<p>...or so I've heard.</p>
<p>What kinds of students IS it for?
What types of people would love it at swarthmore?
What types would be miserable?</p>
<p>I'm torn between swat and two other schools - and all three are pretty different from each other. Any insight from current/past students or parents would be mucho appreciated :]</p>
<p>You will probably get more useful responses with a little more specific question. Your topic is so open-ended with so little guidance about what you want in a school and/or what you already know about Swarthmore that it is like asking people to write a book.</p>
<p>In general, Swarthmore is a good fit for intellectually curious students who enjoy learning for learning’s sake, expect to work hard and be challenged and fully engaged with their academics, want a highly interactive learning experience with participation in the classroom, value an extremely diverse community, and feel some obligation to make the world better in some way as part of their studies and work.</p>
<p>Swarthmore students tend to be more geek/hipster and less jock/prep. The campus is one of the most ethnically diverse elite colleges in the country and that diversity extends throughout the faculty and administration at all levels. It is a part of the school’s fabric.</p>
<p>Swarthmore has been coed from the day it was founded. The Board of Managers has always been required to be equally split male/female and Swarthmore women have been at the forefront of the women’s movement. This impacts the culture of the school in many subtle ways and makes it quite distinctive from other top schools that were historically all-male or all-female and still have those qualities.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is not a good choice for a student who does not expect to study hard in college and be challenges. It is not a good choice for a grade-driven student (“is this going to be on the test?”) who will fall apart at the seams upon receiving his or her first-ever “B”.</p>
<p>In 2002, when we first visited Swat with my oldest S, the admissions rep at our info session said that they were looking for students who were “academically excited by the learning process.” The rep also characterized Swat as a very intellectual place and not a good place for anonymity. My son graduated in '07 and I know that he agrees with the statements made by that rep. That description is what attracted him to the school.</p>
<p>What interesteddad said.</p>
<p>I too am having trouble deciding if Swarthmore is for me. I love learning and the whole philosophy of Swarthmore. But I worry that, even though I was admitted, I will be totally eclipsed by the brilliance of other Swatties, and I won’t be able to handle the workload. :/</p>
<p>I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think found that my academic self esteem went up once I got to swat - other swatties’ brilliance didn’t make me feel eclipsed, it made me step up my game! And being surrounded by other young people with passions and interests gave me a space to figure out what my own were (I didn’t really know in high school).</p>
<p>One of the phrases we heard a few times after my son was admitted was “Admissions doesn’t make mistakes”. If Swat admits you they believe that you are the right student and will do well there. You need to trust their decision and have faith in yourself (but be prepared to work!).</p>
<p>I’m not so sure nursekay is right–there are people unhappy at Swarthmore–but the vast majority seemed pretty happy when I was a student.</p>
<p>If you’re admitted, I wouldn’t worry that you can’t make the grade academically; your fellow students are all “brilliant” but each in a different way (credit to the person who said this on another thread), so that the overall population is charged and stimulating, but you will hardly be the best or worst in any class, academically. That said, you need to enjoy academic work (you must, or you wouldn’t have been admitted). You should think hard, though, about the size of the school and whether 1400 students is big enough for you, esp if you come from a larger HS and are unfamiliar with small school dynamics. Not only is it impossible to be anonymous in classes, but it is difficult socially to avoid people you may want to avoid (“Swat Swivel”) and the sense of ‘knowing everyone’ soon into freshman year. Students who prefer social anonymity will be unhappy, IMO (although I suppose you could hide out in the Crum for 4 yrs…) Even with the +(academic)/-(social) aspects of the samll size, my 2 kids loved/love it and wouldn’t have gone/go anywhere else.</p>
<p>Arador: I wasn’t trying to speak to anyones level of happiness. Rather, I was responding to solastalgic’s concern that “I will be totally eclipsed by the brilliance of other Swatties, and I won’t be able to handle the workload”.</p>
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<p>I think that would be reasonably close to my daughter’s experience. She went with a strong academic record, but from a public high school that clearly wasn’t as strong in the preparation department as some of Swarthmore’s feeder schools. She figured out early on that she could do fine at Swarthmore. As a parent, I was stunned by how smart she got and impressed by the whole approach to education at Swarthmore. She shared some poli sci exam questions with me (I was a poli sci major) and I just loved the open-ended nature of the questions and the way the school encouraged students to think.</p>
<p>What she would was that everyone there had different talents. One friend might struggle with college math, but write art history papers in his sleep. Another might breeze through the toughest math proofs, but not be able to write a decent art history paper to save her life. She had some Phi Beta Kappa friends who could barely figure out how to go to Target and buy snacks, just were not wired for real world at all. So, it all evened out.</p>
<p>One of the characteristics of Swarthmore students, it seems to me, is that most of them are pretty down-to-earth and self-deprecating.</p>
<p>Dear chibistar6:</p>
<p>Understandably, you probably are worried about choices, choices based on the conceit of the individual suitors begging for your consideration.</p>
<p>Now reflect upon this:</p>
<p>Action requires foresight. Loss only requires a ledger entry.</p>
<p>Thus, find the attributes of success and act upon it. Do not allow shadows to prevail. Do not allow actors to distract you from your decision. You are the athlete, the scholar, the prospective student who is coming here. Screw the ********.</p>
<p>Take the time to enter your name and proudly you will be that person to subscribe to independence and the subscription such choices make.</p>
<p>Best wishes and Cheers!</p>
<p>As a parent, I can tell you my son’s experience. He graduated from Swarthmore in 2008. His self-esteem took a deep dive in sophomore year when his GPA took a hit. He did not do so well in some courses and experienced the “sophomore blues” as well as questioning if this was right for him. Swarthmore is definitely not for everyone. One of his roommates dropped out. The roommate was an athlete (a swimmer) and was seriously depressed when he was there. He is now graduating from GWU in 2010 and doing well at a larger university. The DC environment and GWU is suitable for him because of his interest in Government. He works in a congressman’s office and is doing very well.</p>
<p>My son recovered the next year and graduated happy with his lot (there wasn’t a doubt about graduating, btw). He is going to graduate school this Fall. He loved the small classes at Swarthmore and the personal relationships he developed with his professors some of whom helped him a lot with graduate school and career choices even months after he graduated. He is in email contact with many of them and enjoys meeting with them when they come to NYC. The meetings were crucial for him in making up his mind as to what he wanted to do (in the near future at least). </p>
<p>He says the Swarthmore experience has helped him a lot, in class as well as out in the real world. Even compared to some graduate classes he took this year and last at Columbia University emphasized the differences between a small LAC and a university.</p>
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<p>Btw, in my previous post I said a friend of my son dropped out and that the friend was a recruited athlete. The two facts are not related regarding his being a “jock” or whatever. The friend had issues with concentration and he was also someone who had other issues to begin with (He was a great student in high school, though, and qualified to be admitted). The combination of these issues and Swat being a hard place probably made him seriously depressed, although I am neither an MD or in any position to judge here.</p>
<p>Not everyone @ swat is brilliant. Most aren’t. But most are good, solid, curious, hardworking students. My DD is not brilliant, by a long shot. She did well on SATs etc, but certainly no 800s. More like 710, 730, 760 (or thereabouts–my fuzzy memory), which is probably pretty average for incoming kids. Yet during her 3&3/4 years @ swat, her grades have been great. Her lowest were two B+ grades freshman year. This is not to brag about her grades, but to say you don’t have to be brilliant to be academically successful there, at least as measured by grades. She attributes it to her time management skills–doesn’t procrastinate, stays current with reading, starts papers well before deadline etc. And the fact that she really enjoys her classes, what she is learning, and contributing, as the latter goes part & parcel with Swat academics. Yes, she works hard, when she works. But she isn’t a grind either. She leans more toward the party type–Pub Night/Olde Club faithful, parties in the Barn & elsewhere, outings to Philly, other events on campus. The point is don’t be scared off by fear of not being brilliant enough. If you got accepted, and like the scene, you will do just fine.</p>
<p>And if you got accepted but didn’t have 700s on your SATs, you’ll still do fine. I only threw the scores in b/c so many of you seem to need that measuring stick as a reassurance.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks for all the replies…they definitely helped a lot.</p>
<p>I haven’t gotten decision letters from the other two schools yet, though…so it’s possible that I won’t even have to make the decision between the three. From all the comments I think Swarthmore is a good fit for me [and vice versa] and I’m looking forward to Ride the Tide.</p>
<p>On this whole issue of being “smart enough” for Swarthmore, I don’t think enough mention is made of how student-focused the entire college is. Whether it’s putting you up in the infirmary overnight with chicken soup and ginger ale when you have the flu, to a list of deans to help pull any kind of student along, to academic support programs like THE BEST peer writing program of any liberal arts college in the country and cutting-edge science mentoring programs modelled along those lines.</p>
<p>hmm…where did you hear that Swarthmore has the best peer writing program of any liberal arts college in the U.S.? i’m not too sure about that.</p>
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<p>Swarthmore’s program was at the forefront of the development of Writing across the Curriculum programs in the United States, developing its program parallel to the WAC program pioneered at Brown by Swarthmore grad Tori Haring-Smith '74.</p>
<p>The program has received national recognition from the WAC organization. Other colleges cite it as a model, including Amherst which, in the most recent faculty committee on academic priorities, held Swarthmore’s program up as an example of program with resources they could only dream about.</p>
<p>Swarthmore’s program is a leader in having a full-time faculty member devoted to running the program, haviing a full-semester graduate-level course for student peer reviewers, for the number of courses that integrate WAs, for the widespread use of the program, and for the cutting-edge research such as Jill Gladsteiin’s recent published work on assigned WAs in the intro Bio course.</p>
<p>I wrote a much more complete answer to your question a while back. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll just refer to that post which has a half dozen or so links for you to follow if you are interested.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/773818-writing-associates-program-swarthmore-college.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/773818-writing-associates-program-swarthmore-college.html</a></p>
<p>BTW, just to give you a comparison, Williams didn’t even have a paid staff member for their peer writing program for two years. No instruction whatsoever for the tutors. They finally hired a part-time UMass post-doc on a year-to-year temporary appoiintment. Amherst beefed up their program a bit after the Faculty Committee report. They have two faculty members running the program as side-jobs to their regular teaching and use mostly paid post-doc tutors. They have two recent Amherst grads and five current Amherst students as peer reviewers. It’s a very small program. BTW, the whole concept of a WAC program is that well-traiined student peer reviewers are more effective that staff or professor reviewers.</p>
<p>The other liberal arts college that was at the forefront of the development of these programs is Carleton. It is still an active leader along with Swarthmore.</p>