<p>I've been looking around, and from descriptions, swarthmore seems like a very, very good fit for me. Small LAC, beautiful campus, great academics, etc. But the problem is, I visited when I was in 7th grade and my sister a junior, when she was looking at colleges. we live on the west coast, so its unlikely i'll get a second chance to visit (maybe later this fall but probably not). The thing is, on the visit I REALLY didn't like swarthmore, like the whole atmosphere. The students seemed all stressed, and the one thing that struck me as really strange was that there were plaques nailed on trees (to a 11 year old very, very weird). I didn't like the tour guide either. Compared to all the other colleges we visited, overall I didn't really like it at all.
Well, I dunno. It's been years since, and I'm hoping since then I would like the atmosphere more. It really doesn't make sense why I shouldn't like it now since I'm older, and would probably have gotten a totally different vibe if I visited now. I would really like to apply someday, but that one visit years back really turned me off.
So could I here some great things about Swarthmore?</p>
<p>Swarthmore’s campus is an arboretum. Most of the trees and plants have a small placard indicating the species and who donated the planting. If you think gardens and arboretums and stuff are weird, Swarthmore is probably not the right place for you.</p>
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<p>Your admitted students website password is the Latin name of one of the plants on campus, which you are challenged to find. During orientation you are given a plant from the arboretum for your room. You get another one on graduation day to take with you from Swarthmore. On the morning of graduation, all 360 something graduating seniors stop by the Dean Bond Rose garden where the arboretum staff cuts a fresh rose and pins it to their graduation gown.</p>
<p>Most Swatties seem to take the gardens in stride, although the plant placards have been the target of an April Fools joke where they were covered with new desriptions such as “Yellow Flower” or “Green Plant”.</p>
<p>oh ok I get it now about the placards, lol. </p>
<p>it seems like a perfect fit really out of all the colleges I’ve heard about, especially location (i can be near my extended family and go to philly!), and majors (I’m have a strong interest in humanities but also thinking about engineering), LAC etc. </p>
<p>now the only thing stopping swarthmore from being me absolute dream school is the fear that it is too stressful. I read the featured discussion about it being “all work not play” and that is seriously freaking me out. I love to learn just for the sake of it, but I get easily stressed, so I would probably be better off in a more laid-back atmosphere. I also don’t really like a competitive, cut-throat environment for getting good grades. Is Swarthmore as stressful as people make it out to be?</p>
<p>The “featured discussion” was posted by a high school student who didn’t even apply to Swarthmore. The moderators have refused repeated requests from multiple Swarthmore parents to unpin that thread, even when there are much more recent threads with current students discussing the workload. The moderators must have their reasons, although they told me that it wasn’t even the same thread they locked.</p>
<p>I suggest that you discuss your concerns about the workload at Swarthmore with the moderators of College Confidential. They have taken ownership of that discussion. In my opinion, they are doing a severe disservice to students such as yourself, but talk to them about it. The parents of Swartmore graduates here have all voiced their reports of the workload in other threads.</p>
<p>My daughter’s finishing her first year at Swat. She’s pre-med and taking some hard courses this year (e.g., organic chemistry). The learning is intense but intense is different than stress. Here’s a few observations:
- All her classes have study groups that meet 1-3 times a week. Upper class majors facilitate them. Her organic chemistry professor actually spends his Sunday evenings facilitating the one for organic chemistry. That says a lot about someone if they spend their Sunday evenings with students on campus. The students all help each other work on the homework problems. No one is hiding their knowledge hoping to boost their own grade by seeing everyone else tank.<br>
- One professor stayed two hours after a lab to talk with the students about the lectures in one of the science classes - he said he could tell that they were getting stressed and that he wanted to help.
- Professors are very accessible for office hours.
- She has had no experience with “cut throat” students. The students all help each other in their labs etc. I know what you are talking about (students who cut the pages in the reserve library book out so other students can’t access it; students who try to psych you out before a test). That is NOT Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I agree with interesteddad. It seems like a lot of prospective students who post here post because they’re worried that they’ll have so much work that they won’t enjoy it. I find that I’ve repeated myself a lot on the work issue. I’ll say this:</p>
<p>Swarthmore is not all work and no play. I think that there’s pretty much a consensus in this forum. You can definitely find enough time to manage to do your work, do your extraucurriculars, party (if that’s your thing), relax over the weekend, hang out with friends, and get enough sleep. But there are some prerequisites to that. I think good time management skills are essential. It’s also important to take advantage of resources to help you and have a genuine interest in what you’re learning. Doing so will make it easier to do the work you’ll have to do. You also shouldn’t let it get over your head. If you get a B it’s not the end of the world unless you’re pre-med. (I say that sort of sarcastically.) Keep a good perspective. Don’t do more than you can physically do without being overburdened. That means, don’t take too many courses, or too many time-consuming courses. And handle stress well. There was one guy who came to Swarthmore but never graduated. He committed suicide because he was depressed by in part the idea that he just wasn’t smart enough to handle it. So it really is a serious matter that you get out of Swarthmore every so often and that you just know how to relieve stress. </p>
<p>With that said, I don’t want to discourage you from looking into Swarthmore. Professors don’t want to give you so much work that you just can’t do it–that would be counterproductive. As libartsmom has pointed out, professors are willing to go out of their way to help you be successful.</p>
<p>Swatties generally don’t just have a “Wow, this is really interesting to think about” mindset. They have that. But they also seem to have a “OK, I have a paper on this really interesting topic and I really really want to do well on it so I’m going to stay up really late because I want to do my best.” People here seem to try to do their best at every paper and assignment, hence the stereotype that Swarthmore is just too stressful. I think it does get stressful if you really want to do a very good job on every assignment.</p>
<p>I guess this advice applies more to current students but I hope it’ll help you.</p>
<p>You were doing so well, dchow, until you made it seem like suicide is a common thing. Swarthmore has had one suicide it the last fifteen years, a rate that is below the rate in the major study of the Big-10 schools that is used as the “national average”. It was a second semester fifth year senior (who had taken a year off), so the issues were more likely centered around job hunting or grad school admissions than suddenly think after five years that Swarthmore was too much to handle…</p>
<p>Well, I totally did not want to suggest at all that suicide was common, but the poster asked about stress and that was what came up. My point was that there is a lot of stress here at times and people need to know how to cope with it.</p>
<p>i think that as long as you are determined to do well, you will experience a bit of stress… for example, classes like general biology are weeder classes and if you want to do well, you gotta work for it… in my class, 60% of the students failed gen bio 1… out of the 40% left, 25% changed major, 25% transferred school, so were 20% left now…(i hope you can keep up with that math 
) out of these 20% left, another 50+% will fail general biology 2… so yea… hehe and this isnt even a top notch school, not even close… its like a small private one…</p>
<p>If you have decent time management skills and a sense of balance, you’re likely to find things really stressful only at midterm and finals times, in most majors. If you’re wholly focused on your looming MCATs and med school, you’re going to feel a lot more pressure. Kids who are on a pre-med track are more stressed at most schools. Midterms and finals are stressed times at most schools.</p>
<p>Students who understand how to balance a schedule (rather than taking four heavy-reading classes or four problem-set classes or two labs and two problem sets, e.g.) will be happier. And there are excellent informal and formal advising systems in place to help new students choose wisely. Students who don’t define themselves by their grades - and there are many of these at Swat - are happier. I know a lot of students at Swarthmore who would describe themselves as glad to be there, except maybe at crunch times. </p>
<p>Here’s one way for you to look at this: You didn’t like Swat when you were in 7th grade. How much have your other tastes changed since then? Do you still like and dislike the same bands? Do you read the same books? If Swat looks like a great match on paper, visit and give it a chance. Talk to real students who are there, rather than just the tiny subset of students who post. If you still don’t like it, don’t apply, but give your much more adult self a chance to see what it’s really like first.</p>
<p>^ agree 
also, hey it cant hurt to apply! 60 bucks! sure ud spend some time doing essays etc, but hey, its worth it for the opportunity! im sure youd rather have the possibility than realizing too late that it would be awesome for you but you didnt apply :)</p>
<p>talk to students, talk to faculty, and talk to whoever you can reach maybe if u have a friend who lives closeby, see if they could go look at it a bit and see what they think be creative! 
also, hey if u do get in, maybe theyll offer you a plane ticket to come check it out? ive heard of a lot of schools that do that, dont know about swat, but maybe ?</p>
<p>If you don’t have a good feeling about it, why even apply? There are so many other great schools. Go with something that seems right for you.</p>
<p>You’re right in the fact that if it feels wrong, you shouldnt apply… However, I got the impression that the OP likes it on paper and feels like it could be a perfect match, except that he has old memories from his childhood which differ… Thats why I’m saying he should try to get as much info as possible and try get a trip there, so that he can see if he likes it or not… if it turns out that he does, hed be happier having sent an app than missing it! :)</p>
<p>yeah basically for me, what ns89 said. Love it on paper, but bad childhood memory+talk of stressful enviornment might just drive me away.
I am different than years ago, in terms of maturity (ie, now if I went, I probably wouldn’t be wierded out be placards on trees lol). But still have same tastes in many other areas, such as books.
thankfully, college applications are a while away so I still have a lot of time to consider whether I want to apply to swarthmore or not.</p>
<p>hoping against hope that I will get an east coast visit this fall and be able to take another college tour and re-asesss whether I like the atmosphere better now. (but sadly unlikely because of economy :(</p>
<p>without visiting again, I guess I will have to decide solely upon whether I feel it is a good fit for me. Swarthmore is definitely still high on my list.
I have decided that I would probably be best off at a LAC where people learn because they enjoy it, professors are interested in and willing to help students, and administration really cares about you as a person, not just a number. Swarthmore pretty much fits that description, right?</p>
<p>As of now, I don’t have the best time management in the world (sometimes I find myself procrastinating), and am not so good at handling stress (a bunch of tests, papers, activities all majorly important happening at once makes me feel very nervous, and I really do not like to not do well in things.)
that’s why I’m thinking a more laidback, less intense environment would be better for my happiness (and sanity). I recognize however, that most top colleges can be extremely stressful.
But in your opinion is Swarthmore, compared to it’s peers more stressful, the same, or less?</p>
<p>Swarthmore does fit the description you gave. I can’t compare Swarthmore to any other college because I haven’t taken courses at other colleges. I can only talk about Swarthmore as it is by itself.</p>
<p>just curious, how is the food at swarthmore?
any really cool, unique resources/traditions that the college offers that you really enjoy?</p>
<p>My daughter is a freshman at Swat. She has always been very hard working, definitely fun loving, just a bit quirky (which she takes pride in), and active in social causes. She is working very hard at Swat but is doing well and is very, very happy.</p>
<p>And the food is okay but definitely nothing to rave about. When visiting colleges during my daughter’s sr yr in hs, Middlebury was the standout in the food dept.</p>
<p>I think the food is about average. Some dishes I really like, some I really dislike. Overall I think it’s OK. Some people say the food is too greasy, and I mostly agree.</p>
<p>thanks guys for all the advice and insight:D
I probably will apply to swarthmore, as long as it is a good “fit”. It seems like a great school :)</p>