<p>kellymegreener, I doubt you are a 17 yo female who is going to Yale, or that you have ever been to Swarthmore, as your information is highly inadequate, and your enthusiasm for or interest in Yale do not exist. </p>
<p>I do not know what Swarthmore has done to you in the past, perhaps you or your children had a prior affiliation that soured. It really is not necessary for you to pose as a HS senior to make your point anymore, you have revealed your dissatisfaction with the school. You appear to have anyhow given all of your opinions that you could have invented, based upon your posing as a HS senior with a 2 day visit. You think that Swat is overall not a place that you or your children want to be. So point made, how about moving on and trolling elsewhere now?</p>
<p>I don't mean to bud in but I have to say that Swarthmore has got to be one of the 5 most beauitful campuses I have ever seen...and I am including some of the stunning campuses in the UK (Cambridge, Oxford etc...) and several dozens top US universities. As for the dorms, the three that I saw at Swarthmore were very respectable, both inside and out.</p>
<p>The dorms, at least the two in which I slept were pretty crappy; I was in a random room in what seemed to be the basement of a building built in the 50s. Also, I don't understand why everyone makes such a fuss about the "beauty" of Swarthmore; it wasn't any better looking than most other schools I visited. It just had more flowers and trees. Lol</p>
<p>KK, I agree that the dorms aren't spectacular, but they are, as I said respectable. What I found beautiful were the grounds (as you said, nice flowers, trees and landscaping) and some of the academic buildings. </p>
<p>As far as dorms, I thought the Maine LACs, Bowdoin and Bates in particular, had gorgeous dorms. Princeton and Stanford also have nice dorms. Vassar, Grinnell and Williams are also very nice. Believe it or not, some Michigan dorms are very nice too...but others can be quite average. Michigan is currently spending $100 million on renovating dorms, so I suspect it will only improve in this respect.</p>
<p>I agree with Alexander and KK. The dorms were particularly bad, the campus phenomenally beautiful. Walking around campus is a wonderful experience, probably my favorite campus; sleeping in the dormslike sleeping in the garage (it doesnt help that they are quite shaded by beautiful trees, making the experience glummer and danker then would be the case without the shaded windowsmaybe some are in the sun).</p>
<p>The Swarthmore campus is actually an arboretum, and is beautifully maintained. The new dorm was featured in the NYTimes as a model dorm for both the structure and for encouraging students to meet in common areas. The dorms that I have seen there are fine, clean, well-cared for with good-sized rooms. </p>
<p>When we toured colleges, I can't say that any dorms were like luxury hotels, although there are some schools that are trying to attract students by wooing them with dorms. This has been written about in the past few years, I have seen articles about combining new "fancy" dorms with merit money for the purposes of "upgrading" the student population at 2nd and 3rd tier schools.</p>
<p>What's "poking the bear" mean? (Although having once lived through a hunting season in a rural area, I think it may mean getting a reaction for the sake of it, and the nastier the better?)</p>
<p>"One of the interesting expressions is poking the bear. It refers to when you do something that you know will rattle some portion of your audience."</p>
<p>I was just checking the NACUBO list, and it lists UVa twice. UVa Law is also ranked #214 with $203,124,000 in assets. That reminds me that UVA's assets are not compiled into one endowment. The NACUBO list only highlights UVA's university-wide endowment at $3.2 billion (besides the Law School's endowment), but each school (from the Darden School to the College of Arts & Sciences) and each scholarship foundation at UVa has their own endowment. For example, The Jefferson Scholarship Foundation is worth between $100-200 million and that's not included in any endowment figures. UVa is much richer than what the NACUBO list indicates.</p>
<p>My daughter's in one of the--let's say--not so gorgeous dorms at Swarthmore. But the quality of the dorm rooms was never on her list of criteria for college. And, her room has not, in the least, impinged on her quality of life there. I've never seen her happier. In the interest of full disclosure, though, her plant died.</p>