<p>I guess that I have a different view. Here in New England, the top liberal arts colleges are so well respected by the educated and wealthy classes that name recognition isn't an issue at all. People know these schools. The top dozen or so LACs in the northeast have an enrollment of over 20,000 students, so they are are pretty strong presence in this region and have been for a very long time.</p>
<p>As for "great", I guess it depends what your parents consider to be great people.</p>
<p>Among Swarthmore's more prominent alums are:</p>
<p>Helen Magill: first women to receive a PhD in the United States</p>
<p>Alice Paul, who led the movement to gain the right to vote for women in the United States.</p>
<p>Molly Yard Garrett, one of the founders of the National Organization for Women</p>
<p>David Baltimore: Nobel Prize winner and current president of CalTech</p>
<p>Patrick Awuah: worked for Microsoft for eight years following graduation from Swarthmore and then founded the first liberal arts college in his native Ghana</p>
<p>Nancy Grace Roman: headed the NASA astronomy department that developed the Hubble telescope</p>
<p>Here is collection of essays written by 4 dozen alums that is worth perusing:</p>
<p>I guess maybe its a regional thing. In the midwest, UChicago seems to be a much bigger name than Swat, at least among the middle-class professionals I've talked to. In the NE, it may be the opposite. It is true that a large % of Swats students are from private schools, which seems more of a NE phenomenon. I wish I knew some alums from both the colleges in my area -it might make it easier to compare. On the other hand, Swat seems to have changed in nature over time. Pre-1970s, although Swat had unique diversity for the time period it seems to have been mostly rich people, 1970s Swat was radical liberals, and more recently Swat has been mostly top-grades top-scores people. I have another concrete question: what are Rhodes Scholar awards based on? I ask because I know it's a prestigious award, and I'm just wondering if students from a particular school with a particular major win the award several years in a row, does indicate anything about overall strength of a program?</p>
<p>Swarthmore hasn't changed much for at least the last 80 years. Obviously, the times change and some periods (like the 60s and 70s) were more overtly "political" than today. But, Swarthmore's always been a "politically-conscious" and "brainy" school.</p>
<p>The Rhodes scholarship program provides two (or three years) post-grad study at Oxford. I think it requires both an academic and a sports component.</p>
<p>The President of Swarthmore who instituted the Honors Program in the 1920s had run the American office for the Rhodes Scholarship, as did his successor at Swarthmore. Although the honors program he instituted at Swarthmore is somewhat different, his idea for the program resulted from his own experiences in the tutorial system at Oxford.</p>
<p>Yes, I've read the essays, and I like many of them -although I wish there had been more recent ones. As I liked the essays, I think I was equally disturbed by some of the articles in the student newspaper, where current students seemed not to think quite so idealistically of their school. Perhaps though, it is nice that a college's students bother to question a college's purpose at all. Oh -do seminars only meet once a week?</p>