guidebooks portray intense academic climate, perhaps too much?

<p>Everything about Swarthmore sounds idealistic except for the intense academic climate depicted by FISK/P.REVIEW/BARRONS/INSIDER'S. It seems as though kids are not cut throat about grades or competitive with eachother, but that their individual workloads are just insane. I've read that Philly is 11 miles away and most students can't find the time to commute there for fun. These guidebooks also explained that Swatties, when not preocuppied with school work, are involved in dozens of clubs and ecs. Perhaps I've been given a false impression, but I'm afraid that I'll be overburdened by studies with no time for an active social scene to balence out. I am involved in ecs and volunteering but I like to devote my full efforts to one or 2, not 12. Can you make your workload manageable? Can you not be "super involved" all the time? Even if you can, will your friends be too busy to hang with you (explore the city, party, socialize, unwind)?</p>

<p>There is a lot of work, but it is manageable. You have to be smart about picking your classes - not have 4 lab classes or 3 writing-heavy seminars simultaneously, etc. You’ll figure it all out during your first (pass/fail) semester.</p>

<p>You can be as involved or as uninvolved in ECs as you want - it is totally up to you, and people generally choose to do whatever makes them happy.</p>

<p>Whether or not you go to Philadelphia will much more depend on your personality then on your workload. Some people go every weekend. Some take classes at Penn several days a week. Some never leave Swarthmore campus. It's totally up to you.</p>

<p>There are several parties going on campus every weekend, and people hang out with friends all the time. You have to like academics to be happy at Swarthmore, but you certainly can have a life as well.</p>

<p>I've been in philly 3 times in the past week.</p>

<p>dude, my being in clubs is a part of my active social scene. that being said, i have time for whatever clubs i want to be involved in and the rest of the time, i get my studying done. sleep is overrated, i wouldn't waste my time with it. honestly, the workload is not that bad. with all due respect to njpitcher, all my friends are here, why would i want to go to philly? i also seem to recall that philly and cleveland usually run neck and neck for rudest city in the U.S.</p>

<p>having never been to Philly I cannot comment, is it really an unfriendly atmosphere? I'm from Boston and Mid-Western states contend that Bostonians are unfirendly. I don't find it that way but it all depends on your frame of reference. Can anyone familiar with the Boston area compare it to Philadelphia? NJPitcher, is there a lot to engage in in the city?</p>

<p>None of the Swatties I hear about are likely to miss a Friday or Saturday night party. There's definitely time for hangin' out or socializing. Of course, like any college students, Swatties always have some work they "should" be doing. </p>

<p>I don't know how universal it is, but my daughter's friends combine weeknight studying with a little socializing -- heading to the library together after dinner and taking study breaks in one of the lounge areas in the library.</p>

<p>Overall, Phila. and Boston are roughly the same size and quite similar in many ways: professional sports, Symphony, museums, historic districts, ethnic neighborhoods, etc.</p>

<p>Well I consider myself amongst the most social of the swatties. I'm pledging DU right now, because almost all of the baseball team is there and I love the guys, but I have a real good friend who knows a bunch of DJs in the philly area so we go clubbing a lot too. Phily is cool, though not as lively as NYC. It's pretty cool though.</p>

<p>burmell,
I have a S who is a senior, honors major. He virtually never goes into Philly, but that's by choice. As far as I know, he has been in to Philly once this year, for a concert at the Wachovia Center. He has plenty of work, but manages to find time to lead an a cappella group and be heavily involved in another acitivity. He has also done different types of volunteer work over the past three years.</p>

<p>just visited campus and absolutely loved it. Got a great vibe from students, every room felt so inviting, campus was the most beautiful I have ever seen (tennis courts hidden by foliage + big white chair), and I was blown away by Crum Woods (walking trails and bonfires?), and the Scott Amphitheater especially. I also loved the idea of a pass/fail first semester to ease students into Swarthmore, allow them to explore new areas of interest, and most importantly focus less on grades and develop friendships early on. My tour guide could not think of anything bad to say about the school except for that sometimes students get a little too wrapped up in their studies. But she also mentioned that the school does a fine job of mixing an academic and a social life. Another student sounded very honest when she spoke of the plethora of parties/small gatherings during any given night and the commonplace conversations between students that go on until 4 in the morning. Swarthmore has the smallest student body that I’m considering, and yet I get the feeling that I will never stop meeting new “passionate, quirky, and intellectual” people (love the idea of housing with all age classes from the very beginning). Can anyone corroborate these first impressions? Any feedback would be most appreciated.</p>

<p>I wonder if the school has made an effort to be less of an "academic pressure cooker" because all I hear now is how students combine studying and socializing. I think the quality of the academics is the same, but maybe the edge has been taken off a bit by encouraging students somehow to do more than study?</p>

<p>What I hear from students is so different from its reputation, and matches a lot of what burmell just posted. </p>

<p>Any thoughts from students or parents or other applicants?</p>

<p>I am a senior at Swat. I think burmell got a pretty good impression of the way things are. The only thing I would add is that the Swat experience is definitely different year by year. Freshman year is most people's most social year. By senior year you've sort of settled down with a group of friends you feel comfortable with. There's definitely socializing, it's just more low key and less keg/Paces than freshman year.</p>

<p>The experience also changes academically. Senior year has been my most intense so far, which is not what I had expected. At the same time, by this point I've become much better at managing my time and balancing the work with the fun, so I don't have much of an issue with burnout. </p>

<p>And as far as the passion, quirkiness, and shameless intellectual-ness, yup, that's us. We know we'd be terribly nerdy elsewhere, but here when people make fun of you for it, you know they love you anyway.</p>

<p>thanks for the insight. Are you curently tackling the honors program at Swat and if so do you think that is the cause for this being your most intense year academically? Is there a substantial difference in the amount of work between honors and course or is the distinction purely breadth v. depth? My tour guide claimed that honors students might read 2 books and write an essay during a given week. Does this workload carry over for non-honors students? I expect the workload at Swarthmore to be rigorous, and as you say it intensifies each year. I am just trying to get a sense of how much work we are talking about, becuase other Swat students have posted solemn accounts of their swamped schedules that frighten me. It probably all comes down to course selection and time management, but would you say that students at Swat have greater workloads than other top notch colleges?</p>

<p>burmell,
My S is a senior Honors major. He took two Honors seminars second semester junior year, one this first semester of senior year and will take one second semester. (Every Honors major takes 4 total during the course of junior and senior years.) Since he is in a social sciences major, the seminars consist of readings and papers and discussions. He will have to write probably 4 papers during the course of the semester for each Honors seminar. Each student will be responsible for the same number of papers, and they will all be due different weeks. You finish your paper, email it to your classmates so that they can read it beforehand, and then you spend about an hour of the class time leading discussion about your paper. Other classmates will take up the other hours of the seminar in discussion about their papers. </p>

<p>As to the workload, he has told me that in some cases it is not really possible to do all the reading and the professors sort of expect that. You figure out what absolutely has to be read and what you can skim or omit.</p>

<p>Hi burmell,</p>

<p>I'm not an honors major, but I'm currently taking my second (of what will probably be three) honors seminars. There's a lot of variation even within honors seminars. The one I took last fall simply was not as demanding as the one I am taking now, and I can say for sure that the one I'm taking now is the major cause of the higher intensity I'm experiencing this semester. </p>

<p>There is not necessarily that big of a difference between an honors and course major. In some departments (I think Classics is like this), the only difference is that honors majors have final oral exams with external examiners, while course majors have theirs with a Swat professor. I'm a course major, but I'll have taken three honors seminars. The main difference for me is that I won't have to take the external exams at the end of the year. In my opinion, whether or not you do honors should depend on whether it gives you the experience you want. While I declared honors in my sophomore year, I decided not to keep it because there aren't enough seminars that I'm that deeply interested in. Plus, I like the idea of relaxing for the last three weeks of my senior year. :)</p>

<p>To give you an idea of my course load in this seminar: our reading for the week usually has about 300-400 pages required. That doesn't mean it gets read in-depth, mind you. It's usually okay to skim the things you don't find all that stimulating and spend time on those you do, as long as you have an idea of what's going on in all the readings. I write a 10-page paper every other week, but this is more than I did for my last honors seminar, which only required three papers over the course of the semester. When you're writing a paper you'll probably do extra reading on your topic. This might sound like a lot (and it is, in some ways), but keep in mind that the class only meets once a week and counts as two classes. I don't think it's more work than a combination of two classes (ie, it's not the equivalent of three classes). </p>

<p>In order to get work done for seminar and my other classes, I average about 4 hours of work outside of class a day (that's including weekends). I don't feel like that's too much, and it doesn't keep me from doing other things. The only hard thing is if the week I have to write for seminar coincides with a paper due date in another class. That's painful, but has only happened once this semester. </p>

<p>If you get into Swarthmore, you will be able to handle the workload. The main thing will be time management and making choices about what's important to you. It is not necessary to become unhealthily sleep-deprived in order to do well in your classes and have friends. Freshman year is the time to go nuts trying everything out, then settle down with the things that really matter to you. </p>

<p>Not really having experience with other colleges, I can't say for sure if we have more work... I do think there's something different about our work-ethic, though, in that we don't expect that average effort will be rewarded with above-average praise from profs. There is definitely something different about Swarthmore, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that everyone who comes here has elected to be part of a community known for its intellectual intensity. We support each other in that, but we also stage interventions if one of our friends is getting too wrapped up in the work. </p>

<p>I'd be happy to answer any other questions you might have! :)</p>

<p>
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When you're writing a paper you'll probably do extra reading on your topic. This might sound like a lot (and it is, in some ways), but keep in mind that the class only meets once a week and counts as two classes. I don't think it's more work than a combination of two classes (ie, it's not the equivalent of three classes).

[/quote]
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<p>Just so there is no confusion for prospective students about this, Gilead is saying that each Honors Seminars counts as TWO courses. In other words, instead of the "standard" four courses that semester, you would only have to take an Honors seminar and two regular courses.</p>

<p>Of course, some students take the Honors seminar and three more courses, which is where some of the stories of heavy workloads come from! But, there are a lot of tempting courses. How to choose. There's always the option of taking the "extra" course pass/fail.</p>