<p>I have to agree with ID’s posting concerning gpa’s and Swat/similar LAC. Unfortunately for pre-meds it can be an obsession due to the existing system.</p>
<p>Well, it is Saturday. I just called my D, who quickly hung up on me because she was busy. No, she was not busy at a Saturday study group. She was in Philly with friends. I asked “Anything special going on?” She replied, “No, just hanging out with friends. BYE MOM!” </p>
<p>Quoting several other parents who have said it before, “it is all about time management” and I also will add: personality and attitude.</p>
<p>My daughter, a current sophomore, has tons of fun on weekends. She studies hard Sun -Thurs, but saves the weekends for social activities. She is doing amazingly well academically, although she is not really concerned with her gpa. She also does not party. She and her friends always find something fun to do on Friday and Sat nights. Sometimes they to to Philly, sometimes (like last night) they walk up to Balt Pike and have dinner at Olive Garden and then spend 2 hours at Borders. Other nights, they play games or watch movies. There are also planned dances and college sponsored events that they attend. My point, is that, she is never lonely or bored and has never been pressured to party. She is so in love with Swarthmore and could never imagine herself anywhere else.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, getting into med school depends a lot on your grades, so if you go to Swarthmore, you’re going to have to work really hard and you might not get much of an advantage (as in, compared to other schools when it comes to grades), but I’ve heard from a bio professor that med schools really like Swarthmore because, according to her, Swarthmore grads who work really hard and get good grades are well-prepared for med school. I think there are plenty of research opportunities for bio, physics, and chem majors.</p>
<p>As for the social scene, I think everyone has different experiences, but a lot of people seem to complain about the lack of a social scene, but then again, they should have read up on that a bit before they came here. It’s really low-key. A lot of people play drinking games in their dorms or party at Paces on the weekend, and a lot of people check out movies from the library and watch them when there’s nothing else. From time to time there are some neat events. I know someone who doesn’t really like the social scene, and who’s on a committee and is trying to make it better. I don’t drink or party, so I don’t mind the Saturday study group thing.</p>
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<p>I wonder if statistics exist for this. I always thought people who majored in the likes of English, economics, or philosophy had it easy. Of the people I knew who had very high GPAs, a couple were legitimately very smart, but the rest were just majoring in cakewalking as far as I could tell.</p>
<p>Back to the OP: You will have to work harder to get the same grades at Swarthmore as you would at an easier place like Haverford, and, as has been mentioned already in this thread, medical school admissions officers aren’t going to care about a name like Swarthmore when considering you against someone with a higher GPA from some other place. If I may be idealistic for a moment, though, it’s possible that, if you go to Swarthmore and work very hard to get a high GPA, that you’ll end up being a better doctor for it on down the road and will face fewer malpractice suits on account of it. If that’s not something you even remotely care about, then I suggest Cornell or Haverford.</p>
<p>As to the dominant personality type, I’m going to go with nerd.</p>
<p>yea… swatties are nerds, but we’re proud of it! I made a lot of incredible friends at swarthmore. everyone there surprises you with their hidden passions and talents and (sometimes not intentionally) hilarious antics, and honestly, if you want to get wasted five or six nights a week you can do that too. I had friends visit from ‘party’ schools like UMass and Tulane that were surprised by how legit the swat party scene was. </p>
<p>re GPA: don’t go to swat if you want a good gpa, you might have to sell your soul (and weekends) to the devil to even break a 3.6</p>
<p>Well, my take as a parent of an alum is, if you are obsessed with GPA don’t go to Swat. My son got into grad school this year with good financial aid. He wasn’t GPA obsessed when he was at Swat but what he did there helped him a lot with graduate school. His writing samples were very good etc. His cumulative GPA was respectable but not meteoric; I don’t think it was too much of a factor in admissions in his field. I am not going into numbers because it isn’t relevant. His professors helped out too with letters of recommendation, crucial advice, etc. I suppose there are fields like Law and medicine where GPA matters.</p>
Hello! I have a question regarding this old post from starch:
Speaking as a physician and parent of a Swat graduate, you should carefully consider your decision of attending Swat if you have your sights set firmly on medical school. Having known people who served on medical school admissions committees, there is no special adjustment given to students who graduate from "tough" undergraduate schools. This is an urban myth espoused by the uninformed. It is all about the numbers in order to get the invitation to an interview. Since medical school is in many ways a "trade" school, why not attend a well-respected state university and save your financial resources to try and defray the the 200k+ medical student loan debt that many face? If you decide to attend Swat and are still interested in medicine, you may want to be a "closet" pre-med and proclaim your interest in getting a phd instead of a md-more politically correct for the Swat community.
I am trying to help my daughter. She is a soph. biochem major at Swat. She has a great GPA so far, but there are no guarantee for the future. She wants to go to dental school. She has done everything right so far: grades, shadowing, simulation clinics, community service. She is frustrated by Swat’s limited courses and by the social extremism on campus. She loved Elon University when she visited. They have a cadaver lab, all of the courses she needs, and better weather. She wants to transfer, but is worried about being judged (by dental schools) for attending a “lesser” university.
Can you offer any insights here? Does it truly not matter where you receive your undergrad degree?
Thank you!!