<p>As of right now, I have to choose between Swarthmore, Dartmouth, Amherst, or Grinnell for 1/2 price. I am leaning towards Swarthmore at this moment.</p>
<p>I just see a slightly more intellectual, less partying focused atmosphere at Swarthmore than the other schools.</p>
<p>Mostly, I want a school with the best overall "feeling."</p>
<p>Any final thoughts?</p>
<p>
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Mostly, I want a school with the best overall "feeling."
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<p>Unless you're talking about a feeling produced as a gut reaction to other CC poster's opinions, I'm afraid 'feeling' won't be gotten on these boards. Back in in my fretful days, I always explained my school decisions by the 'instinct' word. How well you fit in with the students, whether when you visited you could talk to other kids and professors, whether the school could take care of you... what it felt like, instinctively. That is not really something anybody but you can really decide.</p>
<p>Sometimes, what you need is to just think about it all. Write down what you liked or disliked about each school - how you felt when you visited, whether you can see yourself there, and what you plan to do there. Parents like to factor in these things like cost and career matches, which are important, but if you're talking about fit and feelings... it's you that should be deciding, not someone else.</p>
<p>Oh, yes, one last detail. Kids at Swat don't like to persuade/force others to come, in the sense that if this is the right school for you, you should come, but if it's not, go somewhere else. Not that you shouldn't come to Swat, but if you do, you should do it on your own accord.</p>
<p>Ok, I think I have repeated myself three times. I shall be quiet now. Here is a Swat livejournal to browse through to see a bit of campus culture. You might have to wade thru lots of 'spec question, some of which might be comparable to your situation. <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/community/swarthmore/%5B/url%5D">http://www.livejournal.com/community/swarthmore/</a> And here is a delightful forum created by a Swat '09 EDer <a href="http://www.swarthmore09.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.swarthmore09.org/</a> that is quite active.</p>
<p>All three are awesome schools.</p>
<p>Swarthmore being a bit closer to big cities.</p>
<p>a bit more intellectual</p>
<p>a bit less drinking/partying</p>
<p>a bit smaller than Dartmouth</p>
<p>a bit more liberal politically</p>
<p>a bit more self-selected</p>
<p>a bit warmer</p>
<p>and woos my heart a bit more :)</p>
<p>a friend gave me this advice today, even though it was aimed at deciding between 2 schools:</p>
<p>pick one of them, and see if you will regret the other ones. that's where your heart is. and if you regret more than one, see which one you would most regret not going to.</p>
<p>tough, but it's your call. no one else can decide for you, and you know your own gut.</p>
<p>I'm just sorry that, at this point in the decision making process, no school has jumped out and grabbed you in a visceral way.</p>
<p>Or that, perhaps in trying to overthink insignificant details, the decision is so difficult to make. For example, I was stunned when Allure mentioned that courses available at UMass or UPenn, outside of her preliminary major, were entering into her decision. Odds are that she will never take a course outside of her school. And, even if she does, that course or two will pale in comparison to the 24/7 immersion in her school's campus culture, the people she hangs out with (or not), etc. </p>
<p>Likewise, I just shake my head at kids trying to base a choice between academically top-shelf schools on the odds of getting into a particular law school -- when the reality is that they won't even know if they want to go to law school for years. Details like that should be buried so deep into the noise compared to the A-level stuff, that I don't even know how to react. I just thank heaven that I started the whole process with my daughter by getting her to focus on the big picture stuff. Find the right type of school and everything else will take care of itself.</p>
<p>It's frustrating because, with the benefit of 50/50 hindsight, it so clear that the issues of campus culture, what is the student body like, and what are the school's institutional priorities are the things that are really important in determining a match. But, it is just so hard to explain that to someone who hasn't been to college. When you get to be my age, you won't even remember what courses you took (with a few very good and very bad exceptions), but you will have a clear image of the kids at your college and what the big-picture experience was like.</p>
<p>I'm at a loss to offer any real advice, other than to say: don't get so close that you can't see the forest for the trees.</p>
<p>To me, Swarthmore is one of the most distinctive, least ambiguous schools around. There's no mystery. What you see is what you get. The "marketing" pitch is, IMO, accurate to a fault. If there is any surprise, it's the strength of the community bond and support that students encounter. </p>
<p>I'll try to hard to convince someone to give it a look see. But, to try to convince a stranger that he or she should go there? I dunno. At a certain point, you just have to go with your gut.</p>
<p>To me, the best piece of advice to "specs" I've seen this year came from a current Swattie. Obviously, anyone who gets accepted is a stellar student. But, the motivation for being a stellar student can vary. Some kids just enjoy learning new things. Others like the challenge. Others see the growth opportunity, not unlike training to run a marathon. Others may not really enjoy school, but excel as a result of external motivation: parents who expect them to get A's or who strive to do well in college to "get into a top grad school" or "make a lot of money". The Swattie's advice was that, if your motivation for academics is external or if learning for the sake of learning is not one of your priorities in college, you probably won't like Swarthmore. I tend to agree with that assessment. On the other hand, if you are internally motivated, I doubt that there is a more rewarding experience around.</p>
<p>Hmmm, someone brought this up on another board:</p>
<p>Is there as significant use of pot on the campus in relation to Dartmouth, Amherst, and especially Grinnell? How does everyone see that issue?</p>
<p>The concensus among students on the Swat Live Journal site is that pot smoking is not particularly widespread. [I would guess that is particularly true in the last month or so, since Swat's only known campus pot dealer was put out of action earlier this semester!]</p>
<p>This view seems to be supported by the federal campus crime stats. For the most recent three-year period from 2001-2003:</p>
<p>Swarthmore had 3 drug law arrests and 7 drug law disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Grinnell had 1 arrest and 27 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Amherst had 8 arrests and 27 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Williams had 29 arrests and 78 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is more than twice the size, so factor that into the numbers. It had 41 drug law arrests and 68 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>In the federal crime stats, colleges with large numbers of alcohol sanctions also tend to have the most drug law sanctions.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is like any other college campus. Kids drink. Kids smoke pot. But, neither is a notably heavy part of the social scene. Drinking is much more common than pot smoking. This is probably a change from my generation, when Swat was a counter-culture campus and pot smoking was extremely common at all of these schools. </p>
<p>Back in the late 60's/early 70's, Mary Lyons was the dope-smokers dorm at Swarthmore. Before that, in the late 50's/early 60s (when Dean Gross lived there), it was the "beatnik" dorm. Now, it's the science fiction/role playing gamers dorm. These days, if you want to smoke pot, Hollowell is probably your best bet since it's just about the only dorm that allows smoking, period.</p>
<p>I read the description of Swarthmore you are referring to on the Dartmouth board. Suffice to say, that it wasn't terribly accurate. I haven't seen any accounts of flags being burned at Swarthmore in recent decades, although it sounds like something that occurred on many campuses at the height of the anti-Vietnam War days. More than likely a few bras were burned back in the day, as well.</p>
<p>Interresteddad:</p>
<p>I guess I find it difficult to keep myself from stopping by this board now and then (even though my son has decided to go elsewhere), just to see what folks are saying. Hope I don't seem like an interloper.</p>
<p>In arguing that drug use at Swarthmore is not widespread, you write:</p>
<p>"This view seems to be supported by the federal campus crime stats. For the most recent three-year period from 2001-2003:</p>
<p>Swarthmore had 3 drug law arrests and 7 drug law disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Grinnell had 1 arrest and 27 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Amherst had 8 arrests and 27 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Williams had 29 arrests and 78 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is more than twice the size, so factor that into the numbers. It had 41 drug law arrests and 68 disciplinary actions."</p>
<p>Well, drug use may or may not be widespread at Swarthmore, but, as I suspect you already know (as reflected by your use of the word "seems"), stats of this sort are pretty meaningless in trying to assess, with any degree of accuracy, the amount of drug use on a campus. Why? Because in order to infer the overall amount of drug use simply from the number of related arrests and disciplinary actions, one would have to make a number of assumptions - each of which is suspect - including the following:</p>
<p>--that the degree of law-enforcement and disciplinary attention devoted to student drug use is consistent at each place.</p>
<p>--that the openness of the drug use is consistent at each place (meaning, here, that the use would as readily catch the attention of law-enforcement and disciplinary personnel).</p>
<p>One could easily imagine, for example, a school with the lowest overall amount of drug use having the highest number of arrests and disciplinary actions, simply because of the intensity of the law-enforcement and disciplinary activity. Conversely, one could imagine a school with the highest amount of use having the lowest number of arrests and disciplinary actions, because comparatively little enforcement attention was paid. Without knowing a lot more than these statistics reveal, I think that it's simply impossible to draw any sort of reasonable conclusion from them concerning the amount of overall use, or even to regard them as any sort of meaningful corroboration. </p>
<p>If I'm wrong here, I'm sure you'll tell me why (which, I hasten to add, I say with admiration).</p>
<p>"pick one of them, and see if you will regret the other ones. that's where your heart is. and if you regret more than one, see which one you would most regret not going to."</p>
<p>I like this advice the best...... And it is true, Swat students and administration will not try to persuade you one way or the other. You either fit in or you don't.</p>
<p>No question. The OPE Federal Campus Crime statistics are an imperfect measure of drinking, drug use, sex crimes, hate crimes, illegal weapons possessesion, burglaries, and the other things required to be reported. However, when a prospective student is told by another high school senior that "pot smoking is rampant" at a college and not rampant at another, one would expect to see some statistical correlation, somewhere. </p>
<p>I would not rely on the OPE crime stats as an absolute measure of anything except what they are: federal mandate to report certain categories of arrests and disciplinary actions. I would, however, urge every prospective student to take a look at the numbers. They are just one of a dozen or more statistical measures (diversity, finanicial aid, frat membership, surveyed drinking rates, etc.) that, taken together, provide a reasonably clear snapshot of a college's campus culture.</p>
<p>The Harvard School of Public Health surveys show that nationally, marijuna use (within the prior 30 days) runs about 17% compared to their measure of high-risk drinking in the prior 14 days (44%). They find many of the the same correlations for marijuana use as they do for high-risk drinking. And, in fact, they find a strong correlation between marijuana use and binge drinking. </p>
<p>The OPE crime stats tend to support this. The schools with relative higher numbers of alcohol arrests and disciplinary actions also tend to have higher number of drug law actions. My theory on that is that drunk students are more likely to do something stupid to call attention to themselves and get busted. In reading the school newspaper accounts, it seems a common mechanism for a marijuna charge is a student stopped by police for public drunkenness and finding a joint in his pocket.</p>
<p>There does seem to be some correlation in the OPE crime stats with the degree of on-campus alcohol enforcement. For example, Earlham (a dry college for students of all ages with strict enforcement) reports more alcohol disciplinary actions than Swarthmore (where an alcohol disciplinary action generally requires disruptive behavior). But, both schools (which have similarly low "binge-drinking" rates) report low numbers compared to schools with statistically high drinking rates. Makes sense. Generally, the more drunks you have stumbling around, the more trouble they are going to get themselves into.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, if it looks like a "party" school (euphemism for getting wasted), walks like a "party" school, and quacks like a "party" school, it's probably a "party" school. Not too many folk, including the students there, put Swarthmore high on the list of all-star "party" schools.</p>
<p>Going to Swarthmore!!!</p>
<p>Yay! Will see ya next year at Swat! :D Congratulation!</p>
<p>Congrats on deciding, Nickleby! I kind of knew it already :).</p>
<p>allureNY86,</p>
<p>I have only really known you on this board for the past couple of days, but I would like to thank you for all of the help and support you have given me over that time. I think that we were both destined to go to our different scores telling from our attitudes over the past few days, and I think that we both made the right choice.</p>
<p>For all of the comparisons between the differences of schools like Amherst and Swarthmore, they are really very similar in most ways, including the most important: the committment of the students.</p>
<p>I wish you the very best at Amherst, and know that had things worked out a little differently, I could have been there too, and been very happy with it.</p>
<p>Congratulations Nickleby! I remember reading your posts on the Yale thread- you always have such a nice way of expressing yourself. Best wishes at Swarthmore. I'm hoping my son gets off the wait list there so he can go too!!</p>
<p>AllureNY86 Good luck at Amherst!! Congratulations for making your decision.</p>
<p>andi</p>
<p>Hey, Nickleby, </p>
<p>Best wishes at Swarthmore! I think you definitely made the right choice, and you seemed to have followed your heart (sorry, can't think of a better cliche :p), and I know you'll do great!</p>
<p>I have to thank you for your help too during my indecisive period. By the narrowest of margins, things could have been different for me, but I'll be fine. My heart was kind of in both places, so I let my brain overrule.</p>
<p>There seem to be a couple of people with high levels of Swattiness who are also going to Amherst :)... I know I could've fit at both places.</p>
<p>andi ~ thanks! I sincerely hope that your son will join the Swat class of '09; he seems very deserving! :)</p>
<p>" For example, Earlham (a dry college for students of all ages with strict enforcement) reports more alcohol disciplinary actions than Swarthmore (where an alcohol disciplinary action generally requires disruptive behavior). "</p>
<p>Highly misleading - they would have more disciplinary actions precisely because they are dry, and send campus security into the dorms to actively enforce, and are required to report what they find.</p>
<p>Mini: I think that's the point I was trying to make! </p>
<p>That is, there IS some correlation between enforcement and the number of reported alcohol disciplinary actions, even when the underlying level of drinking is comparable! That's why I picked Earlham for the example and why it is not surprising that they have more alcohol infractions even though they do not have more drinking.</p>
<p>However, differences in infractions attributable to enforcement appear to be small compared to differences in infractions attributible to significant differences in drinking, i.e. the difference in infractions between Earlham and Swat is small, the differences in infractions between either Earlham/Swat and a known high-binge school is large.</p>
<p>I, for one, am quite happy to get off this 'Swat doesn't drink more than <em>insert school name here</em>' comparative mentality. We all know campus security is just security - there to make sure we are safe, not to arrest or punish us. And as a kid, that's enough for me. ^_^</p>
<p>... I feel surrounded by maximiziers... I should be more immune to such social pressures, shouldn't I? ;-)</p>