The administration has tried full-force to display a new image and a new Pomona to the world since then, much to the dismay of many students and alums like myself. It is important to note that the spring before I worked at admissions was the spring Pomona made its rebranding efforts public, headlined by the work done by consultant Mark Neustadt. Designing a collegiate-level course is not. When I originally gave my prompt to the admissions office, it was not worded this way. The prompt I wrote made it clear that the emphasis of the responding essay should be about the individual and not about the course. It was my intention to empower applicants to write about topics that were important to them while also having them share insights about themselves. That is something reasonable to ask a high-achieving high school student to write about. Describe the title of the class, its contents, and why you chose it.” Recent class titles include: 'The Politics of Classical Art,' 'Seeing Science,' and 'The Theatre and Environmental Activism.' Imagine you were hired to design and teach a Critical Inquiry course. “Pomona’s Critical Inquiry course is required of all first-year students, and is designed to be highly interdisciplinary and engaging. While at the office one day, I heard a couple of admissions officers discussing possible prompts for Pomona’s supplemental essay to the Common Application. The main concern the officers voiced with the essays they received was that students wrote too much about a topic important to the student but not enough about the student themselves. I took it upon myself to think of possible essay prompts in my own time, outside of work, and soon afterwards I gave several prompts to an admissions officer. One of those is now the first prompt in this fall’s supplement application.

I was fortunate enough to work as an intern for the Pomona College office of admissions over summer 2013. The upcoming fall application cycle dominated the discussion at the office, from rising high school seniors and their families to other admissions officers to interns like myself.

Scripps college supplemental essays