Pomona College asks applicants to respond to one of the following three short-answer prompts in 250 words or fewer.
Pomona is home to a diverse community of faculty, staff and students who, through close ties and collaboration, enable each other to identify and explore their greatest passions. Considering this, respond to one of the following:
Reflecting on a community that you are a part of, what values or perspectives from that community would you bring to Pomona?
My most cherished community gathers around a table littered with tiny screws, soldering irons, and brightly colored keycaps. We build custom mechanical keyboards. From this group, I would bring the value of patient, collaborative troubleshooting to Pomona.
I learned this value the night my friend Leo’s keyboard build went silent. We spent four hours hunched over the circuit board, desoldering and resoldering 87 tiny switches, passing a magnifying glass between us. There was no frustration, only a shared, quiet focus. When we finally found the faulty connection, the collective sigh of relief was more satisfying than any solo achievement.
At Pomona, I hope to bring this same spirit to late-night study groups and collaborative labs. I see myself leaning over a physics problem set with a classmate, not just searching for my own answer, but patiently working with them to find the faulty connection in our combined understanding. I believe the most profound discoveries aren’t made in a flash of individual genius, but through the shared, steady process of finding and fixing a problem together.
Describe an experience you had outside the classroom that changed the way you think or how you engage with your peers. What was that experience and what did you learn from it?
I used to believe that every problem had a solution, and my job was to provide it. My job at a local grocery store, specifically a conversation with a man trying to return a melted carton of ice cream without a receipt, taught me otherwise.
Store policy was clear: no receipt, no refund. I recited the rule, but the man only grew more frustrated. He wasn't yelling about the ice cream, but about his bad day, the traffic, the heat. In that moment, I realized he didn’t need a solution; he needed to be heard. I stopped talking and just listened. After a minute, he sighed, nodded, and said, “I know you can’t do anything. Thanks anyway.”
Before this, I treated disagreements in group projects as debates to be won. Now, my first instinct is to listen. I’ve learned that validating someone’s perspective is the first step toward collaboration. I now understand that the most effective way to engage with my peers isn’t always to solve the problem, but to first acknowledge the person.
Choose any person or group of people in your life and share how they would describe you.
The members of my high school’s stage crew would describe me as the “quiet problem-solver.” They wouldn’t tell you about a big speech I gave, but about the little things that happen backstage.
They would probably point to the final dress rehearsal for our production of Grease. Ten seconds before the curtain rose, the hand-jive scene was plunged into darkness when the extension cord for the jukebox prop came unplugged. As the stage manager began to panic, I was already army-crawling behind the set, plugging it back in just as the first note of music hit. I didn’t get applause, just a grateful nod from our lead actress.
I believe the crew sees me this way because I find satisfaction not in the spotlight, but in making sure the spotlight works for others. It’s a form of leadership that isn’t about giving orders, but about quietly ensuring the show can go on. I value being the person who sees a problem and simply, reliably, fixes it.
All the best!
