<p>ID: I believe that part. My son's complaint about his English and Econ professors - who are on the permanent staff but new - was that they were too mechanical in their delivery, as if teaching just for the sake of their jobs. The students seem to want a lot more...in the end most of the new professors get into the rhythm of the place. There is synergy between what the students expect and what the professors deliver and expect and that seems to be part of the culture. Imo, that makes Swarthmore a unique place.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is synergy between what the students expect and what the professors deliver and expect and that seems to be part of the culture.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree. That really is Swarthmore in a nutshell. The most recent accreditation review panel headed by the Pres. of Oberlin noted the unusual degree to which the students, faculty, and administration are on the same page and trust each other.</p>
<p>On new professors. I get a kick reading about the most loved professors at Williams today. Some of them were brand new youngsters when I was there and weren't very engaging at all. Teaching is an art that has to be learned over time I think.</p>
<p>Tim Burke points out the problem. PhD programs are so exclusively research oriented these days that there really is no mechanism for learning how to teach. The TA positions are more slave labor than something that is viewed as learning experience. Thus, you are either born a great teacher or you have to figure it out as you go. Figuring it out as you go can be problematic if your tenure priorities are screaming in your ear, "don't waste time on teaching, work on that book."</p>
<p>Does anyone have stats on getting into top law schools and grad school out of Swat out of # who apply, instead of just totals?</p>
<p>There were threads that had the exact %s for each different major at Swarthmore...but they've been deleted. (Too old?)</p>
<p>Anyways, perhaps someone saved the results?</p>
<p>Here is the list of graduate schools most often attended by recent Swarthmore graduates, listed in order, starting with the most common, as provided to USNEWS by the college: </p>
<p>U. C. Berkeley
Univ. of Chicago
Harvard
M. I. T.
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Princeton
Stanford
Oxford
Duke
Columbia
Cornell
Yale
University of Wisconsin</p>
<p>Oh, I know Swat has a very high % of total students getting into great grad schools, compared with other schools. I'm curious about OF THE STUDENTS THAT APPLY, what % get into the schools?</p>
<p>I don't think that's a valid question. The answer is just same as it would be if you asked, "How many College Confidential high schoolers get into college?"</p>
<p>The answer is "almost all of them".</p>
<p>You don't graduate from an elite college and just throw darts, hoping to hit a number. If your plans include grad school or med school or law school, you target selected programs that are a match for your finances, your work experience, your academic transcript, your test scores, etc. Thus, the med school acceptance rate is something in the neighborhood of 90%. </p>
<p>Who knows what the acceptance rate at Harvard Med School would be if every pre-med grad applied there? That's not the way med school admissions work. People don't waste time applying to programs they aren't likely to get into (in contrast to the way some kids approach college admissions).</p>
<p>The "statistics" your are looking for are increasingly difficult to track because professional schools are more and more expecting students to gain work eperience after college before enrolling in grad school. For example, top MBA programs pretty much require work experience. Many pre-med students now take a post-grad research position for a couple of years before applying to med school, especially those looking at top research-oriented med schools.</p>
<p>Ok then -since no one in my family or circle of friends attended grad school, apparently I'm in the dark here. Do you think students from all the "elite" college institutions with good transcripts and work have about equal chances of getting into top grad programs? (I heard Harvard, for instance, is not well regarded by med schools because of its grade inflation). What about Carleton vs. UChicago vs. Swat, for instance?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do you think students from all the "elite" college institutions with good transcripts and work have about equal chances of getting into top grad programs?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes. At that level of college/university, the grad schools accept the individual students and their transcripts and their summer internships and their community service and so on and so forth. UChicago or Swarthmore or Carelton would be unquestioned on a grad school application. The grad school admissions people know the good colleges.</p>
<p>I read recently the average GPA of Swarthmore grads accepted to Ivy League med schools in recent years is 3.7</p>
<p>Ok, thank you. I just wasn't sure because Swat is considerably harder to get into than UChicago, so I wasn't really sure how their workload would compare. (I know they're both very high quantity, I wasn't sure how they compared in terms of quality vs. busy work, etc.)</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, could you provide the URL for the grad school info? I dream of grad school in Europe...</p>
<p>I can't comment on UChicago, but I asked my daughter about "busy work" at Swarthmore and she laughed.</p>
<p>She said, "You go to Swarthmore to learn and the work the professors assign are things that they think will help you learn."</p>
<p>With the exception of math and science courses where there are problem sets and lab reports to turn in and get graded, there's no such thing as "homework" in the sense of stuff you "hand in" on a regular basis.</p>
<p>The assignments are mostly reading, which you then discuss in class. You are graded on class participation.</p>
<p>Most courses have a mid-term exam or paper and a final exam or paper. With very few exceptions these require applying what you have read to an analysis of something else. Just memorizing "facts" won't get you very far in most courses. </p>
<p>Some courses have additional short papers due throughout the semester, again applying concepts you've read and discussed to some new scenario.</p>
<p>The primary day in and day out workload is reading, reading, reading. You pretty much have to keep up with at least the key reading assignments because there's nowhere to hide in a class of 12 people when you are expected to contribute to a discussion. In fact, my D tries to include at least one "lecture" class on her schedule each semester just to balance the workload a bit. Not that those classes are any easier, but you be a bit more "passive" and hide in class if something has to slide due to a heavy reading load in other classes that week.</p>
<p>Hmm... it's too bad you guys weren't talking about these specs when I was trying to decide colleges. I must say that you make Swat really sound NOTHING like my Smith experience. Most of my classes were big (30 or more). And even in a 15 person polisci class, a majority of the students did not do all the reading or participate in class. I certainly received busy work in a couple of classes, like Stats. My Writing Intensive class consisted of writing a 1-pg paper once a week. My upper-level biology class was focused more on fact memorization than building critical research skills -and the culture of Smith was certainly not in agreement that a more challenging teacher was a better teacher. I also had trouble getting into teachers' office hours. That being said, NINA: I have heard from talking to people that UChicago does not have much busy work either. Some classes are not difficult, especially core science courses. But science for majors is good, and other classes have lots of reading and discussion. I heard the average time to study a night is 4 hrs -which is what I heard also for Swat. Swat probably has more writing (I've heard typical papers for non-English UChicago classes is 3 3-8 pg papers a quarter). At UChicago you can take grad-school seminars -which would be similar to Swat's honors program.</p>
<p>Escape:</p>
<p>Smith is nearly twice the size of Swarthmore, so the experience at the two schools will be quite different for that reason alone.</p>
<p>I think it's also important to understand that UChicago and Swarthmore are both up-front about the academic workload. Not too many students apply to either school without knowing that the academics are rigorous. Thus, you get a self-selected student body that made their college choice, in part, because they expect to be pushed academically.</p>
<p>I doubt anybody picks Swarthmore or UChicago because they are looking for a "party" school.</p>
<p>Yes, in hindsite this makes sense. It's simply that in case you have forgotten, when I was originally on this posting asking for suggestions, the common opinion was that Swarthmore would be similar to Smith. I believe this opinion was expressed by you as well, but if I'm wrong, it was still expressed by many others. In case someone else should find themself in the predicament of choosing between schools, I thought I would add my now-more-informed 2 cents.</p>
<p>Escape:</p>
<p>Trying to answer your questions was like watching an Olympic ping-pong match! You alternated back and forth between looking for validation of your postive reaction to Swarthmore on your visit and trashing Swarthmore with all the reasons why you prefered UChicago.</p>
<p>I can't remember who recommended what. However, I recall that I got dizzy and finally recommended that you not transfer to Swarthmore based purely on your obvious indecision and conflict over the choice. You countered every postive post about Swarthmore with reasons why you prefered UChicago and every post in favor of Chicago with reasons why you liked Swarthmore. My sense was that you were ultimately going to be uncomfortabe with whatever decision you made and figured, "why put Swarthmore through that?" The campus as a whole benefits from students who want to be there.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, if someone isn't confident in his decision to attend Swarthmore, then he shouldn't go there. This is a philosophy that current students at Swarthmore use quite frequently in talking to prospective students. They sometimes try to talk prospects OUT of choosing Swarthmore. It's a little selfish, but c'est la vie.</p>
<p>Ok, well clearly this discussion is going nowhere -for that I apologize. But what I was TRYING to do (apparently unsuccessfully) was to play devil's advocate to find out about Swarthmore. I do like to question things -and certainly the whole elite liberal arts college concept is very foreign to the culture I grew up in. What I knew was this: Smith was prestigious and some people said Smith had an intellectual atmosphere and some said Swarthmore would be comparable to Smith, yet Smith was very unimpressive to me in the sense that on average people there seemed less "academically-smart" and hardworking than average people at my hs. Especially because my parents preferred UChicago as it's closer to home, I was searching for a really solid argument that would allow me to declare Swat superior -and perhaps in the end there are none. I was not trying to bash Swarthmore for the sake of bashing Swarthmore, I think its mission for instance should be the mission of every educational establishment in America. However, I know no place is perfect and thus I was searching for the cons and means of comparison to other institutions. My disappointment with the intellectual atmosphere and quality of work at Smith inclined me to be suspicious of glossy brochures -I think had I thought long and hard about difference in selectivity between Swat and Smith and gotten a chance to visit campus to talk with students a lightbulb would have flashed on a bit sooner as to why I had declared Swat my dream school when I actually visited two years ago. Regardless of this personal failing of critical thinking skills, I hardly think that unquestionningly accepting Swat as a perfect place is necessary criteria for attendance given that highly intelligent individuals go there. I think while you provide much excellent advice on these forums, Interesteddad, your opinion that Swat only encourages and accepts people who do not question the excellence of Swat is mislead, and potentially harmful. Constant questionning is a critical part of intelligence.</p>
<p>Not to mention, I think the posting of an actual Swat STUDENT earlier on these forms provided evidence that not everyone at Swat knows that Swat is the place for them. I'm really not sure where you get that impression from -I'm assuming it's anecdotal, such as from the actions of your daughter and her friends.</p>
<p>Not all Swarthmore students are rah-rah cheerleader enthusiastic. But, you were so strongly negative (at least on alternate days), that I didn't think you could be happy with a decision to attend Swarthmore. </p>
<p>IMO, students who are not "sold" on their college decision (on some level, be it emotional or intellectual) are at the most risk of being unhappy when they arrive on campus. You never gave me any reason to believe that you would be happy at Swarthmore. I can't, in good conscience, recommend a college to someone who I don't think would be happy there.</p>
<p>Well, I personally always knew I would be HAPPY at Swarthmore, considering my love of liberal, intellectually lively, politically conscious people and debate, my love of dance parties, and my love of being friends with teachers. I also felt fulfilled in my personal life at Smith (although lack of guys was, from time to time, excruciating). Presumably, I will also be happy at UChicago, once I find my "group," and find some teachers I like who challenge me. Happiness for me was not the issue to the extent that academic opportunity was. Perhaps it's cultural, but I really don't think of "happiness" being an issue with choosing a school as much as objective opportunity to learn and gain skills which will lead to professional success down the road.</p>