Trying to get a handle on Swarthmore

College Search & Selection
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As part of the search across a wide range of liberal arts colleges, Swarthmore was part of our visits. Going in I knew that Swarthmore was super-academic, tops in preparing students for graduate school, etc. After a visit, I am still trying to sort it out.

I was surprised by the way the “preparations” are described. The process seems arcane, confusing, and very credit-intensive. Having to have 3 major preparations and 1 minor preparation to achieve honors seems far more work than a senior thesis. And, after doing all of that work, to have only one person in the major designated for “highest” honors while others are sorted into different tiers seems overly competitive. It also seems to leave little time for doing other things. In contrast to schools where every student writes a relatively light senior thesis (e.g., Princeton :wink: ), only 20-25% of students pursue honors at Swarthmore. But for those who do, it feels like they are just trying to start graduate school early rather than pacing their academic careers to take the best of the college experience.

I also found the heavy emphasis placed on the benefits of the multiple Pass/Fail options at Swarthmore to be a rather paradoxical reinforcement of the grade emphasis. As if the students could not stand to have a blemish on their records, and the faculty could not bear to relax their strict grading system, so therefore had to develop this safety valve. After doing all of that advanced and individualized work, it seems a shame to continue the idea that grades are all important.

In general, the emphasis seems to be on being “rigorous” above all else, with a corresponding lack of emphasis on a well-rounded education. Diversity, student activities, wellness, career advising, academic support and such all went basically unmentioned in our presentation/tour, unlike all the other colleges we have seen, further enhancing the one-dimensional impression I got from Swarthmore. Which is frustrating, because I do want the best academic preparation for my son, but not at too great of a sacrifice of other things.

I should also note that per Naviance, it appears to be much easier to get into Princeton from my son’s HS than into Swarthmore, so perhaps none of this is consequential.

But I am looking for other opinions and experiences that could help me sort this out.

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What does your son want? If he doesn’t want a very rigorous academic college that is known for being intense, he should look elsewhere. I don’t think Swat is hiding anything, and I think kids who thrive there enjoy that environment and make time for socializing too.

It’s not the right place for everyone, and that might include your son. I get a sense that you feel it should be the right place for him because of its reputation. It’s about him though. I think you need to step back a bit and let him decide what colleges are best for him.

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It is fine for you to question whether or not this is the best fit for your S. However, it really is his choice as to where he can envision himself. If he is fine with it, then I wouldn’t worry about it as much. If he asks your opinion, be honest in your assessment but be prepared for him to disagree, too. We want them to start being independent :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks. I agree that the decision is his and the right fit is important. What I was I guess surprised by myself was that I thought of Swarthmore as a place where everyone is smart and motivated, but that they would not be making fine distinctions between those that graduated with high honors versus those that only graduated with honors. Also, given the low participation rate in the honors program, I am also wondering if the Swarthmore reputation means anything to graduate schools if you don’t complete honors.

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It’s Swarthmore and it’s unlikely a grad school will be concerned about a student who didn’t go the honors route. Grad school is a long way off for your son, and by that time, he might have completely different ideas about what he wants to do. More importantly, by the time he graduates with a BA or BS, he will be a full grown adult. Those decisions will be based on what he wants to pursue.

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Most schools make rigid decisions on where Latin Honors cutoffs are. A few schools are notorious for massive grade inflation, but most don’t give out Magna Cum Laude and Summa Cum Laude out like candy. A student has to be very distinguished from their peers to hit those marks. Many name a single departmental student of the year.

As for a separate honors distinction, no one cares, really about any school’s honors program. He should consider it if what is required of the program meshes well with the regular curriculum. If not, it’s not worth the hassle.

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Swarthmore themselves have been talking for some time about how it is getting more difficult for their students to get into grad school:

Not sure why someone would want an experience like Swarthmore’s if it didn’t lead to grad school.

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Because not everyone who attends Swat goes to grad school. It’s like the Harvard of LACs. You are overthinking this. At the end of the day, if your kid has a good GPA, honors or not, and excellent recs, and a good resume, those will be the determining factors in grad school admission.

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Most of that would apply to anywhere. Including the top research university undergraduate programs. Many underestimate how competitive it is to get into a top PhD programs. The number of students that they are looking for are really small. They have the whole world to choose from.

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Okay, I’m going to take a completely different tack here. Trust your thinking. You are not the first, nor will you be the last to come away thinking perhaps Swarthmore is a little too purely academic in their identity. As a matter of fact, you have managed to be far more nuanced in your assessment than most people who arrive at the same conclusions you do; a small college of 1400 kids should have a much higher rate of seniors writing theses.

But, Swarthmore is a CC sacred cow, hence the faint hint of condescension that meets any criticism of it (“It’s the Harvard of LACs”.) IMHO, Swarthmore isn’t so much the Harvard of LACs as the Sparta of LACs. Hint: If you are looking for the Athens of LACs, you may have to look elsewhere.

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I think you are absolutely right! If there’s ANY reason not to choose a school, don’t choose it. Sometimes the reasons can be pretty banal. My son wouldn’t apply to HMC because the architecture was ugly. :laughing: There are far too many good choices to need to compromise.

I do stick to my original assertion though. There are a few well noted ones that defy this, but college shouldn’t be Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.

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I like that, “Sparta of LACs”. Of course, Sparta is renowned and met with some success. Today I watched some YouTube videos of Swarthmore administrators, faculty, and students talking about their institution. They frequently use words like “rigor” where I might expect to see “thorough”, or “difficult” instead of “challenging”. Rigor can be a synonym for harshness, stiffness, and severity. Not to my taste, but my son might surprise me, I guess.

As I said earlier, probably a moot point, since Naviance shows 1 acceptance from 70 applications in the last decade to Swarthmore vs. 35 to Princeton in 533 applications.

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I have hired Swat students for a long time.

I don’t think anyone on CC thinks Swat is a sacred cow, but there is a reality to rigor (or whatever you want to call it). Employers understand that graduating from Swat is not a cakewalk, and as a result, you can major in English and get a job in banking; you can major in poli sci and get a job at a hedge fund; you can major in comparative literature and get a job at a well respected NGO.

For all the teeth grinding on CC that “it doesn’t matter where you go because all colleges are the same”, truth is- they’re not. There are talented and smart and successful students who come from everywhere, but some colleges provide a more intense and academically rigorous education than others.

A kid doesn’t want that? Great, don’t apply. A kid wants it but doesn’t get in? There are other, “Swat like” places. But to some employers (not all) the rigor is meaningful. Folks on CC assume that every HS kid is going to go to grad school and that’s not the case. Lots of people grab their diploma, walk out into the working world, and never look back!

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Thanks for the informative post. One of my greatest fears is that my son will end up at a hedge fund or in banking simply because he is at an elite school where that is a gravitational force. It nearly happened to me, and I still get chills thinking about it. I am really hoping for more of the “life of the mind” for him, hence the push/pull towards schools like Swarthmore.

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Just for fun, I ran the ROI for English majors through College Scorecard, and Swarthmore does pretty well in the “English Language and Literature/Letters, Other” category, finishing right behind Yale and Duke. But, so do Middlebury and Wesleyan. When I run the filter for “Political Science and Government”, Swarthmore does well, finishing in the top 20. But, so do four NESCAC colleges (Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst and Middlebury) plus Pomona, and Harvey Mudd.

So, yeah. There’s a definite Swarthmore cheering section on CC that you have to watch out for.

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I thought we were talking about ancient Sparta…not the kind of thing I expected Friends to be pushing. Here’s just a bit (from Wiki) of how awful it must have been to be Spartan. I once heard a radio show on the subject and they were brutal…

“Boys lived in communal messes and, according to Xenophon, whose sons attended the agoge , the boys were fed “just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough.”[121] In addition, they were trained to survive in times of privation, even if it meant stealing.[122] Besides physical and weapons training, boys studied reading, writing, music and dancing. Special punishments were imposed if boys failed to answer questions sufficiently “laconically” (i.e. briefly and wittily).[123]”

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We have heard what you want for your son regarding a college experience and career, what does he want? Is he saying the same things you are? Taking a job in a hedge fund company or banking doesn’t just happen to someone, even coming from the usual suspect schools.

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There is no gravitational force at these schools. There IS enormous parental pressure (for some families) for the kids to graduate into a lucrative career to justify the expense of a private education-- ROI as it were. There are kids who have their OWN pressure to catapult into the 22 year old version of the 1%. But there are tons of kids going off to fellowships, Fulbrights, jobs at NGO’s, startups which market low cost water purification systems to be sold in Nepal and Pakistan as a way to reduce infant mortality, grant writing jobs at a wide range of non-profits.

The administration at Swarthmore isn’t shoving kids into Hedge fund jobs. Hedge funds want kids who work hard, can think critically and analytically, love to learn, and have strong writing skills. I have never interviewed a Swarthmore kid who couldn’t communicate- doesn’t mean they aren’t out there of course. I’ve worked for companies which run 'Mini-MBA" programs. We can teach everything a smart BA needs to know in terms of basic financial analysis, valuation, core accounting principles, etc. but we were never able to figure out how to take an incurious BA with a business degree and teach him/her how to write a coherent three page executive summary.

But I wouldn’t fear the gravitational force. If your kid wants something less intense though-- Rhodes, Earlham, Knox, Beloit, Reed, Wittenberg… many fine choices with a less feverish pace of academics. Or Brandeis, Holy Cross (many of the Jesuit schools) with a strong tradition of public service and giving back.

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I could have missed it, but I haven’t seen much of a Swat cheering section on CC, at least in comparison to its LAC peers like Williams or Amherst. Swat is often depicted as unnecessarily competitive or “intense”. Harvey Mudd is even more, arguably much more, “intense”, but it gets more love than Swat.

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I agree. Swarthmore’s popularity manifests more in the real world, with, recently, more than 13,000 applicants for a first-year class of 456.

For a brief opinion on Swarthmore in the context of brief comments on other liberal arts colleges, see post #13 in this topic: Differences between top east-coast LACs? (Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury, etc.)