<p>Hey, Swat lovers,
HuffPo lists Swat first in this list of America's most grueling colleges. Agree or disagree? </p>
<p>I have sent along this link to my DS who is going to be a freshman at Swat in the fall. I wonder if he’ll change his mind… I DON"T THINK SO. 
Thanks for the link! You say “grueling,” I say “academically intense.”</p>
<p>Haha, yeah, that list should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. I think Swat can be as hard as its reputation says it is, but for quite a few it’s not that bad. It’s all manageable, or at least, you can make it that way. I can’t imagine having much more work than I normally do.</p>
<p>Haha. S must really be a masochist.<br>
Not only is he a Swat grad, but he’s a grad student at another school on the list.</p>
<p>Yeah–my D as well. She’s definitely an academic masochist–always takes the hard road. What can you do? She’s really good at it–despite the fact that it was/is indeed grueling!</p>
<p>huffpo doesn’t know the half of it. shellfell, siusplau: your kids aren’t masochists, when they applied, they were naive, just like murmillo. “how bad could it be?” once we’re locked up here, we found out. it’s pretty bad, but being a masochist means that we enjoy the extra helping or ten of work, well maybe the bright eyed freshmen do, but it gets old really fast. shell: i guarantee you that your boy’s grad school is a walk in the park for him after what he endured at swat. i routinely sleep three or four hours a night my entire existence here. unless you are enrolled here, you can’t imagine what it’s like. this anonymous forum is the only place i complain about this, because newbies should know. i don’t know any of my classmates that have ever complained about the volume of work beyond our prison walls. i know that i have not. my parents have no clue how difficult it is here. they think it must be like i was in high school. finish my projects over lunch and video games till six am. ok, full disclosure, on weekends, i’m not up til six studying. it’s not that hard to spend evenings with the opposite sex, just because eggheads are born here doesn’t mean that they are nerds. there are plenty and i mean plenty of hot girls here and from a sister school to make weekends explode. listen, there will be and are plenty of parents on this forum that call me a whiner and maybe i am, but i know of what i speak. i was not a borderline high school student. i did quite well on my sat’s (really well) and I got sick grades in my classes at one of the top high schools in the country (one that prides itself on sending us to the very best colleges in the nation, in fact, it seemed like each student may have had our own personal guidence counselor…ok, i exaggerate, but not by much). the volume of work assigned is just outrageous. on the other hand, having done all the work assigned here makes me think that i know everything and maybe, i just might, with all the reading i have done here. my friends at other schools are routinely three or four chapters behind me (early in the semesters) whenever we use common texts and some schools, i found out that i was over ten chapters ahead. i remember one of my friends here told me that the intro first semester chemistry class is actually chem I AND chem II at other places. btw, this friend scored over a 36 or 37 on the mcats, first time out. I will say this much, my grades here are not comparable to my high school numbers, but what i scored on whichever graduate school entrance exam i took was comparable to what i did on the sat’s. i’m not sure if swat had anything to do with that, but i sure hope so. no more reading for me, ever, i will only buy the audio version of my texts in the future. hey newbies, when you’re visiting and auditing a class, remember this, when you walk out and are anxious to tell your parents how intellectually stimulating the class was…don’t forget to ask for the reading list. wow, this was a rambling end of year stream of consciousness. duhvinci out! i never did get my shirt.</p>
<p>I probably should have said something four years ago, but they don’t expect you to do **all **the reading.</p>
<p>Duhvinci,</p>
<p>From your last post it sounds like you are you graduating? If you are, I wish you the very best and I for one, have enjoyed, your ramblings! </p>
<p>But then again, I have been known to have an off-beat and sick sense of humor… </p>
<p>Take care</p>
<p>duhvinci: I was speaking with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek when I referred to my S as a masochist. Since elementary school, he’s figured out how much work he needed to do to get the desired result. He got plenty of sleep at Swat; he wouldn’t take morning classes unless he needed them for his major or minor. One of his biggest gripes about grad school is that he has to get up before noon. Yeah, in some ways, grad school is easier, but that’s because he takes 1-2 classes per semester. </p>
<p>Can Swat be grueling? Absolutely. Is it that way for everyone? No</p>
<p>I was also being somewhat facetious in my reply. As ID says, they don’t expect you to do all of the reading—but that’s where the “hard road” kicks in. Certain students will do more of the reading not because they have to, but because they want to. Swarthmore seems to have more than its share of that type of student, and it rubs off, making everyone (including professors) step up their game. I certainly feel it is possible to get through Swarthmore via a less grueling path.
Still, what Duhvinci says about the reading lists and syllabi seems to be generally true. According to my D, any time she or friends could compare a course directly with a similar one at another school, much more material was covered in a shorter period of time at Swarthmore, and much more work was required.
I hope you feel all that hard work pays off in grad school Duhvinci–good luck!</p>
<p>Like many others on this forum, I have a Swat grad who is also in grad school at another HuffPo school. Two years ago he told me that the Honors Seminars at Swat were better than his grad school classes-smarter students and more engaging classes at Swat. I have another S starting at Swat in the fall. Sorry that Duhvinci won’t be there to provide him with wise counsel on what it’s really like at Swat. 
Duhvinci, it was very thoughtful that you spared your parents the agony of your workload at Swat. Seriously. Best wishes with your future plans!</p>
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<p>I can’t agree with this. For the sake of completeness, I’ll say that hot guys are also not plentiful at Swarthmore. I’m curious where the smart people who are also beautiful go to college. I’m guessing Brown and/or Yale, but I don’t have a lot of data about this.</p>
<p>it’s all a matter of perspective. i find something hot in all the chicks i meet. as to hot guys…who cares? i’ll leave that to others to work out. </p>
<p>regarding the reading, any of you parents here get into a discussion during a swat class and not have read all the material? the prof is ok, it’s the classmates that will eat you alive after the first five minutes of ********ting your way through. so, yeah, you don’t have to do all the reading, you also don’t need to stretch or hydrate before a game, but try getting through either without it.</p>
<p>She could have been BSing me, but my daughter described her strategy as always prioritizing the reading list into the stuff that she knew would be the primary basis of discussion in class and the secondary texts. She started the reading with the A-level stuff. If she got everything read, great. If she didn’t, then she wanted to skip the secondary or tertiary reading. By the time she was a sophmore, she said she could tell.</p>
<p>The one thing she couldn’t stand was a professor who changed the reading assignments mid-week. Often, she scheduled out the reading for the week, getting a jump start the weekend before (depending on her schedule). So a professor who changed the reading for a Thurs class on Tues would leave her with no options as she had other classes to prepare for on Tues and Wed nights. She, on at least one occasion, went to the prof and said, “Stop doing that, if you want us to come to class prepared.”</p>
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<p>That’s not a bad strategy to take while you’re at Swarthmore. It could make the whole experience a little less grueling. You could also try to find something delicious in everything that’s served at Sharples. As for it being a matter of perspective - I couldn’t agree more.</p>
<p>A.E. - my first thought on reading the “Most Grueling” label for Swat was Sharples…</p>
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<p>They go south to the land of top academics and high-level Greek life. Duke is a typical destination for brainy beauties. Brown? Yale? Don’t make me laugh. I have no connection or relationship with Duke. In fact, I hate the school. But I wanted to give an honest answer to your question.</p>
<p>Many of the women at S only date other women.</p>
<p>So I arrived in May to pick up my daughter. Not one thing was packed. Didn’t even have a box. Still frantically cranking out a last paper (the prof threw in last minute). She had dark circles under her eyes and looked like she would drop and/or explode any minute. She cried, she self doubted (she even spoke the D.O. words) but as soon as I was convinced the stress levels and intensity were too much she vigorously declared her loyalty and love of Swat.</p>
<p>My D just finished her sophomore year. She and many of her friends (“all of them” if you were to ask her) had a very tough year. The campus shrinks as you feel you’ve met “everyone” and academics heat up. While she handled the workload well (got up at 6 AM and studied before class, kept up with the required readings, got all As/A-s) she felt all year as though she couldn’t “measure up,” bringing many tearful episodes Strange. She didn’t see a path to changing the world, which weighed heavy on her, since her peers at Swat seemed to be doing all that in addition to excelling at the academics. She really felt the pressure. Hopefully, this summer has been restorative and she’ll go back with renewed confidence, but it’s pretty sad to watch your extremely capable and once-confident child whither. The environment is tough. There were times during the year when I asked whether she wanted to transfer out, and times when I was almost demanding that she do so (seeing her emotional response to the whole experience), but like tsprite’s D, she steadfastly refused. She “loves” it at Swarthmore.</p>