Earlier this month, Pomona College released its Common Data Set containing admissions data for the Class of 2024. According to the data set, Pomona’s pre-waitlist admissions rate climbed very slightly between the previous admissions cycle and this one, up from 6.95% for the 2018-2019 cycle (Class of 2023) to 7.2% for the 2019-2020 cycle (Class of 2024).
More notably, while the number of students who accepted a position on the waitlist decreased from 566 to 505, 150 waitlisted students were offered a position in the class of 2024 compared to only 47 for the class of 2023, a 319% increase from last year. This significant change may be due in part to the ongoing COVID-19 emergency, which has seen a far larger number of incoming students take gap years than in ordinary years. The University of Pennsylvania, for example, cites a 300% increase in gap year requests for incoming students. Demographic statistics, yield rates and standardized test scores also saw a degree of fluctuation between the two concurrent years.
Racially, Pomona’s enrollment profile has remained relatively static. Of the 399 students enrolled in the class of 2024, 30.6% identify as white, 19.8% as Asian, 16.5% as Hispanic or Latino, 10.8% as Black, and 10.5% as nonresident aliens, with the remaining 11.8% either identifying as either two or more races, or preferring not to disclose their racial identity. In the class of 2023, 33.6% of the 416 enrolled students identified as white, 18.8% as Asian, 17.1% as Hispanic or Latino, 9.4% as Black, 11.5% as nonresident aliens and 0.2% as Native American, with the remainder either choosing not to disclose their racial identity or identifying as two or more races.
Gender demographics also remained fairly constant between the two classes. In 2023, the acceptance rate for men was almost 50% higher than that for women, at 9.3% and 6.3%, respectively. Though acceptance rates for both genders increased slightly, men in the class of 2024 benefitted from a slightly higher acceptance rate of 10.1%, compared to 7.6% for women. These figures include students accepted from the waitlist.
The college’s yield rate dropped from 54% for the class of 2023 to 44.6% for the class of 2024, with only 399 of the 895 students admitted in 2020 accepting the offer compared to 416 of the 770 admitted in 2019. Despite this drop, the percentages of men and women making up the two classes have remained more or less the same; 45.2% of the class of 2023 identify as male compared to 46.8% in the class of 2024, while women make up 54.8% and 53.2% of the respective classes.
Most students admitted in 2020 preferred to submit SAT over ACT scores, though some chose to use both, with 68% of students submitting SAT scores compared to 48% preferring the ACT. Test scores remained relatively constant, though the bottom 25th percentile of SAT scores dropped from 1410 to 1390 between the 2019 and 2020 admissions cycles.
Because of the CARES Act, an emergency grant from the federal government to provide relief for colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pomona did not release information about financial aid statistics for the 2020 admissions cycle. Earlier this year, the college revealed it had received $1.3 million thanks to the act, of which a minimum of half was reserved for student-related expenses.
Class sizes also remained relatively constant; 242 of Pomona’s 436 classes had between 10 and 19 students in the fall of 2020 compared to 226 of 431 in 2019.
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