<p>Help!</p>
<p>I'm deciding between Swarthmore College and University of Chicago.
Can anyone give any insight or opinions, or what they would choose if they were me?</p>
<p>I have no idea what I want to study. I visited both places, and they both seemed great places to live and study. To me, the biggest difference seems the size of the two colleges.</p>
<p>I would love some help!</p>
<p>Both are great schools, probably comes down to personal fit, personally I like Swarthmore much more, a lot more personalized it seems than UChicago, but its your call</p>
<p>Congratulations! I’m lucky enough to be in the same spot and am hoping to be able to visit Swarthmore as soon as possible (just got back from Chicago and loved it). Have you visited yet? I get the impression that both have very similar student bodies (will confirm if/when I visit Swat) and similar strengths in the social sciences. The decision might jave to come down to program vs program or Research U vs LAC.</p>
<p>Nevermind, read your post a second time and saw that you visited -_-. If it really comes down to Research U vs LAC, honestly, I would go to Swat. It’s ranked (I know, shame on rankings, but they can give a sense of quality) #2 in the liberal arts colleges for undergraduate teaching and is strong in a wide diversity of fields. Chicago is also overall very strong and places #11 in the university category of the ranking, so it’s no slouch in undergrad quality either. The way I see it though, and all this advice and opinions should be taken with a grain of salt because I haven’t studied in any, you might be more likely to get a better undergrad experience at Swat. You can always go to Chicago for grad school, but Swat is now or never.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is outstanding but I would not pass of U of Chicago, unless Swarthmore is offering more $$$</p>
<p>Hey PMCM18!
It’s cool we’re in the same boat!</p>
<p>Yeah, both student bodies seemed similar at the two colleges.
Right now I’m leaning towards Swarthmore because I’m sold on the whole liberal arts thing(more attention, professors care about teaching, not just their research). </p>
<p>Some of my friends/teachers tell me that Chicago’s bigger population would fit me better, though. They tell me, since I’m a fairly social person, that I would have a better time in a larger community.</p>
<p>The whole social argument is pretty bad because lets face it, no matter how social you are, you aren’t going to be close friends with like 1000 people. You will have plenty of friends anywhere you go for the most part.</p>
<p>D had same choice and went with Swarthmore-better environment for a 17 yr old. 1st semester pass/fail was great. Already doing research with major professor as freshman-with fully funded internship this summer. No grad students to compete with and huge endowment to tap into. Very impressive honors program. She had many friends attending schools on the east coast so that probably influenced her also. Her classmate from high school is at UChi and loves it. Chicago is a great city, so you can’t go wrong. If grad school is in your plans, I’d probably go with Swarthmore-otherwise it’s a tossup.</p>
<p>Other factors to consider: </p>
<p>1) Where are you from? College is a great time to explore a part of the country you haven’t experienced, with the infrastructure that college provides. If you are from Chicago, go east. If you are from Philly, go west (ish).</p>
<p>2) Weather: For some people it makes a difference to their willingness to try new things. Will you go out on a bitter cold night to try something new? There will be more of those in Chicago.</p>
<p>3) How likely are you to take grad-level courses? If you are very advanced in your subject area, the access to grad courses could be an important benefit. If you are unlikely to be at that level, then not having them (or doing an independent study with a prof at Swat) may be sufficient.</p>
<p>I’m from sunny Los Angeles, so both schools are sufficiently new and exotic. I think I can handle the weather, and will do my best to try new things.
I have no idea whether I’ll take grad-level courses— I have no idea what I’ll be like in three years!</p>
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<p>Yep, that’s probably the biggest difference (along with the urban v. suburban settings.) Otherwise, the two should appeal to similar students in many cases.</p>
<p>What about costs?</p>
<p>Congrats on both, your are clearly very smart! Both offer incredible academics but I would choose Swarthmore because it offers a much more involved college experience, social life, and much better weather!</p>
<p>I’m not sure you can exactly argue that Chicago isn’t personalized. It has one of the smallest student:faculty ratios of any university. The core isn’t for everyone, but it gives a great opportunity for a student to take courses in every discipline and see what piques their interest. With regards to social life, I’ve noticed that the people (2016ers at least) are a lot more outgoing and ‘normal’ than they’re given credit for. You’ll also be put into a tight-knit environment with the housing system and make close friends there, which makes UChicago seem a lot smaller anyways.</p>
<p>I know this thread is ancient, but every year it seems that a thread concerned with precisely this question always arises. Here are my two cents:</p>
<p>I went to Swarthmore – I graduated just this past spring. It’s a great school. In my senior year of high school, I was faced with the same choice the OP had to make: Swarthmore or UChicago? I chose Swarthmore, in large part because its financial aid package was much better, for me. I think there are a lot of misconceptions I had had that seem to be resurfacing here. One argument for going to Swarthmore is that you can only go to Swarthmore as an undergrad, whereas UChicago has a grad school. True, but it’s not true that “you can always go to UChicago for grad school.” First, grad school is, generally speaking, much harder to get into than undergrad. Getting into UChicago for undergrad in no way means that you’ll get in to grad school there. Second, grad school is for very specialized purposes. You’re not going to get the “undergrad experience” at Chicago if you’re a graduate student there. So don’t pick the liberal arts college just because it’s an undergraduate-only place. </p>
<p>M’s Mom raised a good point. At Swarthmore you can’t take graduate-level courses. When I was deciding which college to attend, I thought that there were enough classes at Swat, so that I wouldn’t run out of classes in my major. That sort of turned out not to be true, and I would have appreciated the option of taking graduate courses.</p>
<p>About Swarthmore being a liberal arts college: I generally take liberal arts to roughly mean a “well-rounded” education, i.e. courses in a variety of academic subjects. Swarthmore has distribution requirements, Chicago has a core curriculum. I probably would have preferred the core curriculum. Just because UChicago is a university doesn’t mean that you won’t get a liberal arts education there. But it is true that at Swat you will always be taught by professors, never fellow undergrad or grad students.</p>