<p>Achat,
I think you are exactly right about this! Our viewing of the DVD was sorta nostaglic, but it certainly didn't capture anything of my daughter's experience, nor make the place more appealing to S, who has applied, nevertheless, based on D's glowing reports, the super classics department, and the opportunities to get involved in musical activities.</p>
<p>Hey momofthree, thanks for the nice comment. I admit I was just trying to stir the pot a bit and couldn't do more than get a Quaker comeback like the lady gently admonishing me that I am entitled to my opinion (which is more than some of the students at many campuses will give you these days--or the days of yesteryear for that matter) and the rhetorical question that followed that ascerbic comment. I was born and raised in Swarthmore, knew lots of the professors and their kids and knew lots of kids that went there. This was in the 50's and 60's. Swarthmore has to be one of the most magnificent campuses in the country ans I 've seen a lot of them. The town, of course is idylic and there is no oxymoron in the concept that a lot of kids love the school but that does not mean it is necessarily the best school for them. I absolutely loved to be on the campus and spent many many days studying in the old library, which was fabulous (the last time I was there it had been turned into the student center.) the library was a classic. ask your dad if he remembers the old circular wrought iron steps and the grates that lined the floors of the stacks. There was a beautiful big old reading room with double wooden doors and in the spring all the front doorss and the reading room doors and window were open to the sounds of the kids throwing frizbees all across the lawn sweeping down from the main academic building. The white painted adirock chairs wer guarding the top of the hill and if this place wan't the protype of the prettiest college in the country I don't know what was.</p>
<p>Wow, that's the nicest comment I've gotten so far. A Quaker comeback? I'm not a Quaker but I love it! Thanks, relaxwolf. :)</p>
<p>OOps sorry my big fingers hit the wrong button right in the middle of my speech. That's why I have so many typos as i read my stuff over (I am not illerate yet!) anyway, the point is that the two jocks who were my friends that went there --yes they were football players, did not have a good experience. I don't care a bit about football myself but when they do away with lacrosse--and i watched many a game ther in the 50's--it is all over. anyway, it was a strange place and even though the education was outstanding and i am sure still is, getting all these unusally bright and off-beat and avant garde people together was great for them for the moment but it took them away from the reality of say, flipping burgers at the MacDonald's in chester Pa. Many got to feeling that they had found a home in this environment and spent a lot of the remaider of their life wishing they were back at Swarthmore. thsi could be said of many kids at Maryland etc. but Maryland conatains a cross-section of rich and poor and academically gifted and not so gifted. swarthmore was and still is somewhat unique in its students with very high intellects completely sheltered environment and I believe (since I am entitled to my opinion--I guess) kids and professors that think an awful lot alike. I have seen more than a fair share of kids who never moved on once the reality of the world hit them when they came back into it. I do not think there is that kind of sheltered, protected environment in too many other places. That's all I'm saying. Ok this is a string on gender based admission and its becoming a Swarthmore fest. I am not aware of any statistics on yields for men and women but isn't the relevant issue acceptances? I know some cooleges will accept more to raise a desired yield --either mal or female--but I think living in the exact moment of this year the important thing would be to know the respective acceptance rates for men and women accompanied by their respective GPA's and SAT scores and, a breakdown even further by schools with in the University. I don't think the common data gives this and ther is a time lag for most schools that do provide it on their web sites.</p>
<p>I have to say that the alums of Swarthmore I have met seem totally normal and well-adjusted to me and not more nostalgic about Swarthmore than alums of other colleges.
A lot of people who liked their college experience do wax nostalgic about it; it's not unique to Swarthmore. Noone will say that Harvard or MIT or BU have the nicest campuses, but people who have gone there tend to like to stay on in the area-- as do people who went to Stanford.</p>
<p>I think the USNews College Guide website (the part you pay to subscribe to) has data on how many males and females applied, were accepted, and enrolled for each college. It is in the Admission section for the individual college.</p>
<p>By the way, relaxwolf, the athletics is not bad, but I'm not an expert at all, so don't make fun of me because I'm talking about D3 (all that talk of Swat being run by feminine men and all that)! The only thing that was eliminated is football. The D3 soccer is pretty good and Swarthmore was pretty high in last year's rounds:
<a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/athletics/team_mens_soccer/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.swarthmore.edu/athletics/team_mens_soccer/index.html</a></p>
<p>To quote the article:
"The mens soccer team made great strides during the 2004 season, playing in the Centennial Conference playoffs for the first time ever and reaching the finals of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Southern Region Tournament. Overall, the team went 12-7-2, and its 6-2-1 record "....</p>
<p>Repeated, therefore edited out..</p>
<p>At my school our top 10% is mostly female, our top 10 students however is only made up of 2 females.</p>
<p>There aren't any smart girls at my school. There are only girls who do well because they make flowery, neon-colored posters for BS presentations.</p>
<p>Not that there can't be smart girls, they just aren't here.</p>
<p>chalk, i was totally agree with you. The girls who sit around me in class are insane. They spend hours and hours coloring and highlighting and making their notes and projects beautiful. In the end the content is always the same or of lesser quality than mine but they always get the better grade or extra credit.</p>
<p>What goes around, comes around: weren't we talking about illegibile penmanship earlier in this thread (back around pages 2 and 3) and how it hurts grades? ;)</p>
<p>Finally, a club I can join. One for mothers of sons with small handwriting who take 45-minute showers. Count me in.</p>
<p>The original topic of this thread doesn't surprise me in the least. Girls are neurologically more advanced than boys from birth until at least late high school, and of course there are some who would argue that boys never catch up. The focus our society has put on girls in the last few decades has done wonders for their self esteem and opportunities, but may have made an already fragile male group even more apt to fall through the cracks. Add in the ever-increasing number of fatherless homes (I believe it is documented that boys handle divorce less well than girls) and it's just no surprise that boys are struggling.</p>
<p>While it is probably not politically correct, I was happy to see Laura Bush's decision to champion male youth. I think it's time to re-value the boys. A few generations ago, a boy who had nothing else could be kept in line simply by virtue of his family's pride in him as being the heir to the name. Today mothers are open in their preference for daughters. Angry young men have a much harder time finding their way to college.</p>
<p>Women don't hold or talk or make as much eye contact with their boy babies as with their girl babies and it shows in the behavior of young boys as well as their frequent academic lag. My sons have both always had advanced verbal skills for their age; my younger one found the gap between himself and other boys so frustrating that he often sought out girls for friendship due to their higher level functioning.</p>
<p>They really are two different creatures, men and women. But it seems our society is bent upon accentuating those differences. If mothers weren't so worried about "making men" out of their baby boys, they would probably make far better men than they've even imagined.</p>
<p>Bravo Dizzy, I am trying to do my part in bringing up men like this!</p>
<p>Luckily they have a dad with a highly evolved attitude. (He cooks, hugs, & cries!) So far, my boys are sensitive, loving, & great.</p>
<p>There is a book called "Real Boys" that helped me a lot in understanding the pressures on boys (and men) to be macho and bulletproof.</p>
<p>
[quote]
While it is probably not politically correct, I was happy to see Laura Bush's decision to champion male youth. I think it's time to re-value the boys. A few generations ago, a boy who had nothing else could be kept in line simply by virtue of his family's pride in him as being the heir to the name. Today mothers are open in their preference for daughters. Angry young men have a much harder time finding their way to college.
[/quote]
We have spent many years focusing on making sure girls have every opportunity. In the mean time, we have forgotten how important it is to raise good boys. I don't see the male/female college gap changing any time soon without some greater emphasis on boys.</p>
<p>well said Dizzymom.</p>
<p>I am proud to say I am a self-motivated young man, but I paid the price for not having my parents moral support as far as school is concerned (they dont know my grades, they just know theyre good) with lousy sophomore year grades. Im over it now and working hard to get those grades up in my junior year (straight A's so far on a tough workload.) I wont make the same mistakes in college.</p>
<p>I have really enjoyed reading this thread. First, I have two boys whose grades have routinely suffered from homework zeros or what I like to call "process" errors. The story of losing a full grade because uncollected homework was suddenly checked is the story of my older son's life. You might think he would have learned from the first mistake but in young males, magical thinking seems to endure. The frustration of seeing A averages on tests and Bs on report cards simply because of process, not knowledge, has just about driven me nuts trying to understand and solve. My second son, who is ADHD, easily achieves As on tests, projects, etc. if he remembers to write them in his planner, and if he brings the planner home, oh, and if he brings the right materials home. Just a few weeks ago he brought home NO books or binders Friday for the Midterms that started Monday. Oh well, is all he said.</p>
<p>I am working on my doctorate and I am obsessive about my work. I thought I would be a good role model but they think I am being a teacher's pet. They also tell me I am being a girl. Thus, I think it is true that girls are either more mature, see the big picture and know the importance of doing what the teacher expects, or are more compliant. Boys seem to find that complete compliance with school requirements a girl thing <g>!</g></p>
<p>OTOH, I think young men today have clearly been given the message about "girl power". They did not live through the earlier years so a perspective that girls needed a boost is just not there. In their experience is they are being slighted or rejected in favor of girls. I don't support this kind of thinking but teachers still challenge the girls to show their girl power and laud it when present in the classroom.</p>
<p>i'm not going to take the time to read all of this since it's the same stuff my APUS history teacher spews... and he's a wacko, but here's the deal males on AVERAGE will be inferior to females, but almost always the VERY BEST are usually a small group of males trailed by many females... i've observed this in a number of schools</p>
<p>there are many hard-working males, but females probably have a higher percentage of hard-working types</p>
<p>So many moms blaming girls for being too cooperative!! Yes it's true & that is why girls with social/communicator skills excel in producing homework on time, etc. Boys are non-compliant and break rules more often, thus score lower in school. C'est la vie. Both are smart, both show it in different ways. My girl is more noncompliant than average and at least 1 teacher scored her off for not being more of a (dutiful) girl! </p>
<p>PS don't blame society or mothers, it's hardwired genetics. Boys end up competing harder in the long run and get more "prizes" by sheer willpower - IQ is not everything. It'll all get solved after they enter college.</p>
<p>Here are a few data points to consider. I've listed whether the school was historically co-ed or whether it recently became co-ed after a long history of excluding women. I've also listed whether or not the school is perceived as being a "jock" school or not (are varsity sports a major defining characteristic of the school? Do an unusually high percentage of students on varsity teams? Is there a perceived "frat boy/jock" social scene?).</p>
<p>Data is from the fall 2003 entering class. It's available on the common data sets and in the USNEWS on-line database.</p>
<p>I think you will find that the top schools around the country tend to attract more female applicants UNLESS the school's traditional customer base was exclusively male. Even these schools (Harvard, Williams, etc.) feel the same demographic trends as they have now reached 50%/50% only a few short years after accepting women for the first time. For example, the very first women whose mothers attended these schools are just now reaching college age.</p>
<p>A second element is the pressure to stock the large male sports teams. Thus, places like Amherst and Davidson accept or yield more men, despite higher numbers of female applicants, in part because women can't fill the 72 varsity football roster spots. 72 is a big number relative to the very small populations at the LACs.</p>
<p>I looked at the male/female ratios at every school on my daughter's list because of the obvious implications on acceptance odds. I found, at the time, that it was bad to be a woman pretty much across the board. For example, William & Mary was off the charts.</p>
<hr>
<p>Swarthmore: (coed; not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 1,686
Male acceptances: 450
Male freshman enrollment: 170 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 2,222
Female acceptances: 470
Female freshman enrollment: 198 </p>
<hr>
<p>Amherst: (all male; jock school)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 2,657
Male acceptances: 486
Male freshman enrollment: 216 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 2,974
Female acceptances: 515
Female freshman enrollment: 197</p>
<hr>
<p>Pomona: (coed; not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 1,838
Male acceptances: 465
Male freshman enrollment: 196 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 2,701
Female acceptances: 492
Female freshman enrollment: 203 </p>
<hr>
<p>Davidson: (all male; jock school)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 1,856
Male acceptances: 631
Male freshman enrollment: 254 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 2,071
Female acceptances: 618
Female freshman enrollment: 238</p>
<hr>
<p>Wesleyan (all male, not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 2,937
Male acceptances: 841
Male freshman enrollment: 341 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 4,018
Female acceptances: 1,013
Female freshman enrollment: 376</p>
<hr>
<p>Williams: (all male; major jock school)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 2,665
Male acceptances: 558
Male freshman enrollment: 261 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 2,676
Female acceptances: 575
Female freshman enrollment: 272</p>
<hr>
<p>UChic: (coed; not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 4,350
Male acceptances: 1,686
Male freshman enrollment: 560 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 4,750
Female acceptances: 1,919
Female freshman enrollment: 612 </p>
<hr>
<p>Emory (Coed; not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 4,460
Male acceptances: 1,840
Male freshman enrollment: 588 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 5,912
Female acceptances: 2,517
Female freshman enrollment: 708</p>
<hr>
<p>Columbia: (all male, not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 6,206
Male acceptances: 803
Male freshman enrollment: 500 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 8,442
Female acceptances: 840
Female freshman enrollment: 511</p>
<hr>
<p>Oberlin (coed, not jock)</p>
<p>Male applicants: 2,473
Male acceptances: 878
Male freshman enrollment: 317 </p>
<p>Female applicants: 3,510
Female acceptances: 1,281
Female freshman enrollment: 445</p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>