Pomona College (/pəˈmoʊnə/ (listen) pə-MOH-nə[4]) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a “college of the New England type”[5] in Southern California, and in 1925 it became the founding member of the Claremont Colleges consortium of adjacent, affiliated institutions.
Pomona is a four-year undergraduate institution that enrolls approximately 1,700 students. It offers 48 majors in liberal arts disciplines and roughly 650 courses, as well as access to more than 2,000 additional courses at the other Claremont Colleges. Its 140-acre (57 ha) campus is in a residential community 35 miles (56 km) east of downtown Los Angeles, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Pomona has the lowest acceptance rate of any U.S. liberal arts college as of 2021 and is considered the most prestigious liberal arts college in the American West and one of the most prestigious in the country.[6] It has a $3.03 billion endowment as of June 2021, making it the seventh-wealthiest college or university in the U.S. on a per student basis. Nearly all students live on campus, and the student body is noted for its racial,[7][8] geographic,[9] and socioeconomic[8][10] diversity. The college’s athletics teams, the Sagehens, compete jointly with Pitzer College in the SCIAC, a Division III conference.
Prominent alumni of Pomona include Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award winners; U.S. Senators, ambassadors, and other federal officials; Pulitzer Prize recipients; billionaire executives; a Nobel Prize laureate; National Academies members; and Olympic athletes.[11] The college is a top producer of Fulbright scholars[12] and recipients of other fellowships.