Thanks for commenting.
I apologize, what do you mean by this? Swarthmore is in PA.
Reed is a school we are also considering.
We would like to visit the colleges on a tour but that was not possible due to COVID. We plan to do so in the near future.
We would like to visit the colleges on a tour but that was not possible due to COVID. We plan to do so in the near future.
We had planned to visit the colleges on a tour but that was not possible due to COVID. We intend to do so in the near future.
I was just saying - itās very much in and connected to society vs. in the middle of nowhere (in regards to connectivity to a metropolis). My humor is warped sometimes.
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Thank you for commenting.
I understand Pomona is a very good liberal arts school, so I am not surprised she did not find Swarthmore to be much more rigorous. The āmisery pokerā is something that put off both myself and my son. I went to an intense college myself, and I always found that attitude toxic.
As for studying or partying at 10pm, I canāt imagine doing either! I just donāt have the energy to be out and about that late.
Oh, I understand. I was just confused. Thanks for clarifying.
Amherst is fairly connected as well; the town is sizeable, and they are right next to UMass Amherst. Williams on the other hand is right in the Berkshires.
If youāre worried about gym requirements, figure out what is actually required. For example, I have a kid at a midwestern LAC where everyone has to take one semester of the same gym class, kind of like in high school. But my Pomona kid could choose from a wide variety of classes to satisfy the PE requirement, from rock climbing to yoga to intro weightlifting ā there were options for all levels of intensity, interest and ability.
The train station at Swarthmore is super convenient. Much easier for a kid without a car to go from Swat to Center City Philadelphia than to go from Pomona to downtown LA , and much easier to get around in Philly once you get there than LA. How much they actually do that, though, is another question.
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Amherst is obviously in a town / area with many schools but you had mentioned he is used to public transport.
Honestly, I think with all these schools, thereās enough to do on/near campus or kids will uber or one will have a car if they do want to go somewhere.
My point, though, was Swarthmore is not rural or disconnected.
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I know Haverford has an Intro class everybody must take. They also require two additional classes.
Swarthmore allows students who do club sport to skip two of the four required classes, but Haverford only gives credit to varsity athletes. I also know Swarthmore has a bunch of dancing classes that fulfill the requirement. I imagine Haverford is similar.
I was going to suggest Pomona even before I read your āmisery pokerā reply.
I might be biased because weāve already started packing to take our D '25 there.
But I have one more insight to share, a tale of two insanely selective public high schools in our big city that I think has some relevance here.
In one of them, the competition how little sleep one needs was as intense as the academic competition.
In the other one, where D went, the principal asked by an eager student how long the school library remains open for study, replied: āUntil 9 pm but if I see you there in the evening, I would strongly suggest focusing on your social life.ā He realized that the kids so ambitious and smart do not need the pressure cooker, quite the contrary.
And yet, Dās high school is much, much higher in USNWR ranking (for whatever it is worth), and is sending about 40% of the current class to T40 schools, including an impressive number going Ivies and T10 LACs. I donāt have hard stats for mental health outcomes but anecdotes seem to confirm what one would expect from this cultural difference.
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The biggest issue in the athletics front is that Swat has a required swim testā¦a throwback to the early days of the school when recreational swimming was becoming popular and people were drowning. You have to swim one or two laps (donāt remember which) and then tread water for 10 mins. Everyone passesā¦
As for the physical education classes, my Swattie was an athlete, so I donāt know about the requirements. My Haverford grad met the requirements by taking some fairly passive classes (yoga, pilates?), and received credit for going to the gym twice a week and doing almost anything there. It was literally impossible to fail if you signed in.
The bigger issue you mentioned was culture. Our experiences have been that Haverford is a bit more focused on sports in terms of social status, activities, etc. The athletes at Haverford tend to spend more time together than they do at Swat. These differences are smallā¦but the Swat kids seemed to be less āorganizedā away from the field (not always eating as a group when out of seasonā¦not living together) than the Haverford kids.
We looked at many of the NESCAC schools, including multiple visits to Bowdoin. The athletics focus at those schools seemed a bit stronger than at Haverford. Swats had some good teams recently including the Menās BB national champs (in the COVID shortened 2019-2020 season), but even then sports donāt command too much of the energy on campus.
So whatās the difference between the kids at Swat and Haverford? Haverford kids are smart and social. They are very, very good at something beyond schoolwork. Swatties are smart, slightly less social (they are fine spending a Friday night in the dorm if thereās no reason to go out), but excel at multiple things. They play a sport and the celloā¦they sing and know all of the migrating birds in the US by name, color, and call. Swatties are a bit harder to get to knowā¦yet provide endless surprises. If you are going to get stuck on an islandā¦take a Ford. If you are competing on a quiz showā¦bring a Swattie.
Both were great experiences, but slightly different.
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Iāll give you my thoughts and try and qualify what I know from first hand experience, perception from a reasonable distance and hearsay.
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Swat is not in the middle of nowhere. The Philly Main Line area is one of the nicest places youāll find and itās very busy. Itās almost inaccurate to say itās in a suburb, which it is, but itās a pretty busy and dense suburb. And unlike many consortiums, the Swat/BM/Haverford group are in close physical proximity. No concern with middle of nowhere there at all.
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NESCAC and Sports - NESCAC is arguably the most successful D3 sports conference in the country. So most if not all the schools have competitive sports programs. You canāt use āNESCACā here for the point about which youāre concerned. Gotta go school by school. I can tell you first hand at Wes, a sports ācultureā doesnāt even influence, much less dominate the school. The football games in our experience are well attended, but in that crowd are parents, alumni, etc. Many of the students who attend (many donāt) tend to gather near the north end of the stadium in the middle of campus and socialize and tailgate and not follow the game. Wesleyan has enthusiasm for itself, but itās not a ārah rah go teamā thing; rather, itās an excuse to gather and do something. D was a varsity athlete and we had to drag her to football games.
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Rest of NESCAC schools - my perception from my NESCAC travels is that, among the rest of the schools in the conference, it probably varies. By strong reputation and some small amount of observation, Middlebury may cross the line of comfort you are describing. But they are not strong in my Dās sport, so we paid much more attention to Williams, Bates, Hamilton and, to a lesser extent, Tufts. Especially as between Williams and Wesleyan the rivalry can be acrimonious and intense. I saw that, @Williams and @Wesleyan. But that is mostly, I think, for the athletes, athletic alumni and their parents. I didnāt have a kid at either of the other 2 schools, so Iāll just say that, based on some anecdotal experience, the Little Three campuses are full of kids who could not care less about sports and rivalries. Iāve always been under the impression that a non-sporty kid at Wes, Williams, Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Tufts, etc. etc. would have more than enough of their tribe to have a full experience. So, at least as to Wes, I can categorically confirm that any notion of it being too āsportyā is inaccurate an even more poor basis upon which to decide not to attend than itās āactivismā rep. Thereās no there there I promise you. And while it may be different, Iād strongly suspect the same is true for most of the rest of the NESCAC with the exception of Midd and, maybe, Trinity.
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Swat and Haverford have competent and in many cases high achieving athletic teams. Different conference, so I canāt say at all about the athlete/NARP divide. No idea. Though, again, Iād be surprised if a non-sport kid felt uncomfortable on either campus because of being a non-sport kid.
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Swatās intensity - Iāve been hearing about that since I was an undergrad many, many years ago. I go with the āwhere thereās smoke thereās fireā on that one. Again, no kids attended, so I leave it to others who know more.
Hope this helps.
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Yes, small colleges with full sets of sports teams (like all of the listed ones) will have lots of athletic participation and therefore more likely to have a (participatory) sports-influenced cultureā¦ It is also possible that sports may be a āprivilegedā extracurricular in admission reading, due to the desire to provide a pool of potential walk-on athletes to fill all of those teams.
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Swarthmore and Haverford are both located in prosperous bedroom suburbs of Philadelphia, a major city with siginificant cultural offerings, on commuter train lines. Wesleyan is located in a middle/lower middle class large town, that has public transportation to Hartford and New Haven. Overall, I would say that Swarthmore and Haverford have the advantage, in terms of location.
I donāt know what his stats are, but I would say that he should probably apply to all three schools. Both Wesleyan and Haverford have a history of very strong political activism, and a very left-wing atmosphere. Read about the student strike at Haverford last fall.
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Amherst is really quite small - probably no bigger in terms of shops and restaurants than the three other schools considered, and maybe smaller. UMass Amherst is close by, but my kidās experience was that the Amherst kids looked down on the UMass kids, and there was very little mixing. The 5 college consortium is similar to the Quaker consortium, but no Ivy. Boston is at least 2 hrs by car, as opposed to commuter rail into Philly. If the young man wants access to a major city that has a lot to offer, the Quaker consortium schools are a better option.
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Thank you for the reply.
I am aware that Middletown has little to offer in terms of public transport. We just hoped there would be opportunities for activity and going out within the city itself. From what I have heard, Swarthmore is pretty far from Haverford.
We are familiar with the student strike. Does Swarthmore not have as much of a lefty atmosphere as Wesleyan or Haverford?
Historically, Middletown is the county seat for Middlesex County in Connecticut; the county courthouse is there; the main office of the Social Security Administration is there; the biggest hospital in the county is there. It is easy to get fixated on the role it plays in securing the social welfare of the people of Central Connecticut. For all of that, it is also one of the liveliest restaurant scenes of any small city in New England. I would compare it favorably to Northampton (MA) which is a slightly more interesting college town than Amherst.
If the town of Swarthmore is anything like those New England towns with their walkable Main streets in close proximity to wealthy, verdant, liberal arts colleges, I havenāt heard about it. Iāve heard the biggest off-campus draw is the Target on Baltimore Pike.
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I think neither Swarthmore nor Haverford are especially lively. However, both offer easy access to train services, unlike Middletown.
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Sounds like a Hobsonās choice: an interesting college town versus a way to āget out of Dodgeā as quickly as possible.
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Your son should be comfortable at:
Swarthmore College
Haverford College
Wesleyan University
Yale University
Brown University
NYU
Macalester College
Skidmore College
Grinnell College in Iowa is very gay friendly, but in an isolated location.
Occidental College
Vassar College may be a great school for your son to consider.
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