Questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
1

Hi I’m new to this website but I’m hoping I could receive some advice.

I recently visited Swarthmore college and I really liked it and I think it would be a good fit for me. After touring the campus and listening to the information session, I decided I probably want to apply to Swat next year. However, as usual, I thought up a bunch of questions on the way home and have no one to ask. (A little bit about me ~ I’m currently a high school junior pursuing an IB diploma. I play varsity tennis for my school and I have 2 hour practices 3-5 times a week year round at my club. I also love musical theater and played a lead in my school’s musical this year. Every Saturday, I attend music school at a local college where I mainly study piano and voice. My SAT score is decent and I manage to keep straight A’s in all my IB classes so I’m used to studying really hard and managing my time well. In college, I want to go down the “premed track” and probably major in biology. I’m the oldest child in my family and my parents both grew up in Europe (they are clueless) so guidance would be much appreciated. )

  1. The admissions worker said that Swarthmore doesn’t give out a GPA… But there are grades, right? How does that work? How would a med school, for example, see your academic achievements?
  2. I believe she also said taking classes at UPenn is often an option. How would one go about doing that? Is that only for courses that the Tri-college consortium don’t offer? What would be an example of a course like that?
  3. This might be more of a personal question, but how much of my current interests could I reasonably consider continuing? For example, how big of a time commitment are D3 varsity sports? Are club sports more flexible? I’m afraid of sacrificing my grades. If I majored in biology, minored in music/theater, AND did club tennis would that be too much??
  4. Research is also something I’d like to take advantage of. Are there many opportunities for that?

Sorry that my questions are all over the place.

2
  1. There are grades. You calculate your own GPA.
  2. It’s easy, you can register for classes starting your freshman spring. Details on the registrar website. My friend is taking a course for graduate students on biomedical law at Penn right now.
  3. Our tennis team is chill. t’s a pretty big commitment but Swatties overload themselves very effectively. Your plan doesn’t sound too bad.
  4. Yes, for hard sciences.
3

@coniferoustree - nerdybamboo gives good advice.

You don’t get grades in your classes your first semester at Swat so that you can get used to the workload and expectations. After that, you are graded in your classes and you can calculate your own GPA. Law schools and med schools may recalculate. Taking classes at Penn is an option but, logistically, it isn’t the easiest thing to do since the schools don’t operate with the exact same time schedule for classes. I believe that you can do the varsity sport and have a major and minor. For example, my recent graduate actually double majored in the Honors Program in exactly what you are suggesting, plus played a high level club sport for 3 years, and did several other time-consuming activities. I’m not being more specific because of trying to preserve his anonymity. :slight_smile: He did summer science research through Swat. They are very generous in helping you with those opportunities.

4

Thank you very much! :smiley:

5

Hey! I’m a theater-ish kid here (not a major but involved).

My friend last year was a Bio/Theater major (or minor…?) and he managed to do that and a capella and be crazy involved at the same time. It’s possible, but you’ll be busy. The theater department (especially the faculty) are amazing. They’re some of my favorite people on campus and make me feel at home when I’m with them.

Question back to you: what kind of research? Bio research? Humanities research? Regardless, rest assured that there are PLENTY of research opportunities. All of my science friends who wanted to do research this summer have that opportunity and I’m doing research in another division too!

Let me know if you have more specific theater questions!