<p>Does it have to be like: "I want to go to Swat because they have this and that?" Because I wrote an allegorical story about the freedom that knowledge brings, but perhaps it's way too general and Swarthmore wants an essay that's specifically about them. What are they looking for?</p>
<p>I'm guessing they want the reason you want to attend Swarthmore and why you feel its the right place for you, rather than just because you heard it was a great school from USNews.com rankings</p>
<p>I wrote about why I knew Swat would be a great fit for me and vice versa (drew lots of comparisons with my HS also) and threw in names of places I stayed/ate at during my visits wherever they fit in.</p>
<p>Just a suggestion:
Make sure you mention why Swat is the place where feel you could best attain your "freedom" if you don't want to change your essay too much because if not one could perceive it as your own personal choice essay instead of "Why Swat?"</p>
<p>What they are looking for is an essay that shows you understand something about what makes Swarthmore distinctively Swarthmore and that allows them to picture you as a Swattie contributing to the campus community.</p>
<p>There are many ways to write an effective Why Swat essay, but they all communicate a certain Swattiness.</p>
<p>Your allegorical story may or may not do that effectively, although the odds of a generically written Why Swat essay being really effective probably aren't high. Nothing inherently wrong with the allegorical story approach, though. What you describe could be very effective in theory.</p>
<p>What my essay is trying to say is that Swarthmore is a place where you can learn everything you want to, and thus, freedom through knowledge. However, that's kind of the mantra for every LAC, isn't it? Is that too general?</p>
<p>BTW, what separates Swarthmore from, say, Williams?</p>
<p>nbach: at this late stage of the process, not knowing what separates swat from williams is not a good thing. i think they are vastly different and think that most students attending either would be quite uncomfortable at the other institution if they were forced to swap.</p>
<p>I'm afraid mine is too uncreative. I talk about my passion for Eng. and then I get really specific in the essay about why I want to go to swat, like certain professors or clubs. but it's not like those creative essays talking about bottled water or w/e.</p>
<p>It doesn't have to be creative...my son's essay wasn't. If it comes from the heart and shows you understand something about the college culture, that seems to be enough.</p>
<p>And your wanting engineering is a plus as I can see..in these days when the country needs more engineers and scientists, that urge should be encouraged. But that is just my opinion...</p>
<p>I agree with Achat. The essays don't necessarily have to be "creative". If that is your natural writing approach, fine. but a nice, simple essay can be equally effective.</p>
<p>If anything, I think students may feel that they have to be too "creative" or "profound" with their college essays. That's a flaw in most of the "How to Write College Essays"... too many of the examples are heavy overcoming adversity or dealing with crisis essays. I call 'em "Dawson's Creek" essays.</p>
<p>I had all my essays written up before I got into Princeton. For my why Swath essay I wrote mostly about the Quaker ethos and it's quaker heritage. Since I went to a Quaker run high school- I drew many similarities and expanded the idea of learning under those guidelines and the advantages it offers to an all-round education and in more areas than just pure academics ... especially the emphasis on ethics and morals in everything we do ! :)</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure I'm just overlooking it, but...is there a word limit for the Why Swat essay?</p>
<p>hmm, not sure about a word limit, but i remember messing with the margins and font and stuff to make sure it all fit on one page</p>
<p>i think it might have been around 500 but mines was about 580 so i'm sure it's okay to go over</p>
<p>I don't believe it has a word limit, though if you have a paper copy of the supplement the space for the essay is only about a page which suggest that 500ish words would be appropriate. </p>
<p>As far as what separates Swat from Williams, I felt very, very different atmospheres at the two schools when I visited. I chalk some of that up to the fact that I visited Williams during midterms and Swat just after fall break, which certainly affected some things, but I think some of the differences were quite real. Williams seemed to put more emphasis on sports and seemed somewhat "preppier" to me (squash courts, semesters spent sailing, emphasis on the Oxford program). Williams also has a winter study program that is an integral part of the Williams program. The entry system (in which first-year Williams students are broken down into co-ed groups of 30ish students that live together with junior advisors) makes the freshman experience at Williams quite different from that at Swats. Also, (this is my Swarthmore-grad sociologist father speaking here) the fact that Williams has multiple dining halls rather than one unified (Sharples-style) hall affects how much students interact and how unified the campus is. Williams is also somewhat larger than Swarthmore. Though U.S. News-type statistics make the schools seem similar, I found that Williams and Swarthmore had very different atmospheres and took the education of their two extremely bright student bodies in quite different directions when I visited. IMHO, Williams is more like Amherst or an Ivy than it is like Swarthmore, and Swarthmore is more like Oberlin or Chicago than it is like Amherst ( though really none of those are very good comparisons). Before visiting, Swarthmore was my clear first choice and Williams was a strong second. After visiting, Swarthmore was still my clear first choice and Williams had dropped off the list entirely. Both are great schools that have some things in common, but I think that largely arbitrary rankings and faceless statistics (SAT scores, class rank, etc.) make them seems much more similar than they really are.</p>
<p>Megblum,</p>
<p>Thanks a lot. This is a great comparison of the two school. I think the comparison of Swarthmore with Chicago and Oberlin is apt (perhaps also a bit of Reed?), although the schools are certainly not identical.</p>