you a leading question. So students who are, and this is, this applies not just to international full needs students, but students who are, let's say, I'm going to make an extreme This is not anybody on this call, but students who are very obsessed with getting into a highly selective school, and they're pinning their hopes on success equals getting into that school and failure is knocking that school. What advice would you give to those students? It's a super leading question.


Speaker 1  57:59  
It's I'm glad you asked this question, because it's something that I really want to like, dedicate my career towards having people rethink about this. I think a lot of students think that the degree is going to speak for them, or the college that they go to is going to speak for them, and you have the voice on the platform to speak for yourself and to demonstrate why you're talented, why you're motivated, why I'll be a great employee at insert company. And that is a undeniable fact of your story and your trajectory, no matter where you go to college. You know Cal State, LA is one of the highest colleges in terms of upward mobility for students who are on the bottom 20% of the income bracket in the United States. The United States who eventually end up making it to the top 20% right Cal State, LA is not as selective as Pomona. It is right down the street. And to say that certain schools are the only ones that are going to be able to make you anyone in this world, and to be someone who is contributing greatly to our world and our planet is absolutely not true. It is not true. And I think being a part of the 97% of students that I mentioned before is not anything to discredit or discount or think as a signal of failure. Like 97% you are among friends, right? Like there are many people among you who are not going to these Elite League colleges, and for students who are from the lowest economic background, that can really be that upward mobility ticket for many students at these highly selective schools, for the vast majority of students who are high income, especially middle income, the difference between going to an Ivy League school and earnings potential and going to a less selective school is negligible, and I think that needs to be really understood, because it's not the Silver Ticket bullet that people think it is, or it's not the essential thing that people think it is as well. So remember your drive, your ambition, your curiosity, your work ethic, and show people, no matter where I went to school, you cannot take that away from me, and that is who I am. I. And that is why we'll be I love it.


Ethan Sawyer  1:00:02  
Well, let's, let's do one more. Let's grab Do you have a question? Yeah, okay, let's do one. A student asks, Should you be decided in your major when you're applying to college? Or does that matter? Not matter so much?


Speaker 1  1:00:13  
Oh, wow. This question was asked. No, like 80% of students in the US changed their mind about their major from their initial point of application. It is not the major is not what makes you at all. And I know it can be helpful when you're researching colleges and you want to get a sense for, okay, what types of programs are more attracted to me. You know, where are my gifts and talents going to fit in the best at this particular school? Oftentimes, you're doing a lot of speculating about that, and you get until you get to the campus and interact with faculty and students and learn more about different programs, that you're able to get a better sense for what major truly is best for you and what major truly is the best fit for your skills, your talents, your left brain, right brain, whatever mix you may be. So that absolutely does not need to be the case, and especially at a place like Pomona, a small liberal arts college where exploration and adventure and dabbling around and switching your path and winding is such a part of kind of what Pomona students are all about. The major really should not be the sole Angular, narrow path, and just being open to that flexibility is what I recommend. So for


Ethan Sawyer  1:01:17  
students who are undecided, that's not like immediately a no, because they don't know what they want, because I think that's the fear, right? That if, oh, if I say I'm decided, I'm going to seem indecisive, right? My advice to those


Speaker 1  1:01:28  
students is to you can be indecisive, but don't be apathetic, because sometimes I'll get statements that are like, you know, I kind of like a lot of stuff. It's really interesting. You know, I could, I can see myself going a lot of places, and that's it, like, talk a little bit about, like, Okay, at this point in time, here's what I'm thinking about. Here's what I'm curious about. I don't quite know how that's going to fit into the college campus, to be honest, but here's what excites me, and here's what I'm excited to explore in college. And I'm also excited for the possibility of change at a place like Pomona, where that's a part of our academic philosophy and our culture as a liberal arts college that emphasizes both breadth and depth, like that type of answer is completely within line of Pomona fit, right,


Ethan Sawyer  1:02:07  
right. Another thing that you're making me think of is supplemental essays, which we haven't even touched on yet. So for the part two, we'll do getting into the Pomona supplemental essays that would be a fun conversation. Tom, thank you. It's so great to see you and connect with you, and I appreciate your generosity and your just, your big yes,


Speaker 1  1:02:25  
so absolutely. Thank you, Ethan, for having me. Thank you all for tuning in. I know you're coming from all different corners of the world, different ages, different reasons for why you attended this, whether you're a student or family or counselor, but I'm so honored to have been here, and I hope this was helpful


Ethan Sawyer  1:02:37  
information. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and we'll be in central soon. And thanks all stay on the email list. We're gonna follow up with not only practical steps, but then we're gonna get into like, when it's time to write the essays and things that's all coming, y'all, so stay tuned. All right, thanks again, and I'll see you soon. Hey, friends, that's the episode. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out Episode Two, where we talk about things like, what are some do's and don'ts for students at a college fair? What can folks learn about Pomona based on their particular supplemental essay prompts? And even, how does Pomona decide which prompts to use? We'll talk about whether or not it matters which prompt you choose for the common app, personal statement, and does it matter which major you choose when you apply? Talk, soon. Stay curious. You.


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