<p>One thing that I've regularly seen from the challenging liberal arts schools is that they do very well in getting people into PhD programs and medical school. However, I also know that Swarthmore and Reed, for example, are known for tough grading, and seeing how medical schools in particular seem to reward academic cowardice (ie, would rather see a state school 4.0 than swarthmore 3.0), how can they do that do that?</p>
<p>What I'm sure that college admissions people would tell me is that med schools (which I'm interested in going into) are aware of the difficulty of Swarthmore and other such challenging liberal arts colleges and judge applications accordingly. To what extent is that true?</p>