Swarthmore vs. Williams

<p>if they’d let their hair down (no ponytails) and put on something other than running shorts or sweats, running shoes and flipflops I could have been able to tell one girl from another… in fact, they were almost interchangeable including wannabe tour families’ girls. If you’d switched around girls / parents you wouldn’t have noticed.</p>

<p>Don’t forget the guys with backwards baseball caps.</p>

<p>'tis right, with hair cropped real short cute pink ears showing full.</p>

<p>arador,
In post #8, you made a comment about grades being lower, citing the biology major as an example. I am curious as to whether you speak from personal experience with the bio department or experience gleaned from fellow Swatties? I am asking because I have a son who is in the final decision-making process for next fall, and he is a prospective bio major with thoughts of med school down the road. Although his brother is Swat '07, he was not a science major, so that’s an area of the school we’re not overly familiar with.</p>

<p>Can you shed some light on your comment about bio because that is a concern. Thanks!</p>

<p>Just to provide a LITTLE perspective on athletics at Williams, yes, it is far more of a point of emphasis at Williams than at Swarthmore. But is Williams overwhelmingly athletically oriented the way Interesteddad portrays (and his views of the school are WAY outdated, see, e.g, the backwards hat comment, which hasn’t been the dominant male campus fashion since the early 1990’s)? No. In fact, the school has been consistently deemphasizing athletics in both admissions and resource allocation over the past ten years. Basically EVERY facility on the Williams campus has received MASSIVE renovations over the past fifteen years, EXCEPT athletics facilities, which are the only facilities that leg behind its peers. The school has eliminated admitting the low band recruits who used to be prominently featured on the football and ice hockey teams. Indeed, in a recent year, the football recruits AVERAGED over 1400 on the SAT. So there is not a huge academic disparity like there used to be between tipped athletes and other admitted students, although of course there is SOME disparity. Williams reduced its total TIPS each year to 66, which is LESS than most NESCAC schools, so Williams actually has fewer athletic RECRUITS on campus than most NESCAC schools. IF you look at emphasis on facilities, resources provided to athletic teams, admissions concessions, percentage of recruited athletes on campus, a whole bunch of other area, Williams actually lags behind many of its peers, such as Midd, Bowdoin, Trinity, Amherst, or at WORST is even with them. </p>

<p>Now, the two areas Williams stands out in the other direction? One, success. Yes, Williams has tremendous success in athletics. But it also has arguably the best success among liberal arts colleges in terms of theater/art/music, and in terms of the sciences. I’d say Williams embraces excellence across multiple arenas, INCLUDING athletics, but does not place an unusual or particularized emphasis on athletic excellence relative to anything else the campus focuses on. second, Williams has a high percentage of students participating in athletics. But not because of an especially big group of recruited athletes. Rather, the school has absolutely ENORMOUS cross country, track and field, crew, and swimming & diving rosters. Most of the students on these sports are not recruited athletes and certainly don’t materially change the campus culture. I’d say Williams has more WELL-ROUNDED students who enjoy the outdoors and athletics, as well as the arts and other things, than many of its peers, but not necessarily more elite athletic recruits. Indeed, in the team sports that tend to involve the most recruiting, sports like basketball, football, baseball, ice hockey, lacrosse, Williams has been fairly even in recent years with its biggest athletic rivals, like Amherst, Midd, and Trinity.</p>

<p>Interrestedad mentions wrestling. Well, one reason wrestling would never be eliminated by Williams is because it requires NO admissions concessions, like many other top sports at Williams. (The average GPA on the wrestling team at Williams is over 3.5, HIGHER than the average GPA at Williams). If you look at the MOST successful sports at Williams, they are teams that require no or virtually no admissions concessions … swimming, cross country, tennis, women’s crew, wrestling, track and field. Even the Nike camp comment is by ONE SINGLE professor, and it was made about a decade ago, BEFORE the numerous dramatic changes in admissions policy at Williams took place, including lowering total TIPS by 50 percent from the peak (used to be as high as 94 I believe) and eliminating low band athletic admits. </p>

<p>Basically, Interresteddad has a well known and long standing animosity towards athletics at Williams. His views are severely outdated, in some cases misinformed, and ignore many realities that have been pointed out to him again, and again, and again. None of which is to say that athletics are not a far more important presence at Williams than at Swarthmore. But that is because Swat is at one far end of the spectrum, and Williams is part of a substantial group (including MANY NESCAC schools) closer to the other end. But to portray Williams as some sort of extreme outlier in terms of athletic campus culture, especially in light of the changes in admissions and resource allocation and emphasis over the past decade, is just a flat-out fiction.</p>

<p>I’ll have to say, this could be an interesting discussion without the gratuitous stereotypical/sexist remarks. As someone whose daughter is trying to make a tough decision about these two schools, it doesn’t put Swarthmore in a positive light. Hopefully you folks aren’t representative of the Swat population.</p>

<p>I must say that I’m not picking up any sexist remarks here, other than a random post, mostly it’s just jesting. And Swat couldn’t be further from stereotypism or sexism…at least from what I’ve seen.</p>

<p>My D has been especially impressed with the kids she’s met on the Facebook Class of 2014 page. It’s a very eclectic group of caring and brilliant kids.</p>

<p>Williams is an awesome school as well. No criticism from me. What I saw to be the major differences between the two schools has already been said but I’ll say it again.</p>

<p>Location: Swat is 10 minutes from an airport and a major city filled with culture and history. Williams is 2 hours from Boston on a very winding road. </p>

<p>Sporty: Williams definitely seemed more sporty. Swarthmore seemed more serious academically, IMHO. Both are incredibly academic though. But Swat’s Honors Program blew me away. Also, they started the whole Freshman writing thing that everyone else does now.</p>

<p>Party: Williams kids party harder, I am told. Swatties are more likely to have a movie marathon in the lounge than play beer pong. I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard it from several alums.</p>

<p>Congrats to your D on having a wonderful choices. My D did as well and chose Swarthmore.</p>

<p>

Ahem. Library–which was due for renovation until the financial crisis, end result being that Williams still has the cinder block that my tour guide was so glad for being torn down “next year.”</p>

<p>We’re not comparing Williams to Bowdoin. We are comparing Williams to Swarthmore. I have already given, above, the % statistic of recruited athletes on campus. Also, with regard to wrestling–may I ask, does the sport cost the school $$ in funding? I promise not to criticize the program further if Williams wrestling gets $0.00 in funding from the school. Otherwise, it really is a waste of money from my perspective.</p>

<p>

I disagree. And that, in essence, is why I never applied to Williams. I prefer a student body that is well-rounded by participating in intramural sports; for that many students to make a varsity-level commitment speaks to the importance of sport in their lives, and that materially affects the campus culture.</p>

<p>GTAlum - Like mrscollege, I haven’t noticed “gratuitous stereotypical/sexist remarks,” more “offensive humor.” But if your D finds herself disagreeing with the substantive opinions set forth here on Williams, then perhaps she should choose that school.</p>

<p>GTalum, some of the posters here aren’t connected with Swat. Their remarks really don’t shed any light on Swat <em>or</em> Williams; they’re just stirring the pot.</p>

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<p>Actually, the 66 is the NESCAC cap. Even that is very very misleading. It’s an example of an athletic conference and schools being disingenuous in their public relations moves.</p>

<p>Yes. The NESCAC has reduced the number of “tip” from 72 t0 66. They conveniently don’t talk about all the other categories recruited athletes. I</p>

<p>Williams has three groups of recruited athletes in every new class: 66 “tips”, 30 “protects”, and (depending on the year, another 40 to 50 “likely 4 year varsity contributors”. All three designations on the students admissions folder start with the Athletic Department, i.e. recruiting contact and visits. The total is 135 to 150 out of every entering class</p>

<p>So when Williams looks at you, bats their eye, and says, “we’ve reduced tips”, it’s like Eddie Haskell complimenting June Cleaver on her loverly red dress. I wish I had a dollar for everytime Dick Nesbitt has said, “we only have 66 recruited athletes.” </p>

<p>The SAT stats they trot out are equally disingenuous. Sure, the football team has a high average SAT score. Everyone knows that Div III football recruiting (and Div III sports recruiting in general) is lily-white, focused primarily on private parochial and prep schools (like Deerfield) that cater to a an affluent white clientele (who tend to have high test scores). The reason recruited football players need tips is not because they are first-generation minority students from woe-be-gone rural high schools in southern Alabama with no opportunity for test prep tutoring, but because they scored 1500 on the SAT and cruised along with a solid “B” average in prep school. </p>

<p>The reason Williams has a reputation for being a school for really smart jocks is because there are a LOT of recruited athletes. Six hundred or so. Plus the hundreds of more on the “walk-on” teams like cross country and so forth. Just like Swarthmore has a reputation for academics because there are a LOT of future PhDs at the school.</p>

<p>Likewise, on the athletic budget. It’s over $6 million a year. That’s double what places like Grinnell, Pomona, and Swarthmore spend. Just like Swarthmore spends four times or more than Williams on its Writing Program or its Honors Program or it’s community service organization. The reputations come from real institutional priorities (usually reflected in the budgets). In this case, Swarthmore’s Board voted in December 2000 that they would not reserve 30% of each class for varsity athletes. Williams does commit 28% of each class to new students who have been recruited and designated as “likely 4-year varsity contributors”.</p>

<p>I don’t know why Williams backs away from its brand as the top liberal arts college for really smart national caliber Div III athletes. It’s a great brand. As is the corallary “well-rounded” and “work hard/play hard” claims, along with the emphasis on “collegial” leadership as outlined in the search for the latest in a line of white male Presidents. I’ve never understood the reluctance to embrace it.</p>

<p>Sorry, suspect I was too sensitive. Thanks for coming back to substantive discussion. One question that we’ll ask on both the Williams and the Swarthmore campus is whether there are “walk-on” opportunities for sports, especially for track and cross-country.</p>

<p>Peter Carroll is head coach of both Men’s and Women’s x-country and track teams. He is very highly thought of on campus. D was a middling member of her HS x-country team and had fun on Swarthmore’s x-country team her freshman year. I’m sure there is room for walk-ons. D eventually decided that she preferred the training to actual meets, so dropped x-country after first year, but she seemed to have made good friends on the team and liked the coach.</p>

<p>Per the typical interesteddad methodology, he makes outlandish claims about Williams and athletics, then partially backs away from some of them, but continues to cite all sort of misleading and outdated statistics. By the way, only Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan went down to 66 tips, the rest of NESCAC stayed at 72. And it is INDISPUTABLE that Williams has SEVERELY restricted the volume and nature of concessions to athletic recruits vs. what happened 10-15 years ago. And all the recent evidence shows that there is now barely any difference in the academic performance of Williams’ athletes vs. non-athletes, and NO difference outside of just a few specific teams. And interesteddad knows all that, but makes the same blanket statements (aka, lies) that he has been making for years, despite all the evidence that contradicts everything he says. </p>

<p>Yes, Williams recruits more athletes than just the 66 Tips. But those who aren’t tipped (the “protects”) have essentially similar academic credentials to all the other admitted students … they are just basically given a preference over the vast number of applicants who possess otherwise equal credentials. Even still, we are talking about around 100 out of 550 students in the entering class who are truly highly recruited athletes who are protected or tipped by coaches (as opposed to someone who just has an athletic attribute / can be a contributor of some type on some teams, just like they can probably contribute to campus in a myriad of ways), which is less than 20 percent of the class. </p>

<p>The budget figures are, as stated again and again and again, misleading and outdated. They don’t include facility expenditures which, anyone remotely objective would agree, is a major signal about relative institutional priorities. Look at Williams’ arts facilities, student life facilities, dining halls, dorms, academic facilities, and science facilities, all of which are the finest or at worst among the finese of any liberal arts college, then look at its athletic facilities, which are merely pretty good, and then tell me that Williams has been overemphasizing athletics. Williams’ athletics budget has been cut to the bone and I can site a million anecdotal arenas in which Williams has to make due without in areas where its peers have budget to spend. Williams isn’t paying its coaches higher salaries, it’s not traveling more, it’s not spending more (or really anything) on recruiting, it doesn’t (unlike many of its peers) provide free access to all of its home sporting events via the web, and on and on and on. To the extent Williams has a higher athletic budget than some other places, it is because it has a wider variety of varsity sports, things like skiing, crew, golf, and wrestling, some of which are quite expensive, but none of which attract steretypical “jocks” that interesteddad likes to denigrate. And of course it has a much higher budget than Swarthmore because Swat is a much smaller school, with fewer students, fewer athletes, and more importantly, no VERY expensive football team. No one is arguing that Williams does not possess a more athletic culture than Swarthmore; Williams is TOWARDS one end of the spectrum among LA college, and Swat TOWARDS the other (although neither is an extreme outlier). But you feel a pathological need to perpetuate lies about the prominence of athletics at Williams vs. EVERY liberal arts college, not just Swarthmore. The fact is that Williams does not emphasize athletics more in admissions or in terms of budgetary / capital priorities than many of its immediate peers, including Amherst, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Trinity, and so on. And in particular, Williams does not have materially more success, conduct more recruiting, or place more emphasis on the sports that have a reptuation for most affecting campus culture, namely hockey, lacrosse, football and maybe a few others. Heck, even WESLEYAN just hired away Williams’ football coach, you think he’d leave for Wesleyan if they didn’t promise to prioritize football relative to Williams?? (Wes also recently hired Bates’ basketball coach away). For the zillionth time, Williams’ (a) success and (b) larger proportion of athletes is related in most part to individual sports like swimming, cross country, tennis, and so on, and those students tend to be the type who did fifty different activities in high school, only one of which is a varsity sport, and who wouldn’t stand out on campus from those uninvolved in any sort of athletics. </p>

<p>Williams does not “hide” from its reputation as a sporty / outdoorsy / athletic school. It is in a rural location and athletics / outdoors activities are a big part of campus life, and if you live for city life and hate all forms of athletic or outdoors activity, you should certainly think twice (or three times) about attending Williams. But really, the school is equally stellar in the arts and in terms of producing students who attend the top grad schools in the country in all disciplines; it is far from the single-minded athletic factory that interresteddad has, and always will regardless of the evidence, describes. Pay attention to the posters who DON’T have an agenda, who actually have BEEN on the Williams campus in recent years when school is in session, who have, in some cases, non-athlete kids who are CURRENT students at Williams, and listen carefuly to what THEY have to say about how dominant the athletic culture is. Much more credible source than someone who basically has been cutting and pasting the same diatribe / rant for years, without any first-hand knowledge of what CURRENT campus life actually involves.</p>

<p>Oh, and GTalum, check the roster on track and cross country for Williams – absolutely ENORMOUS rosters, consisting of both athletes known to coaches before hand and MANY true walk-ones.</p>

<p>Finally (responding to another poster), here is the list of facilities that have been gut renovated or newly built at Williams in the past 15 year: new dance studio / theater, new studio art facility, two new student centers, two new humanities building, new comprehensive science center / science library, about 1/3 of all major campus dorms. Not a single major athletic renovation on the list, despite some which are BADLY needed. Yes, the library was put on hold, but it will go forward probably in about a year, and that is the ONLY major academic building on campus that hasn’t been renovated or newly built, and you can hardly blame Williams for a slight delay in the most expensive project in the college’s history, which will be happening soon in all events. The also-badly-needed track / football field renovation (a MUCH less expensive project) has also been delayed due to the financial crisis. Again, I am not saying Williams does not place some degree of emphasis on athletics, just disputing interresteddad’s inaccurate characterization that such emphasis is even close-to-unique or unusual among the bulk of its peers.</p>

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<p>It’s interesting that you should cite Wesleyan in this discussion because I was just thinking how fortunate it is to be of a size and scale – more than your average LAC, but not quite as impersonal as a research university – that it can field enough varsity teams to compete in NESCAC and still maintain a reputation for being rather “artsy” and “quirky”.</p>

<p>I have no skin in this game. I think the OP will do well at either college. But, I think Ephman, like Hamlet’s mother, you doth protest too much. Williams has clearly profited by its reputation as a perennial Little Three champion and Wesleyan has clearly paid a price for not keeping the conference competitive. Hopefully, that won’t be for too much longer. :)</p>

<p>Ephman - I don’t think interesteddad is necessarily saying that Williams is different from Swarthmore because its athletic tips lower its academic standards (though that is true, it’s not outrageously true). However, athletes recruited at the same academic standard are still athletes, and they contribute to Williams’s campus culture. It doesn’t matter if golfers are not stereotypical jocks–they are still athletes. Do you dispute this conclusion?</p>

<p>

Again, I disagree. Most casual observers will note that Williams is “more athletic” than Swarthmore; this observation is substantiated by the simple fact that more Williams students are athletes. Scholar-athletes, absolutely–but still athletes.</p>

<p>I would not necessarily listen to the parents on CC who have their own pro-Williams agenda. Actual Williams students are more reliable–and yes, some of their anecdotes have matched the parental ones, but some have not. It is a more balanced POV (this thread is certainly not balanced, but that’s why the OP made it in both subforums).</p>

<p>I’ve been following Ephblog and various financial reports from Williams, because I like to read those kinds of things; I doubt that the renovated library (which was originally to be a complete knock-down-the-cinder-block overhaul, but I’m not sure of the current plans) will be ready in tip for the '14 OP to benefit from it. Given the state of the library, I’m surprised that Williams chose to delay its renovation for so long–but then I’m not privy to the more pressing need for multiple student centers.</p>

<p>OP–I personally think that Swarthmore is a better fit for you. But I am also extrapolating from personal comfort level with alcohol abuse and a predominant athletic culture. It is difficult to deny that both attributes are MORE common at Williams than at Swarthmore, though the degree to which this matters to you, and to which it might affect you, is a very personal decision that only you can make.</p>

<p>In particular, I think that Swarthmore is more welcoming than Williams to people who want to be more active but really have no experience with it–I see Williams as the perfect school for the well-rounded scholar-athlete who might also be an amazing musician, for instance. (A friend of mine was admitted ED as a recruited athlete, and I think she is a perfect fit for the school. I know her from the musical side, not the athletic side; but I wouldn’t particularly want to attend a school with her “type” as the predominant model, because that is too athletic for my taste.)</p>

<p>nceph:</p>

<p>I didn’t raise the issue of lower standards for athletes at Williams. You did. I think I actually referred to Williams as the best school in the country for “smart jocks”. I mentioned it in discussing Swarthmore’s decision to drop football because that was the major reason. Swarthmore was unwilling to allocate such a large percentage of its lower-band admits to varsity athletics.</p>

<p>BTW, I dispute that Williams has materially changed the standards for athletic recruiting. They’ve raised the absolute floor from embarrasing to well below average. That’s mostly window dressing.</p>

<p>Here are Williams seven academic reader categories, quoting from the new NBER working paper/senior thesis on matriculation yield at Williams.</p>

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</p>

<p>The stats of the overall class at Williams have improved. The average was 3.6 in 1990, increasing to 2.8 in 2000. In the last few years, “Around 60% of the admitted students in the data set had academic ratings of one or two.”</p>

<p>The tipped athletes have traditionally averaged far below those standards:</p>

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</p>

<p>Morty’s new policy. implemented in 2002, limited low-band recruits:</p>

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</p>

<p>An academic 6 is state school material. It’s horrible for an applicant at a school like Williams. But, at least the school now limits them to only 10 of the 66 tips. I guess that’s progress. Seriously, if your kids had B averages with average academic courseloads with 1250 SATs, would you have even remotely considered them as Williams material (unless you are Edgar Bronfman or Herb Allen?)</p>

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<p>Of course. I thought that was the topic. Williams is a much more sports-oriented school and, therefore devotes more financial and admissions resources to sports and has more athletes on campus. The premise here is that, if you prefer a school with a very large number of varsity sports (and therefore varsity athletes), then Williams is a great choice. If you, on the other hand, prefer a school with less focus on varsity sports and more focus on, for example, community service or diversity, then another school might be a more appropriate choice.</p>

<p>BTW, DIV III football is not hugely expensive. Williams and similar NESCAC schools spend about $300,000 a year on football.</p>

<p>I don’t want to put too much credence in this new yield study from Williams because I’ve seen some critique that the regression modelling uses antiquated techniques, but here are some things that caught my eye:</p>

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<p>I think 27% is a very low number. I would guess that well above 50% of accepted Swarthmore students would qualify for this “academic vitality” tag, which is related to Swarthmore’s reputation for academic engagement and class participation.</p>

<p>The meat of this new study is regression analysis of how likely an accepted student with various admissions office attribute tags is to actually matriculate at Williams. The categories marked as statistically signficant were:</p>

<p>Art tag: 12.7% less likely to enroll
Theater tag: 9.8% less likely
**Top athlete: **10.7% more likely to enroll
Middle athlete: 20.1% more likely
Lowest athete: 28.3% more likely
Intellectual vitality: 8.9% less likely
Legacy: 5.5% more likely</p>

<p>interesteddad, that was not a post from nceph; I think you meant Ephman.</p>

<p>Keil, for the fifth time on this thread, yes, I AGREE that Williams is, on the whole, significantly more athletically oriented than Swarthmore. I take issue with interrestedad because in this and other fora, he cherry picks any sort of perjorative information about Williams (without providing any context) that fits his preconceived notions and biases against the school, and which are completely resistant to change and divorced from ANY recent first-hand observations or conversations with current students and/or parents (and by the way, I would DEFINITELY disagree with your assessment of parents, who tend to be VERY tuned in to their children’s welfare and happiness, but if you are so dismissive of parental opinions, then you should be TOTALLY dismissive of interresteddad’s views, since he doesn’t even HAVE a kid who attended Williams). He also ignores or tries to explain away any data or annecdotes that DON’T fit his preconceived notions (like the very real gains Williams has made in diversity – the last frosh class was something like 12 percent asian, 10 percent black, 10 percent latino, and 7 percent international, which is fairly comparable to most of its competitors – or very substantial changes to athletic recruiting, or community service when he ignores the absolutely AMAZING accomplishments of MANY grads and students on the service-learning front in recent years). </p>

<p>This was the original blurb that I was responding to, just to be clear:</p>

<p>"Williams is the most sports-focused Div III liberal arts college the country. A professor famously called the school “a Nike camp with enrichment classes.” The most varsity athletes, the biggest athletics budget, etc. Swarthmore is in the normal category, about the same as places like Pomona and Grinnell. About 130 to 150 students in each freshman class at Williams are recruited athletes, tagged by athletic dept as likely four-year varsity contributors. That’s more than the number of arts, music, dance, and theater tags combined. Swarthmore has about 60 or so recruited athletes in each class.</p>

<p>Forget football, Williams wouldn’t ever consider dropping even wrestling, a sport so unpopular these days that Williams conference (the NESCAC) doesn’t even sanction wrestling. Middlebury and Bowdown and Bates and Colby and Tufts and Amherst don’t even have wrestling, so Williams competes againt Bridgewater State and Norwich University in wrestling. God help anyone who suggests cutting the program. Not happening.</p>

<p>Saying that Williams isn’t a jock-oriented school is like saying nobody takes academics seriously at Swarthmore. It’s just a ridiculous thing to say."</p>

<p>I’m telling you, trust me, there are many liberal arts schools that will feel no less “sports oriented” than Williams. Now, Williams is substantially more sports oriented than Swarthmore, and moreso than the mean, but is it materially different in this regard than Middlebury or Bowdoin or many others? No. There are many other false and/or misleading statements in this paragraph (for example, Williams HAS put on the table the prospect of dropping varsity sports, although hopefully it won’t come to that), some of which I’ve addressed, some of which I’m frankly sick of addressing. It is this type of sentiment, along with other myths and misconceptions that he obsessively perpetuates, that I am debunking. I am not saying that Williams and Swarthmore have identical cultures, but anyone with half a brain who (a) reads a few college guides and (b) spends a few days on each campus can sense that for themselves. And my larger point is that many, many, many people who are not athletic and don’t play sports are very, very happy at Williams. Which is not to say the school is for everyone, really, the most important thing is to meet as many current students and/or prospectives as possible and talk to them. </p>

<p>I think much of the negativity and stereotypes about Williams on this thread are simply wrong. I am a person who, obviously, loved Williams, and while I do love sports (as well as art, and literature, and movies, and many other things), I never played a competitive sport in my life, including in high school, let alone Williams, I am not what anyone would call a jock, my group of friends from Williams are the smartest, most intellectually engaging people I’ve ever encountered, moreso than peers at my grad school which has a FAR more “intellectual” reputation, and on and on. Just as you and others cast about aspertions and stereotypes about Williams, many of them inaccurate, I could say don’t go to Swarthmore unless you are an antisocial dork who wants to be locked up reading alone in your dorm room every Friday night and loves to be stressed out to the point of exhaustion. I am not going to say that, as I’m sure it is not true, even if personally the one weekend I spent at Swarthmore I came away very unimpressed with the campus culture – just wasn’t the right fit for me. But I know people who I respect who went to Swarthmore and loved it (and one of them happend to be in college a massive boozer and rugger). </p>

<p>Finally, as for the library (and I’ll compare Willaims’ facilities favorably to ANY liberal arts college, by the way), it was built in the mid 1970’s, while the student center that was replaced was built over 20 years earlier. It wasn’t as if the college prioritized student life over a library – hell, the school in 2000 spent millions to build a spectacular new science library – it’s just that the life cycle of one building was 20 years behind the other, and the student center (whcih was built for a campus half the size, with no women, etc) was desperately in need of replacement, while the library was not. And while hardly perfect, the library is not an UTTER disaster or anything. It is fine for a few more years, especially when you consider there is a brand new science library with gorgeous study space on campus, and there is ample room to study in the current main library - I’d say that it is actually nicer than Amherst’s current library system, for example. Williams is still demolishing this library and building an entirely new one – that HAS to happen due to the construction of two brand new buildings directly adjacent to it. The timing just happened to be very bad. The school will have a gorgeous new library, but yes, it won’t be for several more years – but you can hardly question Williams’ priorities, as you seem to be doing, when it has spent or soon plans to spend about 200 million on new academic facilities, including two just-completed humanities buildings and a forthcoming 80 million or so new library. </p>

<p>I’m done wasting time here. My basic advice to anyone reading is that, when it comes to anything do to with Williams vs. Swarthmore, especially when it comes to matters like diversity, athletics, campus culture, etc., take everything interresteddad says with a grain of salt. Heck, take everything I have to say with a grain of salt. Talk to as many CURRENT students, or failing that, as many recent alums or parents of current students or current prospectives or other people with a close connection to the school as it stands TODAY and who don’t have a well established agenda / bias, as possible, and listen carefully to what THEY have to say.</p>

<p>Visiting with an open mind is key, I think. Even so, some people will feel strongly drawn to one school or the other; other kids, who might even begin with similar mental lists of what’s most desirable, may not get that blast of certainty, despite the fervent posts here and elsewhere.</p>

<p>I’m hardly the first to make this point, but the truth is that it wouldn’t take long to round up hundreds of kids at each school who couldn’t be readily IDd as Swatties or Ephs.</p>

<p>The schools are just not as wildly different as some people like to paint them to be. There are poet-jocks at both schools, plus musician-jocks, painter-jocks, and dancer-jocks too. And obviously there are nerd-nerds and jock-jocks at both schools as well, but you’re not going to know who’s who right off the bat. College isn’t high school; the lax team isn’t terrorizing the mathletes - the mathletes are on the lax team, for one thing. </p>

<p>Both have binge drinkers and nondrinkers, but in between each school has a bigger population of sure-it’s-a-sunny-day-I’ll-have-a-beer kids. Swat has the 'dactyl hunt - and it also has Crunkfest. Somebody else can fill in something similar for Williams, although it’s possible that arador is right about the 'dactyl hunt being an only-at-Swat phenomenon. </p>

<p>Some kids will feel drawn to or repelled by the very angular kids at each school, and will come away with a feeling that those kids define the school’s culture. Other visitors are not going to see it that way. </p>

<p>I’ve spent time with Swatties representing every year currently enrolled, and the two years beyond that ('08s and '09s). Out of all those kids, I can think of three who would almost certainly not have been happy at Williams. Two of those are engineers, so it was a specific academic choice rather than a social one. The other one really hates snow (not that Swat was much better on that count this year). </p>

<p>That’s not to say that these kids didn’t have really good reasons for choosing Swat. It’s just an attempt to remind people that the schools do not sit at such opposite ends of some spectrum. </p>

<p>And if that’s not long enough for you, here’s my real tl;dr rant of the day (some of which I know see is x-posted, but I’m going to say it anyway):</p>

<p>It’s my hope that prospective students (and their parents) reading CC threads are able to bear in mind that all posts should be taken with a grain of salt. Some people have a real desire to post information that will help prospective students make a good choice; some people have agendas that are less altruistic. I like to think that most people intend to be helpful; it’s good to award a fair helping of benefit-of-the-doubt to allow for the lack of nuance and expression available in this format. </p>

<p>It’s also good to pay attention to who a poster is, and where their knowledge comes from. There are alumni who post (recent and not-so, happy and not-so), parents who post, people who are both alumni and parents who post, students who post (though very rarely, and with good reason - here, as at Williams, they have <em>much</em> better things to do), high school students who have visited, high school students who have never visited, and high school students who have been admitted and not yet matriculated. There are also people with no more knowledge of Swat (or any other school) than what their cousin once heard from a friend, or what they’ve read on other websites. If people don’t say who they are, and you want to know, 1) good for you, and 2) read their older posts. You can usually figure it out.</p>

<p>I’ll save anybody who’s still reading the trouble: People in my family a generation ahead of me went to Swat, I went there, and I’m a parent of two current students. I try to protect my kids’ privacy, so I don’t actually post a lot, but I’m happy to answer specific questions via PM.</p>

<p>Congratulations and good luck to the OP and the others faced with this choice.</p>