<p>These two places seem almost identical to me. Differences?</p>
<p>Ohh, Katie they are very different. Yes they both have a quaker feeling (they are both in the quaker tri-co), and are both selective liberal-arts schools, but they have very different feels. Read H-ford's honor code, it gives you a good idea of what they are. Swarthmore...is quirky. If you are a good fit there, a)you'll know it, and b)you'll love it. You'll just have to visit/mingle with the people to understand. Try an overnight.
I probably shouldn't be saying this on a Ford site, but Swarthmore is more academically challenging, and is statistically a more selective school.
However, it's really more personal. You will get a great education at either. I personally applied to Ford ED because I found their values and general atmosphere to perfect for me.
Check them both out in person...</p>
<p>Although very similar on paper, with beautiful campuses and excellent reputations, there are very different vibes at each. And people who love one tend to not like the other (note -- this is a personal observation and is not based on any survey data). You should definitely visit -- it's easy to see them both in the same day.</p>
<p>It sounds like you spent a fair amount of time looking into both schools. If you did this and you see mainly similarities, then that should provide you a framework to recognize how minor the differences are in the greater scheme of things. </p>
<p>There are pros/cons with every institution with their academic offering, campus culture, location, resources and how each school spends those resources. These are different though for each school and one applicant’s pro may be another’s con. </p>
<p>I’m not going to waste my time arguing subjective differences about “intellectual intensity”, “student engagement”, “rigor”, “which school is more “challenging” and other stuff thrown around that have no proof other than the word of biased parties or hearsay.</p>
<p>College reputations are based partly on some truth but also marketing. Just because one school has a t-shirt that says, “Anywhere else it would have been an A” doesn’t make it true. West Virginia has a T-shirt that says “Almost Heaven” but I beg to differ. Just because the campus culture of one school makes a game out of complaining (“Misery poker”), I think most adults realize that those who complain more don’t necessarily have more things to complain about. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, I will say this. I worked very hard at HC. The combination of academics, ### extracurricular activities and leadership positions and the addition of discussing the honor code/community on top of this was a lot to juggle. I graduated with a very respectable GPA but I wasn’t the “smartest” kid there (we had only one summa in our class and he went on to do astro-physics at Princeton… and friends who went to Harvard and JH med school were magna and magna/cum laude by comparison). I went to an excellent medical school where the work wasn’t as challenging, I had less stress, a better social life and I was able to publish 2 papers and graduate top 10. I say this because 1) this is an anonymous site so I’m not embarrassed by this and 2) my experience among my classmates isn’t unique. I know people who graduated from HC without honors but who then went on to do residencies in ortho and neurosurg at the most prestigious hospitals for these fields. Expectations may be stratospheric at Swat but they are sky high at HC.</p>
<p>I will, however, discuss concrete issues. The Tri-co isn’t an “equilateral triangle”. BMC and HC are 5 minutes apart and Swat is 30 minutes away. When you look at HC, you must also include the resources of BMC. At Swat, what you basically see is what you get (and you do get a lot). BMC=1300 students, HC=1200 students, SC=1500 students. All of these schools have student: faculty ratios of 8:1 with HC/SC approaching 7:1. Thus each school only has a finite # of faculty to teach all the disciplines students are interested in but there are limits. You can’t do everything with only so many professors but BMC/HC have overlapping departments and also synchronize their curriculums so that smaller areas of study can still be excellent and available. There are 3000+ bi-co x-registrations a year.</p>
<p>Examples include being able to take Italian in the bi-co if you are an English/comp lit/art history major, Swahili if you concentrate in Black/Africana studies, a bio-med department unparalleled among LACs, the best language programs are at BMC (Russian, French, ect… are masters level), taking archaeology to supplement understanding in fields like art history, classics, religion and history, taking a Cities class to complement anthro/ sociology/ poli sci, doing research at BMC’s acclaimed School of Social Research (PhD), taking a class on bronze casting as an arts major, psychology that is both excellent at developmental (BMC) and behavioral (HC), ect. ect. ect…</p>
<p>One more thing before I take leave of this site for the weekend.</p>
<p>There are things that Swat provides that HC does not or does not do as well or as well as I would like. Swat's endowment/student is HUGE, I think twice that of HC. As I've demonstrated, this doesn't apply to the quality of professors (HC the only Academy of Science memebr for a LAC, 2 NIH funded labs that is unique as well, 2 MDs teach in the bio department, the former chair of religion wrote the "Approaching the Quran" book that became a national issue when UNC had it as assigned reading for freshmen a few years ago and the Religion chair before him left HC to eventually head Harvard's Divinity School, ect...) or the academic experience but there are some things that $ can provide. </p>
<p>To make a generalization, they have better financial aid (actually, HC gave me a few hundred $ more so the formulas are different) and as a result, have a slightly more diverse student population in terms of race (HC 33% vs 40% at SC??) and class. Also, I think they have several "merit-like" scholarships that attract a few more spectacular students to enroll there than elsewhere.</p>
<p>So, basically, pick your poison... boths schools are great and both have their limits.</p>