For all Swat applicants..

<p>Is Swarthmore your first choice? If not, where else did you apply?</p>

<p>Swarthmore certainly numbers among my top choices. I almost - very nearly - applied Early Decision - but chose not to, applying also to 5 women's schools(including Bryn Mawr), 4 Ivies (of which Harvard is one,) and 4 others (Wesleyan, Williams, Amherst, and Sarah Lawrence) Upon visiting Swarthmore, I was struck by the intellectual feel of the place - it exceeded even Princeton, where I found the student body reluctant to speak of their studies once they left the classroom. Not so at Swarthmore.</p>

<p>Swarthmore is one of my top choices. But the absolute top...goes to Reed. They're actually very similar schools, I think. Although Reed may be even MORE intellectual than Swarthmore, it certainly has a repuation for being THE place for people who love learning for it's own sake. Sorry for the tangent. /praise Reed</p>

<p>yea i've heard a lot of great things about reed but unfortunately it's too far away for my parents to let me even visit, much less attend.</p>

<p>yea, swarthmore is my fave school, the only reason i didnt apply ed was because of financial reasons - i didnt want to pay that much if i get a muuuch better deal somewhere else</p>

<p>It's definitely among the top couple (along w/ wesleyan, maybe williams). I thought about ed a little but didn't want to commit to a place I hadn't visited! So hopefully I will have a reason to visit come april...</p>

<p>i you like swat now, i guarantee you'll love it even more once you visit; the campus is really charming and pretty, all the students i randomly walked up to were really friendly, and just got a great vibe from the entire place.</p>

<p>swarthmore is definitely one of my top choices (along with yale, uchicago <- also filled with intellectuals, and willians)</p>

<p>The campus is gorgeous, but it's really just a suburb-- as soon as you leave Swarthmore you're in a very ugly industrial area. When I visited there was not one student outside. Not a single one. The people I talked to were really nice though. Like crazy nice. It used to be my top choice but I'm now thinking I'm going to want to do some things other than studying in college.</p>

<p>yeah. its a suburb. but honestly, most college campuses are either in crummy sections of the city (penn), not so interesting places (williams), or whatnot. at least that's what i've observed...but each college is like an island unto itself, and swarthmore particularly gives off that image. i'm not sure when you visited, but i found plenty of students to ask questions and all of them were happy to answer. and it was summer too, so i assume the campus is more alive when school is in session. swarthmore isn't only top choice just because i'm too indecisive; i want to go to all the schools on my college list. but i definitely don't think swatties study too much; from the ppl i talked to, i gathered they did a lot of studying, but a lot of hanging out too. the only difference in terms of academic atmosphere is that swarthmore sort of radiates intellectualism. a lot of colleges have brilliant kids, but i had the feeling at swarthmore that the students aren't afraid of seeming smart outside of class, that the entire learning process isn't confined to a lecture room. that's the kind of community i love.</p>

<p>"swarthmore sort of radiates intellectualism. a lot of colleges have brilliant kids, but i had the feeling at swarthmore that the students aren't afraid of seeming smart outside of class, that the entire learning process isn't confined to a lecture room."</p>

<p>I think that is true, and it does set Swarthmore apart from many other good schools where students are trying to project a "laid back", or "work hard/play hard" kind of image...</p>

<p>I love intellectualism, and I think I can hold my own against all (or many) comers in an intellectual debate on a topic on which I am knowledgeable (e.g., deconstruction, European history, existentialism)--and even if I can't, I enjoy the grilling and the feeling of having my underlying assumptions bludgeoned into oblivion. Discussion with equals is my favorite activity in the world, ever.
But do Swatties do anything to relax physically? I'm not much for drinking, but I do occasionally partake of Totally Wink-Wink Legal Herbal Mixture (tm)--would this be looked down upon?</p>

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<p>I think your terms might be a little misleading. The term "suburb" conveys something to a resident of Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, Phoenix, or SoCal that is not at all descriptive of Swarthmore. Swarthmore was a "suburb" a hundred years ago. Now, it is a gorgeous older close-in neighborhood -- an "inside the beltway" kind of neighborhood. It is very wooded, but hardly "suburban" in character by sunbelt city standards. It's not like there are miles of tract houses.</p>

<p>I'm not sure I agree with the "very ugly industrial area" description either. That implies run-down factories and smokestacks. A mile away in one direction, you emerge from the fancy old houses of Swarthmore onto a major road where it intersects with an Interstate highway. Typical of such locations, you find the usual miracle mile sprawl -- a mall, a Best Buy, a Target, lots of restaurants, etc. The car dealers and retail extend in both directions along the Baltimore Pike as far as I managed to drive -- several miles.</p>

<p>In the other direction (south), you have about five miles of mostly older residential neighborhoods and light retail until you get to Chester, which is a pretty low-income area.</p>

<p>PS: interesting screen name. Great bass player; sad junkie life.</p>

<p>Antithesnes:</p>

<p>Swatties have their share of fun, just like any other college students. The "intellectualism" doesn't appear to be oppressive. More along the lines of having some topic from a class pop up to be debated while drinking beer or playing poker or whatever. Ten minutes later, the topic might be "hot celebrities" or the latest "New Pornographers" CD.</p>

<p>It's not like everyone wears tweed jackets and ponders Kant all day, but rather that they share what they are doing in class with each other.</p>

<p>How often and easily would you say people travel to New York and/or Philly? I think being right in the middle is a major plus, and I'm counting on that--correctly?</p>

<p>PS: Weather Report, even with the overproduction and the corporate let's-cash-in-on-Miles-Davis'-ideas, was great. Did you hear how Jaco died? Carlos Santana once told him that he could play with him anytime during any show, and one day when he took him up on the offer a bouncer mistook him for a regular junkie and beat him to death. Depressing, when you think about it.</p>

<p>I LOVE SWAT. No getting around it. Their intellectual climate and aversion to the "kill the curve setter" attitude makes it one of my top choices.</p>

<p>Antisthenes, I don't know if Swarthmore is in the middle. Philly is a lot nearer. My son goes to Philly at least once a month if not once in two weeks. The train station is right outside the campus, about 50 yards from the new dorm. I wonder what that does to the noise level in the new dorm? Dunno. </p>

<p>There are plenty of good eating places nearby. As Interesteddad puts it, it is called the "miracle mile" where there are a range of department stores in malls and other stores like Best Buy etc. and chain eating places like Ruby Tuesdays. There is a Panera Bread nearby. There are really great eating places in Media, a town near Swarthmore. These are EXPENSIVE, though. An entree about $20-25! The kids can share an entree but that does not make for a dinner! If you can take the shuttle, there are great eating place near Haverford.</p>

<p>But Philly, of course, has fantastic restaurants. </p>

<p>NY, well, going there takes 15 mins to Philly and then 90 mins to NY, I think.</p>

<p>Swarthmore is about halfway between New York and Washington D.C. However, my understanding and hope are that there's enough to do on campus that students aren't emptying out the dorms and doing road trips into the big cities every weekend.</p>

<p>searching, I think you are right. There are things to do on campus and they don't empty out on weekends. But there are also enough eating places nearby that if you tire of Sharples food, then there are places to eat without going far. And people can also go to Philly to eat cheap food for a change.</p>

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<p>Swarthmore is IN metro Philadelphia. If you were telling someone where Swarthmore is located, you would say "Philadelphia". It's only 11 miles from the city center business district.</p>

<p>My daughter and her friends take the train (or the Swarthmore shuttle bus) into downtown Phila once or twice a month, usually for a Saturday afternoon and a leisurely dinner at some ethnic restaurant. There are a ton of restaurants in the downtown business district, as well as a thriving Chinatown area. There's an entertainment area called "South Street" not too far away.</p>

<p>She and 15 of her friends also have gone to New York for the weekend. There are three options depending on how much you want to spend: an express train, the New Jersey commuter rail that takes a little longer, or the Chinatown bus service that is dirt cheap. The beauty of the location is that you can get anywhere on convenient public transportation. Having a car at Swarthmore is totally unnecessary.</p>

<p>A plus is that there are cheap airfares (Southwest, Jet Blue, AirTran) into Phila and you can get directly from the airport terminal buildings to Swarthmore's campus on the commuter rail system. Makes arranging travel to and from very easy and very inexpensive.</p>

<p>I'm guessing since students have to travel to a city for entertainment that Swarthmore is not located in a "college town" like Boston? </p>

<p>Interesteddad, is Swarthmore a diverse place? There are some LAC's that COMPLETELY lack diversity. I hope Swarthmore isn't like this. When first coming to swarthmore, did your daughter ever talk about being surrounded by peers who were from all ethnicities and socioeconomic classes, brilliant, and offered a wide aray of perspectives?</p>

<p>Hi, I'm not Interesteddad, but yes, Swarthmore is very diverse.
15.3% Asian American
8.3% Latino/a American
7.3% African American
0.9% Native American
0.4% Multiracial American</p>