<p>I like Swarthmore. I've visited, liked most things, but am concerned when I find content in The Phoenix like the snip I posted below. I assume this is an extreme minority and not the common talk of students. Can some insiders assuage my concerns? Please! </p>
<p>I think I’d be more concerned why Swarthmore received more than a 1000 less applications this year and they are now admitting more than 18% of applicants, many including Middlebury, Pitzer and Claremont McKenna are now more selective with applicants. Swarthmore may be sliding in the selective rankings faster than any other LAC?</p>
<p>New to CC and correcting myself already. I was happy to find an alternative narrative that seemed much more healthy than the Phoenix Op-Ed I posted above. It was in the Swarthmore Independent (no idea the tiny school had more than one news publication.) I feel better and less anxious about the culture.
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It is true that fewer students applied, but acceptance rate is not synonymous with selectivity in my book. The interquartile SAT range for matriculants, while not perfect, may be a better indicator. According to the latter measure, Swarthmore is much more selective than Pitzer, which is an excellent college itself. </p>
<p>By definition : Selectivity = the quality of carefully choosing someone or something as the best or most suitable.
“provision is organized on the principle of selectivity”
: the property of affecting some things and not others.</p>
<p>Admissions % = Admissions Selectivity, nothing whatsoever to do with SAT scores!, which are of course the worst way to judge college applicants, @coase Swarthmore does indeed have higher avge SAT’s than Pitzer, but are they happier?, it would appear 1000 less HS applicants this year said no, but then Williams dropped 500 apps and still admitted 18% like Swarthmore</p>
<p>I will not get into a spitting match about the definition of selectivity. As it happens, I teach at an institution that had a slightly lower acceptance rate than Swarthmore and slightly lower SAT scores. I would never call my institution more selective; it is harder to get into Swarthmore. </p>
<p>A quick Google search unearthed the source of Englishman’s issues:
<p>A couple of interesting facts, according to information from their college websites: Middlebury had 916 fewer applicants this year and said they accepted fewer students this year because their yield was higher than expected last year. Middlebury’s reported acceptance rate this year was 17.3%. As stated earlier, Williams had 537 fewer applicants this year and an acceptance rate of 18.2%. Swarthmore’s acceptance rate this year was 16.8%. So all three of these excellent Northeast LACs had fewer applicants this year.</p>
<p>As to the opening post’s question, you can find different viewpoints at Swat. At times, you may have to search for them but they are there. I strongly encourage you to spend an overnight and talk to students. There are many different active student groups at Swat.</p>
<p>I think the application decline is a measure of numerous issues. Mountain Justice, the assault issues, and chasing the graduation speaker combined with a decline in LAC apps has most likely removed the “ah…why not” applications for those reaching for admission to a very selective school. With an overall acceptance number down, if yields remain high the true impact of the change in applications will only be known by comparing test scores…which is also perilous. </p>
<p>I think Chopps departure will return Swat to its recent positive (perception) trajectory. </p>
<p>lacgrad and EveVeee make good points. Against my better judgment I will make a couple more points about selectivity. If a given school’s acceptance rate drops, that may or may not mean that it is more difficult to get accepted. Imagine that a school embarks on a campaign to increase applications. If literally all of the additional applicants are uncompetitive, the set of matriculants will not change. So, one will see a drop in the acceptance rate but no change in the SAT interquartile range. I would argue that the school has not become more selective despite the drop in the acceptance rate. By contrast, if the campaign leads to an increase in the number of competitive applicants, the interquartile range will shift. I would then argue that the school has become more selective. The point is that the interquartile range gives additional information with which to interpret changes in the acceptance rate for a given school. </p>
<p>Now consider comparisons between schools. Imagine that school A has an acceptance rate of 18% while school B has 17%. Looking at SAT scores, school A has an interquartile range of 1350-1550 while school B has a range of 1190-1370. I would bet that the applicant pools are very different and, as a consequence, the typical applicant would find it much harder to get into school A. When schools are in different “markets,” SAT scores may be useful to get a sense of relative selectivity. My conclusion is that no single statistic should be taken too seriously. </p>
<p>@coase Seems Jim Bock agrees: “We remain outrageously selective,” said Bock. So it seems as if Swarthmore do believe acceptance rates are synonymous with selectivity. But they still had a drop of 16% in apps, thats said SAT scores were the same</p>
<p>I visited Swarthmore back in 2009 on a beautiful fall day with D1. </p>
<p>I think that I’m a pretty liberal guy, perhaps on the Clinton end of the spectrum (I hope I can say that). </p>
<p>At no other school did I get such a strong sense of extreme left wing group-think that made me feel like an extreme conservative. It was pretty in your face and uncomfortable. I wondered who there was to argue with, and I thought that graduates there would not help tone down the vitriol in our nation’s current political discourse. It didn’t bother my D any, but personally I’m glad she went to a school with a more balanced population where she got to meet intelligent people with differing points of view. She’s still very liberal. </p>
<p>@ClassicRockerDad, I am assuming the administration at Swat knows this. If they don’t, they lack leadership competence. If they do know this, they either, </p>
<p>A - support this culture
B - believe that this culture is just what happens when you set young adults free in an ‘questioning’ academic culture
C - don’t support it, but don’t know how to change it (least likely I think)</p>
<p>If it is B, seems to me that a healthy academic culture would support counterarguments and not one-sided ‘this is the way it is’ views.</p>
<p>Boo boo. Consider this counter example. Consider two colleges A and B, both of which only have room for 10 students in their incoming class. College A receives applications from 1000 students, all of whom have SAT scores at 1600, whereas Collge B only receives applications from 100 students, but these students all have SAT scores of 2300. Whereas College A is apparently more selective, College B perhaps has higher competition because the composition of applicants is more competitive. Indeed, this example is totally made up, but its simplicity sheds light on what is actually going on in more complex cases you consider. </p>
<p>What this example shows is that to make “selectivity” comparable, you need to hold (at the very least) composition of applicant pools (i.e., distribution of applicant characteristics over relevant dimensions) constant. But you don’t do that. More interesting is how selectivity of colleges with identical applicant pools varies, because that maybe says something about general perception of the prestige or desirability of the college. Without doing so, the selectivity you discuss doesn’t tell a consistent (or coherent) story. </p>
<p>I can tell you why our D is not applying to Swarthmore. I’m disappointed Swat didn’t make the short list but I completely understand and support her reasons.</p>
<p>We visited Swarthmore twice. She fell in love with everything about the school. Sadly, the school’s reputation for being an intense courseload was often repeated during the campus tour, the information session and subsequent research. Swarthmore has a reputation for being a very intense place. And that’s great for some but not for my D. She’s a senior this year and had seven solids and four APs her junior year. She has taken a challenging courseload her senior year too. And while she is doing all of this to get into a great school, it’s not appealing to hear that what you did in high school, the football games you didn’t go to, the social life others had that you didn’t, will be repeated if you come to our college. We’ve never heard or read anywhere stories about life outside of the classroom. Swarthmore is always framed as a place to learn, study, learn, study inside or outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s appealing to some but the messaging doesn’t resonate with some students (and parents) who are watching their kids sacrifice so much in high school to pick a school they will enjoy.</p>
<p>@wherezwallace I’ll just say that my son is a frosh at Swat (and I’m an alum, so have “been there”). I honestly think that the “intense” thing is more sold than true. Yeah, everyone buckles down on Sunday night to finish their papers or p-sets, but I never felt that I “couldn’t have fun” and judging from my son’s texts, he is having a ball, balancing the fun (he went to Chinatown with friends last Saturday) and the work (walking his CompSci homework “up the hill” on Sunday night when we talked to him last). Back in my day we liked to “brag” about the intensity, but at least in my experience, it just meant that kids knew they were there to learn, and didn’t go nuts with the partying beyond certain evenings, and had a quota on “free time”. That doesn’t mean fun and free time doesn’t exist. </p>
<p>@wherezwallace - I think your on point with the academic rigor and the “badge of honor” the students feel for making it through. It’s a bit like boot-camp…you struggle together to get through and come out the other side better than you started. That surely isn’t for everyone, but we still have a volunteer army, so it must appeal to some.</p>
<p>What’s interesting in your commentary are the suggestions of “sacrifice”. I don’t believe the students see the rigor as a sacrifice. They are passionate about what they want to focus on…not really worried about “will they get a job”. To your closing point, I think the kids at Swat “enjoy” the challenge.</p>
<p>That said, those qualities are not the norm, and many of the kids come off as a bit odd. Many are…but odd kids exist at every school. What’s different about the Swat kids is that they generally seem VERY nice. I think they target kids who are genuinely “good” people.</p>
<p>Not fitting in that environment is understandable. Every school isn’t for everyone.</p>
<p>donnaleighg, if it’s not true, they should tone down the ‘we’re so intense we never sleep’ motto a bit, because they are losing good students because of it. It was my D’s very close second choice, and I think part of her final decision was based on the extreme intensity they advertise. She decided it is possible to get a great education with happier students elsewhere.</p>