<p>I was wondering if anybody knew how good Swarthmore is in the arts (painting, music, theater, etc.) compared to other liberal arts colleges. How "artsy" is Swarthmore compared to, say, Williams, Amherst, and Wesleyan?</p>
<p>It's not as artsy as Williams and Wesleyan.</p>
<p>The Theater program at Swarthmore is good. They have a great facility, and there are quite a few Swarthmore alums in theater. See About</a> Pig Iron | Pig Iron which was founded by several Swat alums (I believe). The music program is oriented towards classical music. There is good support for instrumental lessons, but my sense is that the program is not a high-powered performance program. On the other hand, Peter Schickele, the discoverer of P.D.Q. Bach, was a graduate of Swarthmore music department. Peter</a> Schickele Bio</p>
<p>Dance is also considered to be a strength at Swarthmore, although students are more likely to minor in Dance than major.</p>
<p>There are a lot of art and art history majors - over 5% of the senior class last year, 19 students. Theater had 6 majors, music had 4.</p>
<p>All three performance departments (music, theater, dance) have non-traditional offerings. Dance in Ghana, Theater in Poland. Balinese music, etc. All three have a lot of opportunity for both majors and non-majors to participate in peformances.</p>
<p>You need to be more precise with your term "artsy". I do not think of Swarthmore as an "artsy" college in the same way as a Vassar. Likewise, Williams is not very "artsy" in vibe despite having strong music and art history departments. So, I'm not sure you mean "artsy" vibe or the quality of the art oriented academics. There is very high participation in performance arts at Swarthmore, although many students are combining that with academics in other fields.</p>
<p>I would say it's of average artsiness among elite liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>I agree with interesteddad on this one. According to this post on the Williams forum, there are only 20 "out" gay men on the entire campus of 2000. I realize this is relying somewhat on an overused trope, but, how artsy can the place be if only a small number of gay men find it safe enough to come out of the closet?
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/williams-college/606363-gays-williams.html#post1061372882%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/williams-college/606363-gays-williams.html#post1061372882</a></p>
<p>I think the poster probably needs to define what he/she means by "artsy" before we all assume different meanings. I do not necessarily agree that an out-of-the-closet gay population is a necessary precondition for an artsy environment.</p>
<p>well, by using the term, "precondition", you immediately cause the question to become one of those "chicken vs. egg" riddles. Let's just say, each serves as an interesting hermeneutic for the other. :)</p>
<p>In any event, can we agree that it takes more than a few a capella groups and an occasional revival of "Oklahoma" to make for an artsy campus?</p>
<p>I meant "artsy" as meaning that there are a lot of people on campus who either major or minor in something along the lines of photography, painting, literature, music, dance, theater, and stuff like that. I meant artsy as the opposite of a place like MIT, or anywhere where science and math dominate.</p>
<p>Oberlin
Vassar
Wesleyan
Williams
Swarthmore
Amherst</p>
<p>any arguments?</p>
<p>I think Kenyon should probably be on that list. I am not to sure about ASW - there are a lot of people involved in theater, a capella, dance, etc., but the general vibe there is much more "academic" than "artsy", I think...</p>
<p>Looking at the number of majors in the arts and literature is a quantifiable question that can be answered by looking at the numbers in the Common Data Set. InterestedDad usually has good insight into those types of questions. For Swarthmore, 7.6% of the degrees in 2008 were for majors in the visual & performing arts, while at Amherst in 2007 (the latest I could find on their website), for example, 8.9% of the degrees were in the visual & performing arts. Is this a significant difference? Not sure.</p>
<p>If we draw the definitions more broadly, a larger difference appears. If we define "the arts" as including foreign language & literature, English plus vsual & performing arts, as the OP appears to, and contrast that with "hard sciences" defined as computer science, biology, math, physical sciences and engineering, then Amherst has about 30% of their degrees in "the arts" and 13% in the "hard sciences," while Swarthmore has 21% of their degrees in "the arts" and 29% in the "hard sciences." This is certainly influenced by the fact that Swarthmore offers engineering, while Amherst does not.</p>
<p>Numbers aside, my D did a great deal in the arts at Swarthmore, primarily in the visual arts, and my S is doing lots of music. I don't think either of them feel that Swarthmore was/is not "artsy" enough, though neither of them did or or are likely to major in the visual and perfoming arts (although both will probably have had enough credits in the arts to have a minor).</p>
<p>The existence of minors at Swarthmore throws the table off slightly. I'm pretty sure you can't minor in anything at Amherst (or, Williams or Wesleyan), which could cause more people to take the leap into a full-fledged major.</p>
<p>I agree that the atmosphere and the actual academics are two different things.</p>
<p>I think johnwesley's listing a good representation with a few caveats. </p>
<p>The five college consortium give Amherst students a remarkable range of opportunities and an "artsy" atmosphere in Northampton.</p>
<p>I know Swarthmore has a consortium as well, but the five college consortium seems very well integrated. Smith is a large LAC so it has many course offerings, and UMassAmherst is right there is an almost endless lists of courses.</p>
<p>I also just looked for numbers in majors at Williams, and there are an average of 56 art majors in every graduating class, a very impressive number when English majors number 68 and Economics majors, the most numerous, number 87.</p>
<p>Music and theater each come it at 6 majors a year, but the opportunities for performance are many with a summer theater lab in conjunction with the Williamstown Theater Festival offering many opportunities.</p>
<p>And Williams also has an Art History Masters.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the absence of a film major dims its offerings a bit.</p>
<p>I do not know the gender of the OP, but I would offer Barnard as a school with many arts opportunities and somewhat arty students. Their creative writing major is without peer in turning out actual published writers. (Recent major award recipients Jhumpa Lahiri and Edwidge Dandicat are two cases in point.)</p>
<p>The actual number of "artsy" graduates of Swarthmore in the class of 2008:</p>
<p>37 majors in art, art history, music, dance, theater, film, and related special majors.</p>
<p>That's 10.2% of the 364 graduates and 8.2% of the 449 majors.</p>
<p>In addition, there were 20 minors in those "artsy" fields. That's 9.3% of the 215 students who minored in something and 8.2% of the 243 minors.</p>
<p>All togther, you have 57 majors and minors in "artsy" fields from a graduating class of 364 students.</p>
<p>CAVEAT: The number of majors and minors jumps all over the place from year to year. To get meaningful numbers, you really should average over at least five years. Otherwise you can get caught out by small sample size variation. The data is available to do that at:</p>
<p>Swarthmore</a> College :: Institutional Research :: Fact Book</p>
<p>I'm too lazy to import all the data into a spreadsheet.</p>
<p>I did once look at a multi-year tally of majors at Swarthmore and Wiliams. Williams had many more art history majors (a specific Williams specialty). Swarthmore had the same or slightly higher percentages of studio art, music, theater, and (of course) dance majors.</p>
<p>Overall, I would say that Swarthmore has a pretty active "artsy" scene with a lot of student involvement for a college that is not an "artsy" oriented college. The students in the music, art, dance, and theater departments seem to really like what they are doing and there is a lot of invovement by non-majors, which is not always the case and which may important to many Swarthmore-type students.</p>
<p>For example, my daughter went to Swarthmore with no particular plan to study Art, although she had been to quite a few of the world's top museums and taken a summer course at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Took the intro Art History course and loved it. She ended up taking quite a few Art History courses and, I believe, getting a minor in Art History.</p>
<p>dadx3:</p>
<p>Amherst has traditionally had a ton of majors in English and History, relatively few in the sciences. Swarthmore is a bit more balanced across the board, but is a very strong science school and, of course, has social sciences as an historic specialty.</p>
<p>ID makes an excellent point. Schools like the ones under discussion have very welcoming departments for non-majors. For many students, this is more supportive of participation than an "arty" environment.</p>
<p>
<p>37 majors in art, art history, music, dance, theater, film, and related special majors.</p>
<p>That's 10.2% of the 364 graduates and 8.2% of the 449 majors.</p>
<p>In addition, there were 20 minors in those "artsy" fields. That's 9.3% of the 215 students who minored in something and 8.2% of the 243 minors.</p>
<p>All togther, you have 57 majors and minors in "artsy" fields from a graduating class of 364 students.
As a science major, I can tell you that is not correct. Some of the art majors may have been art history minors, and so on, so 57 represents the upper-bound for the number of people who majored and/or minored in one of the aforementioned subjects. I have to imagine the actual number is smaller, as many of the fields listed would be popular major/minor combinations.</p>
<p>I think Swarthmore is pretty artsy. While majors and minors are certainly one way of telling these things, the amount of people who are involved in music and art casually is just as telling although that is harder to gauge. Nearly everyone I know here is musical, theatrical, or artistic in some way...I'm not sure why it is, or if it's this way at most other schools, but Swatties definitely love the arts, and while I would probably categorize Swarthmore as more academic than artsy, I think one would certainly feel at home here if that's an environment and a network that they're looking for.</p>
<p>bpkap,</p>
<p>Did you ask because you want to major in an art area or is it simply that you want to be surrounded by students with some interest in the arts?</p>
<p>If you want to major in an art area, you need to research the pertinent department and offerings at whatever LAC to which you want to apply. If you just want to be around students with a side interest in the arts, there are many at Swarthmore, as well as at the other schools already mentioned. I also would suggest Bard, Pomona and Bennington should be added to the list.</p>
<p>My d attended art magnet schools from 6th grade through 12th grade and very intensive summer theater college credit programs at NYU and Yale. There is no doubt in my mind that she will be a professional actor/playwright. The natural progression, thus, would have been for her to have gone for a BFA like the majority of her hs classmates. However, when it came time to choose a college, she wanted a school where she could continue to pursue a solid theater education within the context of a truly liberal arts education. Finding such a school was not easy and rather time consumming in terms of identifying the appropriate programs followed by visits and overnight stays. She found most non-BFA theater departments were very basic with limited offerings, few faculty members and not too many visiting professionals.</p>
<p>Frankly, Swarthmore was never among the schools that came to most people's lips when talking about strong theater at LAC's. We stumbled upon Swarthmore's theater department through a directory of theater programs. After visiting the usual schools and sitting down with theater dept representatives, my d felt Swarthmore had stronger and more varied offerings, as well as study abroad opportunities than the better known counterparts which were usually mentioned. </p>
<p>One of her first observations when she arrived on campus was that in her entering class there were many students who had no intention of majoring in the arts but who were nonetheless incredibly talented and intent on getting involved in extracurricular art related activities. Many of her friends at Swarthmore sing, dance, act, play music, write music and are definitely not art majors. My advise is to scrutinize and compare the bios of faculty, courses offered, check how many visiting professionals are brought in to teach, what opportunities are there for getting involved? In theater, Swarthmore scores very high. The dance department does not seem as strong as my daughter would have liked, but it is decent and she has yet to explore it fully, so she may be pleasantly surprised. I have no idea about other departments.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>