After withholding admissions rate data for students accepted in the Fall 2018-Spring 2019 admissions last spring, Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College (CMC) released their Common Data Sets last semester containing this data. While Pomona’s admission rate for the 2018-2019 admissions cycle (Class of 2023) dropped very slightly to 6.95% from 6.96% for students applying in the 2017-2018 admissions cycle (Class of 2022), CMC’s admission rate for its Class of 2023 rose to 9.59% from 8.91% for its Class of 2022. Both figures do not include students admitted from the colleges’ waitlists. Besides admissions rates, there were also interesting trends for yields, demographics, test scores, and financial aid.
Both colleges’ yield rates stayed relatively constant at the 52% – 55% range. In a first, CMC’s Class of 2023 was the first year that CMC has a majority female class—173 women and 155 men are in CMC’s class of 2023.
At Pomona, men were almost 50% more likely to be admitted than women. While at CMC, the acceptance rate for men is relatively similar to the acceptance rate for women, averaging 9.7% for women and 9.6% for men, Pomona’s acceptance rate for men and women averaged 9.3% and 6.3% respectively. These figures do reflect students admitted from the waitlist.
CMC accepted 43 students from 328 students who had accepted the waitlist position, 18 more students than they accepted in 2018-2019 where 651 students accepted their place on the waitlist. Pomona College accepted 20 less students in 2019-2020 than they did the year prior while the number of students who had accepted the waitlist stayed relatively similar at 566 from 527.
The majority of students—over 60%—who apply to Pomona College send in their SAT scores in favor of their ACT scores, while at CMC these numbers are much closer to 50%.
CMC’s 25th and 75th percentiles of ACT scores remained constant at 31 and 34, respectively, while Pomona College’s 25th percentile rose to 32 from 31 and the 75th percentile rose from 34 to 35. However, Pomona College’s SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing 25th percentile score dropped 10 points to 690.
Early Decision acceptance rates rose for CMC in the 2019-2020 admissions cycle from 25.0% to 28.22%, while Pomona College’s stayed roughly the same from 15.17% to 15.39%.
CMC’s total $ value of need-based scholarships rose in 2019-2020 to $29,008,084 from $25,554,529 in the previous year; Pomona’s remained constant from $50,513,808 to $50,153,948.
Finally, 225 out of Pomona College’s 412 classes in 2017-2018 had between 10-19 students and the numbers stayed consistent from 2018-2019 with 226 out of 431 classes having students between 10-19 students. For CMC, 205 out of 279 classes had between 10-19 students in 2017-2018, while 222 classes out of 293 had between 10-19 in 2018-2029.