Most Rigorous LACs

College Search & Selection
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<p>Maybe the difference in rigor comes from Swarthmore’s honor college, which I don’t think Pomona students are allowed to take. </p>

<p>But yeah, trust me, at Pomona, academics take up a lot of time. In my personal case the work-load never really stopped- I always had some reading, homework set, project, essay/etc. to do. Looking at previous CC threads I can sympathize with a lot of comments made for Swarthmore’s difficulty with Pomona’s, such as here: </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/575010-difficulty-courses-swarthmore.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/575010-difficulty-courses-swarthmore.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Swat vs Pomona - We live in the area of Swat. We visited Pomona for my DS who has recently applied. My DS would not even consider applying to Swat.</p>

<p>The difference to DS was not that the classes are easier at Pomona, but that he felt an East Coast/West Coast difference. Pomona students where more vocal about being “balanced” and taking time for ECs and outdoor exercise. Swat students were very, very proud that they study 24/7. </p>

<p>I can’t imagine these schools who attract 2100+ SAT/32+ ACT, well rounded students to ever be a walk in the park. Peer Group alone would push the class discussions IMO.</p>

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<p>One more question that has NO answer that is based on evidence or facts, but plenty of answers based on opinions and remotely educated guesses. </p>

<p>The reality is that nobody can answer that question, except to describe the school he or she attended, and without any real comparisons. Even exchange semesters do not provide valid comparisons as students do NOT repeat the same classes, or would be wise to not commit academic suicide in picking the hardest classes at the “other” school.</p>

<p>All that is available is pure hearsay and this type of question merely yields answers that happen to “sound” good to the biased and selective ears of the responders. There are NO real tools to measure how rigorous a program is. After all, highly selective schools admit students who have shown superior prior performance, and many factors come into play in average GPAs or graduation rates. Does the requirement of a thesis REALLY intimate that the requirements are rigorous? What if this requirement happens to fall in the perfect wheelhouse of a candidate?</p>

<p>In the end, ALL you have are individual performances versus fit to measure. Not groups!</p>

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<p>What about Vassar, Dartmouth, Brown, Williams, & Bowdoin. I think these would be in the group and I’m sure there are more. I guess it depends on how you define “rigorous”.</p>

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<p>D’mouth and Brown aren’t usually classified as LACs–they have robust grad programs. Vassar is great, but not as rigorous. Same for Bowdoin. </p>

<p>Williams, definitely.</p>

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<p>Nostalgic, I don’t think anyone is trying to deny that Pomona is a rigorous school.</p>

<p>Having been accepted to both schools and attending both RTT and The Weekend, I think Swarthmore’s rigor comes from the fact that the academics are the defining factor. Life revolves around the academics and the students take them most seriously. Honors colleges show how important academics are for the school. In that thread that you linked to I really agree with interesteddad’s comment:</p>

<p>"What makes Swarthmore unique is that academics are its signature quality. It’s like: you go to Maine for the lobster; you go to Swarthmore for the academics. It attracts students who want to play a championship golf course from the back tees. The professors, in turn, feed off the students.</p>

<p>It’s not that Swarthmore is “harder” per se. There’s just a campus culture that really values academics as a top priority in the college experience. You find that the average Swarthmore student really, really loves many of his or her courses. Like, would take them just for fun."</p>

<p>Many of these hold true for Pomona, but to a lesser extent, in part due to the vibe of the students (more mainstream, West-coast, well-rounded).</p>

<p>To add onto the thread, I have friends who attend Vassar and Williams and they are struggling quite a bit with the workload!</p>

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<p>^A lot of those are puzzling, but the one I wonder about the most is why Wooster? </p>

<p>Their graduation requirements include an extremely grueling thesis, the school is no walk in the park. Take a look at Loren Pope’s book for more info.</p>

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<p>Not to knock Wooster, but there are a lot of LACs where a thesis or final project is required and Pope’s book has named tons of LACs over the years.</p>

29

<p>I agree with xiggi that no one really knows, but heck, this is CC; if we all stuck to what we actually know, there would be no CC, right?</p>

<p>I’m going to say Swat. My D1 attends Haverford, which I regard as an extremely rigorous school, with a very heavy workload and extremely high academic expectations. D1 is a hard-working, committed, conscientious student who does all the assigned work and then some, does it well and in a timely fashion, and always tries to take it a step beyond expectations. She’s doing very well academically and getting, IMO, a first-rate education, as good as any on the planet, but she comes home at the end of each semester completely drained and exhausted. </p>

<p>D1 knows quite a few kids at Swat, and she says she’s glad she’s not there because the workload and the expectations at Swat are even higher, to the point that some of the people she knows there are on the verge of burning out or collapsing mentally and emotionally. Most won’t, of course; Swat has a very high graduation rate. But the way she describes the culture at Swat borders on collective masochism: students take a perverse pride in how hard it is, how they are pushed (or push themselves) to the very limits of human endurance, how much pain they endure, beyond the breaking point for most people (i.e., us lesser mortals). Not to say that they don’t also find joy in learning and their classes and research projects and so on. But there is also a distinctly masochistic edge to it. It’s not even a competitive thing at least internally; it’s a collective identity, perhaps a little like Marine boot camp (where of course I’ve never been, either), a sense that “We’re all in this together and frankly it’s a kind of living hell, but we’ll all get through this together because we’re Swatties and unlike most of the rest of the world, we can take it. ‘The few. The proud. The Swatties.’”</p>

<p>In comparison, Haverford is seen both by 'Fords and by Swatties as a kind of “Swarthmore lite.” Plenty rigorous for D1’s taste, thank you, and for mine as a protective parent.</p>

<p>Of course this is all based on third-hand anecdote, and some of the anecdotes may have been exaggerated for effect. That could be part of the culture as well.</p>

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<p>Swat sounds totally awesome. I continue to regret not having applied.</p>

31

<p>I’m going to say the Academies. </p>

<p>They have a core curriculum which includes 30 hours of engineering and hard math/sciences. Everyone also has to take"soft" subjects like psych, econ, philosophy, english, history, speech, law. The average course load is 20 hours per semester. When you add in summer programs (required for everyone) you graduate with 178 semester hours of credit. </p>

<p>On top of that you have requirements to participate in intramurals and military training to include Saturday morning inspections and parades monthly.</p>

32

<p>A lot of this discussion is splitting hairs. Every top LAC grad I’ve ever talked to mentions that graduate school work is so much easier than their undergraduate courses. These comments come regardless of the grad school or the discipline. The obvious conclusion is that all of these LACs are rigorous and prepare their graduates well for whatever comes after. Arguing these minor points of relative rigor among them seems waaaaaaay too inside baseball.</p>