<p>I got into Williams, Swarthmore, Brown, Dartmouth, and Carnegie Mellon, but I basically ruled out the last three because I really enjoyed the LAC experience. However, I am not able to pick between the first two. </p>
<p>One major advantage that Swarthmore has is that it's much much closer to home, but other than that, I can't really split them apart. </p>
<p>I am still undecided about a major, but it will probably involve math, biology, physics (maybe engineering in Swarthmore's case), or economics, and it will most likely be interdisciplinary.</p>
<p>Where are you from? Did you get a chance to attend Ride the Tide? Swarthmore is very interested in students developing interdisciplinary programs of their own. However, I guess a need a bit more info on your interests socially and academically.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is an accessible 25 minutes from one of the largest cities in the country, while Williams is in a rural area. Which do you prefer?</p>
<p>Swarthmore students are stereotypically brainy, geeky, liberal social activists. Williams students are stereotyped as bright, athletic, pre-professionals. Stereotypes should be taken with a grain of salt, of course. Which do you prefer?</p>
<p>Williams is not very diverse, 31% of the student body being comprised of non-Whites. Swarthmore is over 50% non-White. Which do you prefer?</p>
<p>Frumens, your stats on Williams in terms of diversity are way, WAY off. Williams’ most recent entering class (2015) is 37 percent domestic students of color, plus 8 percent international students, so 45 percent (the over 50 number at Swarthmore certainly counts internationals; Swarthmore has 42 percent domestic students of color in its frosh class) are non domestic white students. Swarthmore typically has a similar percentage of underrepresented minority students on campus (and since it is much smaller, a smaller number, total) as Williams (although a significantly higher asian percentage, which accounts for the slight overall difference, but I wouldn’t say makes Swarthmore more “diverse” since asian students are hugely overrepresented at both schools, as well as all top schools). Williams also has a higher percentage of students who are first generation college students and/or Pell Grant recipients than Swarthmore, signaling more economic diversity. So overall, the campus diversity is roughly even. </p>
<p>I’ll note that math (Williams clearly has the best math department of any liberal arts college, including three national professors of the year in the department), biology, physics (most Apker awards by far of any college or university, and the school President is a physicist), and econ are four of Williams’ best departments, although of course there is no engineering offered on campus. I believe Swarthmore is also very strong in these areas. </p>
<p>Really, you can’t go wrong here, I imagine you’ll have a great experience at either.</p>
<p>I was accepted to both as well, and chose Swarthmore. It just felt more “right” on the visit. One of the things I noticed is that there were a massive number of prep school kids admitted to Williams. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but there were a large number of snobs, which was not a good first look at Williams for me.Granted there are probably similar people at Swat, but I just felt more of a personal connection with the school. Also, the remoteness was really troublesome for a NYC native like me, and for some reason they put Previews on a Mon/Tuesday, which made Williams look incredibly boring. When you have a connection like that then your decision will be easy. Go with your gut and have no regrets.</p>
<p>Frumens, I agree that the Williams web site (in my view) is inadequate / outdated on many fronts, which has annoyed me for years (how many schools don’t have a video virtual tour, for example, and the campus photos are totally outdated). The good news is that the school has radically reworked its internet presence / outreach (starting with twitter, Facebook, YouTube, all of which are dramatically improved over the last two years), and the last stage of this is an ongoing, long overdue, ground-up redesign of the website which, I believe, is slated for completion in early fall (or so they told alums). But in the meantime, it’s not the greatest resource, and you have to dig around far too much at times for info.</p>