Hi, I know that these two schools are great schools and so different that you really cannot compare but my husband and I started an argument because one of us said Swarthmore and Columbia are in the same level.
I just want to hear your thoughts about this.
Years ago I was friends with a woman who transferred from Swarthmore to Harvard. After a year she transferred right back to Swarthmore with a much greater appreciation for what it had to offer.
Swarthmoreâs acceptance rate is 11%
25-75%ile is 1410-1550
Columbiaâs acceptance rate is 6.6%
24-75%ile is 1450-1580
The margin of error for SAT scores is =/- 30 points. Thatâs assuming you think acceptance rates or SAT scores have any real meaning. I donât. I believe Columbia gets a lot of extra applicants because some people thing the Ivy League is special and some people really, really want to be in NYC.
They are in the same level, just very different types of schoool.
Seems an odd topic for a marital argument.
Thank you so much for the kind replyâŠ
I guess it all depends what you are looking for in college life.
SJ2727 because our son applied to both school and he seems to have âstereotypical ideas â about each school.
Itâs really an apples to oranges comparison on a lot of levels. They are so different.
If youâre talking about post-graduation outcomes I would put them on roughly the same level, I think. They both do a great job of preparing their graduates to succeed. Theyâre both quite respected.
Rank is subjective if you donât agree on the weight of the criteria that youâre using to rank things, which is why USN&WR and Princeton come up with different rankings for the same schools with the same basic starting data.
The most relevant question is, which one is better for your son, based on his academic strengths and weaknesses and what environment he does best in? And thatâs impossible for anyone but your son to start to quantify.
Arenât they both ED? So you donât have decisions back from either one. My personal rating of a college gets a huge boost when they are smart enough to admit my child and offer them money. But maybe thatâs just me.
They have very different personalities. Swarthmore is more like the U of Chicago in terms of its valuing smart-for-the-purpose-of-being-smart. Granularity of information. Thereâs a lot of smart one-up-manship in those two schools. Columbia also has strong academics, but is more laid back in terms of inter-student competitiveness. At CU you will find students actually skipping classes to go skiing in Colorado, for example. Thatâs almost unthinkable in Swarthmore and Chicago, which are more study study study study, I got an A what did you get? Oh only an A-?, and acting out the occasional Monty Python scene.
I agree with the first two sentences of @Dustyfeathers. But based on info from my son, who just graduated from Swat last year, the competitiveness? No. In fact he was pretty laid back about grades. And he got a great job after graduation and is quite happy. @Dustyfeathers what is your info based on?
One of my closest friends went to Swat in the 80s, as did 3 other people I knew at the time. Very intense academics and very cliquey social scene at the time. Two thrived; two disliked their time there even though they say they got great educations.
Now my Dâs best friend is a first-year at Swat. Still very intense but seems less socially clique-y. Sheâs happy overall but struggling a bit b/c sheâs used to always being high achieving and she doesnât feel (so far) like a high achiever at Swat. There is def. the âone up-manshipâ described above.
One professor recently shared with her how students work really hard to impress each other which can make course conversations great but also trying at times and intimidating for new students. I think sheâll be fine and come out on the other side of this, but itâs been a bit rocky. Realize this is anecdote of one â but it fits with what I hear about Swarthmore generally.
I think Columbia is a more âtraditionalâ school of high achievers with some who take their academics more seriously than others so you can approach the academics there in a number of different ways.
I also went to Swat in the 80s, and was very happy there. Two of my kids attended much more recently (obviously!), and both thrived, though theyâre very different kids. (And both were happily employed by graduation time, though I donât think thatâs really the point here.)
I never saw, nor did my grown kids, âoneupmanshipâ or student v student competition. No grade-grubbing, no elbows-out pushing to the front of any academic (or other) lines. I wonder if itâs something thatâs limited to certain majors - though for what itâs worth, the three of us do account for five different majors.
What difference does it make? Both are fine colleges.
The important thing isâŠwhat does your son think, because he will be attending. Presumably he found things he liked about both schools or he wouldnât have applied to both schools.
@donnaleighg 1) what @AlmostThere2018 described; 2) knowing several people who have attended both places over several decades, none of whom enjoyed their experience at Swat because of this (âSweatmoreâ is what one person likes to call his experience, another person interviews prospective students and has told me that she wonders if she should tell them how much she hated her experience there); whereas many people I know who attended UChic loved their experience and they as a rule are super granular in their conversation, will argue a point into the earth etc â several of my relatives â 3rd gen Uchic family; 3) the competitive nature of the comments that seem to come from Swarthmore people on this forum.
I wonât comment further because of the âno debateâ rule here.
ACT score profiles, in particular, indicate an equivalence in the academic preparation of the incoming students at these schools:
Middle Ranges
Swarthmore: 31-34
Columbia: 31-34
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Swarthmore&s=all&id=216287#admsns
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Columbia+University&s=all&id=190150#admsns
ââŠour son applied to both schoolâŠâ
With low acceptance rates of 11% and 6.5% I wouldnât worry about such a choice for now.
I had an impression from way back that Swat, while an outstanding program in every way, had a social environment that was hierarchical and perhaps snobbish â intellectually. That is one reason why I did not recommend that my son apply to Swat. I attended Reed and while Reedies are very âintellectualâ on the whole, they were not into one-up-manship. No âgiantsâ on campus, just a lot of intellectually engaged students. When my son was applying to college, he had Reed and Chicago (among others) on his list, but not Swat. He attended Chicago, and liked the intellectual focus and yet an atmosphere that wasnât overtly competitive. In some respects it is a much larger Reed.
I really wish folks would stop posting impressions from âway back,â âin the 80s,â etc. Not terribly relevant.
I donât know anything about Swarthmore, but as the parent of a daughter and son-in-law who attended Columbia roughly 10 years ago, I canât agree with a characterization of Columbia as âlaid back.â Those students are highly ambitious and very competitive, and the overall environment is intense and also high-stress. However, I would say that the pressure there is more outwardly and future-focused â students tend to be pre-professional (prelaw, premed) - or aspiring to jobs on Wall Street â or focused on future admissions into PhD programs. There is definitely grade inflation â it was not difficult for my daughter to pull an A- in a class. (But a lot harder to bring that A- to an A) So itâs not that classes are easy - they arenât â itâs just that the school is filled with very smart & highly motivated students who are all very capable of doing the work assigned.
So the dynamic of the competition might be different. I donât think students would be interested in one-upping one another in a classroom- --and it really isnât a âlife of the mindâ type school. Keep in mind that Columbia is an urban research university â students there are going to have many large lecture-format classes, discussion sessions & tutorials led by grad students, and they are also often in classrooms with older nontraditional students from Columbia GS as well as a campus dominated by graduate-level programs. Plus the campus is physically very small, so a large amount of socializing tends to take place in off-campus venues. So again - those students are outwardly focused because of the difference between a cloistered environment of a suburban LAC and a larger urban research U. So a different balance & perspective between life/school.
Skipping classes to go skiing in Colorado, from NYC? That would be a rich kid thing, so not something that my kid would have seen among her cohort. But class schedules were set up so that very little was scheduled on Fridays, making weekend getaways very possible (without needing to skip any classes) â and definitely, students go elsewhere on weekends. Not necessarily out of town â but they arenât hanging around the campus for entertainment from Friday-Sunday.
âone of us said Swarthmore and Columbia are in the same level.â
I agree with this. This is much like comparing really great apples with really great oranges. Both schools are excellent. They are however very different.
If you child is more comfortable at one versus the other, and if the one they like offers a good program in their intended major, and if you can afford it, then I absolutely would not be concerned about the quality of the education at either. I also would not be concerned about graduate school admission with a degree from either. These are great schools.
One is a LAC, the other is a national university. They are both full of super-smart and ambitious kids who want to do well in college, and were at the tops of their high schools. Swarthemore has smaller classes and a more personal focus in education, because it specializes in undergraduate education. The faculty at Swarthmore are hired based more on their skills as educators than because of their skills as researchers. Research that is gearing towards the inclusion of undergraduates is highly encouraged. Columbia has larger classes, a larger selection of classes, more faculty members, and more extensive research. There is less emphasis on education, and less personal attention for undergraduate students. Faculty are hired based mostly on their research (and grant writing) skills and achievements, with their abilities in undergraduate teaching being secondary. Research is set up to get big results and as such is based on graduate students and post-doc work.
Comparing them is like comparing the top rated luxury SUV and the top rated Pickup.