Cons

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
61

<p>can anyone expand further on the "terrible vegan food" situation??
i've been vegetarian for ten years and vegan for seven and honestly, i cook quite well--but i know that if i were accepted to swat i wouldn't have time to cook myself breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day (nor would i have mom to bail me out and cook me some great vegan dinner during finals week). i've grown rather accustomed to semi-gourmet meals (horizons restaurant in philadelphia ROCKS, i can't tell you how many times i've roadtripped down there more or less just for the meal) and whole foods binges. how bad is the food compared to, say, the stuff on the typical whole foods hot bar? is anyone here able to make that comparison? and what exactly is so bad about the vegan choices??</p>

<p>my gluttony always gets the best of me, i'm somewhat ashamed to admit. i need food answers.</p>

62

<p>The selection of vegan food is usually one hot dish, the salad bar, and some tofu...usually one dessert a day is vegan too. I mean, our vegans eat, but...it's not gourmet, or semi-gourmet. You certainly won't starve, and maybe it is better than at other schools, but mostly the problem is lack of choices and the general quality of the vegan food, from what I know eating there and what I've been told by my vegan friends. :]</p>

63

<p>I doubt that the non-veg dishes at Swat, or any other school for that matter, are semi-gourmet or even semi-semi-gourmet. College food is college food.</p>

64

<p>the food's pretty good at Wesleyan, though it isn't clear that the present vendor (Bon Appetit) will keep its contract (up for renewal in about a month.) The biggest complaints are the point system which seems to mandate a lot of nickle and diming to stay within the caps. And, of course, the hours. Nothing stays open late enough when you're pulling an all-nighter.</p>

65

<p>yeah
isnt this the swat page?</p>

66

<p>Here are some menus from typical days taken randomly from the Swarthmore Daily Gazette and copied below. You can search the Gazette online for other meals, they are published every morning. The salad bar is supposed to be good. </p>

<p>You can easily access menus from other schools online and compare the food offerings. The big difference between Swarthmore and some other places is that they do not have an agreement with other food outlets. Some colleges and universities have restaurants on and off campus as part of meal plans that offer a wider variety of food, such as a Chinese restaurant where you could get a vegetarian meal. Sharples and a few other smaller places are the only available places at Swarthmore. I don't know so much about other LACs, if they are as limited in food. I have thought that Swarthmore could become a leader in fresh and local food offerings among colleges, as they are supposed to be so progressive. They had one night last year where they did a meal of fresh local foods as an experiment and the food was supposed to have been great. </p>

<p>The other huge problem with Swarthmore is the inability to find substantive food after dinner, for people who work out or are just staying up late. There are one to two smaller places but my understanding is that the food is mostly snacks and pastries or meaty or fried kinds of foods. My child scrounges for food after working out at night, and then has snack or frozen food, which costs extra and has to be bought off campus at a supermarket to have enough of it affordably. Also I think that the meal plan has to be changed to get access to some of these smaller snack/food areas, where less food choices are available than at Sharples. This has actually been a chronic problem for my child, who is not overweight, just likes to eat a lot of healthy food and wroks out at night, and does not eat fish, beef or pork. We manage to have a lot of healthy food at home with this description. And other colleges offer more variety and better hours.</p>

<p>Sample Swat menus:
Lunch: chef’s choice of soup, scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns, cream dried beef with biscuits, whole wheat pasta and veggies (v), broccoli, cauliflower, blintz bar, coffee cake</p>

<p>Dinner: roated turkey w/ cornbread stuffing, rosemary gravy, ratatouille (v), pasta toss, peas & onion, corn, pasta bar, cheesecake brownies</p>

<p>Lunch: Potatoe Leek, Chicken Barley, Beef Boursin Sandwiches, Steak Fries, Tempeh w/ Broccoli (v), Whole Wheat Tabouleh (v), Baby Carrots, Green Beans, Asian Bar, Krispy Treats</p>

<p>Dinner: baked or fried chicken, corn bread, cauliflower au gratin, asparagus stir fry (v), zucchini, veg blend, taco bar, fruit cobbler</p>

<p>Lunch: Vegetable, Clam Chowder, Stromboli, Skin on Fries, Lemon Tofu (v), Veg. Stromboli, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Specialty Salads, Lemon Squares</p>

<p>Dinner: turkey london broil w/ sun dried tomato, roasted bliss potatoes, garlic bread, el’s black beans (v), pasta and sauce, spinach, corn, pasta bar, vegan apple pie</p>

<p>Lunch: beef vegetable, potato leek, sloppy joes, lattice fries, tofu joe (v), peanut noodle, cauliflower (v), california blend (v), puppy club bar, brownies & blondies</p>

<p>Dinner: flank steak, baked stuffed potatoes, pasta aioli w/ broccoli rabe (v), eggplant rolletes, asparagus (v), corn (v), garlic bread, pasta bar, carrot cake (v)</p>

<p>You can draw your own conclusions!</p>

67

<p>Wow, that's really helpful! Thank you very much!</p>

68

<p>Haha, colleges always make food sound way more appetizing than it could ever possibly be!</p>

69

<p>thanks for your input...
i read the daily gazette everyday (i am obsessed)...and so i've SEEN what the vegetarian choices are--but i've never actualy seen the food itself, let alone tasted it. anything can SOUND amazing, tasting amazing is a completely different subject.
i wasn't expecting gourmet, semi-gourmet, or even semi-semi-gourmet--just, you know, edible. hoping for it, at least...(trust me, the food at my current college is quite awful, yet i eat it every day--i would live with edible).
can anyone talk about something i heard: that students can obtain a tri-college meal pass? has anoyone done that? i hear bryn mawr has very good food.</p>

70

<p>hopefullyLAC, I'm a Swat student who eats at Bryn Mawr roughly once a week. Getting a tri-co meal pass is relatively easy: you go to the desk, fill out your name and meal number on a list and they give you a card. I've only ever eaten in one of their dining halls, but the food is widely acknowledged to be better than Swat or Haverford. Of course, I don't think many people would make the trek to the Bi-co just to eat, but if you're over there anyways it's a great change of pace.</p>

71

<p>I think if the menu sounds OK to you, then it pretty true to form as to taste. I don't know if you can easily get veggie burgers, which would be filling. It would be good if the smaller restaurants at night would serve these, I don't know if they do. A Swat vegetarian student would know. And the salad bar apparently is good. Pasta bar can be made vegetarian.</p>

72

<p>Okay, I can't resist: is it tri-co or bi-co?</p>

73

<p>Swarthmore-Haverford-Bryn Mawr is a tri-co, but Swarthmore is not really in the same location (it is about 20 min away), so it becomes more of a Haverford-Bryn Mawr bi-co + Swarthmore on the side. The bi-co is more of a true colloquium (because the same location makes it easy). And I think there are more bi-co students taking classes at Swarthmore than the other way around.</p>

74

<p>^^^^^
Correct. "Tri-co" refers to all three colleges, "bi-co" refers to Haverford and Bryn Mawr.</p>

75

<p>whenever there are burgers there are veggie burgers available and black bean burgers (yum. double yum).</p>

76

<p>The food really is a huge problem. For instance, I am currently very sick and it's very difficult for me to recover here because greasy foods (which is 90% of the food here) are obviously not healthy foods conducive to getting better. Aside from being sick, the food quality will affect everything - from your emotional happiness to your ability to do work. </p>

<p>The biggest CON at Swat is if you're trying to go to medical school. DO NOT COME HERE IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A DOCTOR. Quite simply, the school is stuck in the 1940s grading system, and professors (particularly in the sciences, chemistry especially) will not hesitate to hand out grades of Cs to no less than a fifth of the class - a standard bell curve for grading. Obviously, this will permanently hurt your chances. </p>

<p>Swarthmore does claim to have an almost 100% acceptance rate from their applicants to their medical schools, but keep in mind this comes after nearly all applicants go through one or two years of post-bacc study and activities. Any student who could get into swarthmore obviously could do much better grade-wise anywhere else, and not have to go through the unnecessary 1-2 years of extra education simply to compensate for a lower-than-accepted-average GPA.</p>

77

<p>^ Oh please. There is plenty of healthy food in Swat's dining hall. I didn't realize that the salads, cereals, fresh fruits, sandwiches, and vegetarian entrees were all fried too. </p>

<p>On the note about medical school, sadly swatinform is mostly right. However, we have to remember that med schools understand simply from looking at GPA distribution in a major how easy it was for students to get good grades. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know how much that affects med school decisions.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Any student who could get into swarthmore obviously could do much better grade-wise anywhere else, and not have to go through the unnecessary 1-2 years of extra education simply to compensate for a lower-than-accepted-average GPA.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Uhh.... I'm not so sure. Swarthmore isn't exclusive in its practice of 'weeding kids out.' [Though I'd like to think Swarthmore doesn't do it intentionally, its Chemistry/Biology 001 classes are pretty challenging.] HYPSM too weed kids out of its pre-med tracks. Only so many kids can get A's. And if we move to big public schools like Michigan/Berkeley, we'll see that trend even more clearly. In fact, I've heard from a few doctors that they recommend students purposely try not to graduate high school so they can take the first few pre-med classes in community college and then apply to a top school. I don't know how successful that plan is, but I think its prevalence at least in my experiences demonstrates how pervasive the "1940s grading system" really is in American higher ed. Swarthmore isn't so different.</p>

<p>However, I do think it's important to note that Swarthmore sciences really treat students as if they're all PhD candidates; in many/most cases students are not and the additional requirements make succeeding harder (though for the sake of learning it can't be so bad).</p>

78

<p>The grading system is ridiculous across the board. I have one child at a very highly ranked larger university who had excellent courses and received top grades. He worked medium-hard. The child at Swarthmore (just as smart and more organized) works twice as hard and doesn't get as good grades. Most other places this student could work 1/2 as hard and get higher grades.</p>

<p>The Swat student thought to try pre-med, since in HS showed real promise in science. The science courses were absurdly difficult and the curve was ridiculous. The grade received was the lowest ever in all of schooling for either child and there went pre-med.</p>

<p>But even the humanities courses are like that.</p>

<p>If you are wanting to have a high grade point upon graduation, don't count on Swarthmore. It's grade deflation, not inflation. They need to get a grip on it.</p>

79

<p>“It's grade deflation, not inflation”</p>

<p>The academic rigor of Swarthmore is in my opinion the second best thing about the school, the first being the way they treat each other and the out-side world.</p>

80

<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.gradeinflation.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Documented mean GPA of available schools.</p>

<p>Brown 1999 3.47
Carleton 1999 3.26
Chicago 1999 3.26
Colby 1995 3.01
Harvard 1999 3.42
Swat 1997 3.24
UNC CH 1999 2.93<br>
UVA 1999 3.18
Wesleyan 1998 3.46</p>

<p>Grade inflation for the ivies is well known. I sat on a “top 5” Ivy med school adcom and another that was “top 10” and the directors always gave a caveat with an Ivy applicant’s GPA. I had the impression, though, that LACs have GPAs that hover around 3.2-3.3 but surprised to see Wesleyan’s.</p>

<p>Med schools have experience with most colleges so an applicant is 1) compared to others from that school (via the pre-med letter that states the school’s average GPA and their scale for outstanding/ excellent/ very good/ good applicants) and then 2) compared to all other applicants (via MCATS, work experience and the interview). Pre-med advisors/committees don’t inflate their recommendations because they know it’s their reputation on the line. Ivies, top public and private universities and the top 15 LACs+ Smith/ BMC/ Oberlin/ Reed/ Barnard are considered in similar esteem.</p>

<p>Sorry but I have to ask. Do students still have that t-shirt… “Anywhere else it wouldn’t have been an issue… REALLY”? The idea is good in the sense of political activism, social justice and caring (Swat’s biggest PRO) but I’ve noticed that it can also be a negative in that sometimes issues that really shouldn’t be a big deal are exaggerated and problems that are simply dealt with at other places with little attention are warped into significance at Swat. Yes, the work load is tough and grading isn’t as generous as the Ivies but there are several other LACs and universities that put their students through a similar grind with less histrionics and self-importance.</p>