<p>Swarthmore is a little harder to get into than Cornell, but unless you really like Swarthmore’s culture better, I would go with Cornell as a more enjoyable, well-rounded college experience; especially if you are a NYS resident. I would think if you are able to visit both, it would be clear what environment you would like better.</p>
<p>Both schools are terrific schools … congrats on the great choices. Personally I’d vote for visting both and going with which you prefer more … they are both great academic schools with great student but very different … I find them a unique set as finalists … I would think one will feel much more like home when you visit.</p>
<p>handz555 -</p>
<p>If you want to attend a “Top Tier” law school you are going to need buckets of money to pay for it. This means that you need to keep your undergraduate expenses down. Out of state tuition at Cornell is the equivalent of private college tuition at a place like Swarthmore. Sit your parents down and find out just where the money for your education is going to come from before you fall in love with an expensive undergraduate college/university.</p>
<p>Haha, I knew this was going to happen when I said that. I’m just tired of all LAC’s thinking that they are better than every lower Ivy and larger private school, it’s just kind of obnoxious. Swat is not worlds above Cornell, that is a joke</p>
<p>Since you yourself will be heading to Cornell ILR come Fall, one could understand if you were in denial, bjomountsi09.</p>
<p>yeah, good one kwu, im going to cornell next year too but Im out on the west coast (california) and I havent ever heard of Swarthmore until they started spamming me earlier in the year with DVD’s. I excused them as another liberal arts school with sub 500 SATS and didnt realize otherwise until my dad, whos an engineer whos responsible for hiring a lot of people, told me I should go watch the DVD. </p>
<p>Case in point, Swarthmore is definitely a good school. Many people responsible for hiring are going to be familiar with the school and the students it turns out. Other than that though, Swarthmore cant touch Cornell in prestige. If you told people you were going to swarthmore, half of them would think you were going to community college; on the other hand, everybody knows the Cornell is a good school.</p>
<p>Again, so everybody doesnt get all ****y, im not saying that swarthmores a bad school but I am saying that when you think of a prestigious school, Swarthmore isnt really the first thing that pops into your mind.</p>
<p>Kwu, in denial about what? Of course I’m going to be in ILR next year, people go on these threads to defend their schools, people don’t just click on “Swarthome Poli Sci vs. Cornell ILR” for the hell of it. Are you trying to say I’m biased, of course I am, everybody goes on here to look at the conversation and then put in their 2 cents for their school. There’s no denying that, you clicked on this thread with the intention of defending your school. I don’t understand your beef with me? I never said anything bad about Swarthome, I just said its inane that every single LAC feels like the completely trump the lower Ivys.</p>
<p>This is for the OP if he doesn’t know already… Swarthmore does not give loans, they give all grant now. So if he is lower-middle class he might really luck out with tuition at Swarthmore. Swarthmore adopted the old Princeton System with helping students pay for tuition. I believe that is why Swarthmore is Princeton Reviews “Best value college.”</p>
<p>as others have said: FIT matters.</p>
<p>there is no true noticeable difference, academically, between these two schools. Look at their environments, the students, financial aid, etc, and then make the decision. What matters is not what “other” people think of your school, but what “YOU” think of it.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is one of the most highly regarded liberal arts colleges in the country. If I were asked to name the liberal arts college with the most intellectual student body, Swarthmore is the first one that would come to mind.</p>
<p>When I went to Cornell a third of a century ago, ILR students claimed that ILR was an acronym for “I love reading”. It’s not a classic liberal arts curriculum, but its students seem to get a pretty good grounding in the social sciences. Many of its students attend law school afterwards; I had a roommate whose brother was an ILR graduate who went on to study law at Columbia after working for the air traffic controllers union. Most of its students take a significant number of classes at the College of Arts & Sciences.</p>
<p>I changed my mind twice my freshman year about what I wanted to major in. That would be less problematic at Swarthmore than at the ILR school. On the other hand, if you change your mind about law school (always a possibility), your job prospects (for a specific type of job) would likely be quite good coming from ILR.</p>
<p>Before you make up your mind, at a minimum, you should spend a lot of time looking at the catalogs for both schools. As a high school junior, I thought I wanted to study journalism at Northwestern, until I started reading the catalog and decided that the journalism courses sounded a lot less interesting to me than the courses in history, English, and political science. You might have a similar breakthrough.</p>
<p>Those are to such different universities, chosing should be easy. </p>
<p>SIZE:
Cornell: 20,000 students
Swarthmore: 1,500 students</p>
<p>LOCATION:
Cornell: Rural/Small college town
Swarthmore: Suburban/one of the country’s 10 largest cities</p>
<p>INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS:
Cornell: Agriculture, Architecture, Business, Engineering, Hotel Management, Humanities, Industrial and Labor Relations, Music, Sciences and Social Sciences
Swarthmore: Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences</p>
<p>SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT:
Cornell: Varies from laid back to party central
Swarthmore: Chilled for the most part</p>
<p>As you can see, we are talking about significant differences. Visiting those two schools should, in principle, give the individual wildly varrying points of views.</p>
<p>Now add the fact that the two programs in question are completely different. Political Science is a highly conceptual, theoretical and intellectual field. Industrial and Labor Relations is a more practical and applied field, drawing on such subjects as Psychology, Sociology, Law and Economics for most of its principles and innovations.</p>
<p>Those two schools only have a couple of things in common. Both are elite, both have gifted students, and both are known for having intense academics and intellectual student bodies. From a graduate school placement point of view, both are excellent. That’s where the similarities end.</p>