Each fall, a couple dozen new faces make their way up three flights of stairs. Faces glistening with sweat, the students struggle to haul their heavy suitcases up to their new home on the third floor of Pomona College’s oldest dorm, Smiley Hall. As more trickle in, bonds are quickly forged in the shared misery of their A/C-less rooms. Group chats are made, origin stories are shared, and it nearly feels like freshman year again. But for this particular genre of new students, it’s far from it.
Transfer students are a tricky bunch. They miss out on first-year bonding, yet they are just as unfamiliar with the environment as first-years are. Finding solace in one another seems commonplace, but attempts at branching out can be a tough task.
The intimate vibe of the 5Cs is widely celebrated and attracts many students — including transfers — to the schools. Yet that same close-knit feel can be a challenge for incoming transfers. Even though returning students warmly welcome those new to the colleges, it’s more difficult for them to develop lasting friendships.
“A lot of current sophomores and juniors who are around the same age as me have made most of their permanent friends here, so it’s hard to find an opening,” Aaron Rogers PO ‘27, a transfer from Santa Monica College, said.
That feeling isn’t exclusive to Pomona. Karina Klein SC ‘25, a transfer from Colorado State, said she also found it hard to create closer relationships with returning Scripps students during her first year.
“It was a lot harder to make friends than I thought with people in my grade because I didn’t realize how closed off a lot of people are when they have already formed their friend groups,” Klein said.
In addition to finding previously-made friend groups intimidating, Scripps creates another barrier for transfer students to feel welcome by placing them in off-campus housing at the Claremont Collegiate Apartments (CCA).
However, despite being isolated from most Scripps students, Klein said that many of the transfers said they found themselves bonding with one another.
Further south, according to Ever Cook PO ‘27, a transfer from nearby Chaffey College, Pomona transfers also deeply valued the kinship found in their cohort.
“We’ve built a community [where] we can rely on everyone … we can trust them,” Cook said.
At Pomona, 41 percent of transfers are first-generation college students, and two are non-U.S. citizens. A majority — 64 percent — transferred from community colleges. The diversity of experience found in the cohort only strengthens their collective resolve.
“It’s a big messy family,” Sean Diament, politics professor and Transfer Student Association advisor said.
Diament, a former community college transfer to UC Berkeley, said he understands the difficulties in finding your footing in a new place.
“I felt really alone and experienced a lot of culture shock … and yet there [were] thousands of transfer students,” Diament said.
Although Diament reflects fondly on his time as an undergraduate, he was no stranger to the feelings of isolation that often come to a transfer student.
“My experience at Berkeley was really anonymous and inconsequential as a transfer … it didn’t open doors, it didn’t give me any real connections,” Diament said, “But here I think you’re clearly supported more.”
This sentiment was shared by many within the transfer cohort. The same smaller atmosphere that can initially be hostile for transfer students often helps them adjust, particularly in the classroom. Cailey Brousseau PO ‘27, a transfer from Bryn Mawr College, noted the positive difference that small class sizes make for transfer students.
“I cannot imagine taking the same language class that currently has 18 people in it with 30, 40, even 50 people in it,” Brousseau said. “There’s just no way I would be learning that much.”
As someone who works to foster that intimate learning environment in his own classrooms, Diament said he agrees that the 5Cs’ ability to provide such a setting is a unique selling point that most other institutions can’t offer.
“Your experience can become currency,” Diament said. “The classroom is the venue of support.”
It’s these smaller communities in the classroom or on the dorm floor within the broader 5C social landscape that make this place so special for its student body.
“It’s probably the first time I ever felt that I can actually go up to anyone and ask for any type of assistance … it’s just helped me overall come out of my shell a bit,” Amirah Lockett PO ‘27, a transfer from Victor Valley College, said.
Finding an enclave to express yourself and learn from others, regardless of your background, is vital to the liberal arts mission. Transfer students and their unique paths to the 5Cs are a key part to that mission.
“If you believe in liberal arts education building model citizens, you should believe in transfer students,” Diament said.
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