<p>I love the tutorial system at Williams (a focused seminar on a fascinating topic with one other person and an expert in their field would pretty much be heaven for me :)), but I've established that the culture there really isn't for me. Is there something like it at Swarthmore?</p>
<p>You've just described the Swarthmore Honors program, the thing that really put Swarthmore on the map academically.</p>
<p>It was started in the 1920's by Pres. Frank Adylotte, who came to Swarthmore with the express purpose of starting the Honors program. The basis of the Honors program was students doing independent non-classroom study either individually, or in small groups of two or three kids, with two professors in the department. Over the course of the final two years in school, an honors student would do honors "preparations" in three specific topics in his or her major, with Senior year largely devoted to a thesis on one of these topics. There were no grades at all in the Honors program until 1996.</p>
<p>At the end of four years, a outside panel of three experts in the field (typically professors from other fancy-pants schools) visits campus, reviews the honors students' thesis and gives a series of written and oral exams on the three areas of study. This outside panel of examiners determines whether the student graduates with "honors", "honors with distinction", or "honors with high distinction".</p>
<p>The program has changed somewhat over the years, but is still the same basic format. These days, you only prepare two honors topics, I think -- kids were avoiding honors because it really cut down options for studying outside their major. And, now, honors students do receive grades in their regular classes, plus the various levels of honors are translated to grades on the final transcript based on some formula. If I recall, I think I read that last fall 130 outside experts arrived at Swarthmore to hear honors presentations and give the written and oral exams.</p>
<p>If you have the Swat admissions video, take a look at the scene where Emilano (the viola playing Rugby guy) is sitting in his professor's office. That is a one-person class, developed for/by the kid on a subject that is not in the standard course catalog. That sort of thing is not unusual at all. This kind of course is listed in the course catalog for each department. Look for a course called "Directed Reading". Just to pick a department, there were 15 sections of "Directed Reading" in the Sociology/Anthropology department last spring. The dept. averages between 15 and 20 majors. These can either be half credit or full credit courses. The senior thesis is a one credit course, one on one with a single professor.</p>
<p>More than one third of Swat's official classes have fewer than 10 people and many of those have just a couple of kids, depending on the department. </p>
<p>For freshman year, every department offers (and everyone takes) "freshman seminars" which are capped at 12 people. These meet once a week for three hours (sometimes at night) and have basically replaced many of the "101" intro courses. These seminars are often centered around student presentations and also focus on the process of writing in that field, i.e. you turn in a draft of a paper, get it back with comments, and then turn in revised final version.</p>
<p>Thanks so much, interesteddad... where do you obtain this trove of knowledge??? The honors program sounds fascinating.</p>
<p>hi ladylazarus,
My S will be starting the Honors Program as a junior next year, double majoring in politcal science and history. He will take four (4) double credit seminars during the course of the next two years, and at the end of his senior year, there will indeed be examiners from outside colleges and universities who descend upon Swarthmore to test him and the roughly 1/3 of his class who decide to pursue the Honors major. He will prepare four Honors preparations for them, based on the double credit seminars he will have taken, and they will examine his written work and test him orally on his "preparations." The Honors program is competitive to enter, more so in some majors than others. For example, you have to obtain certain grades both within your intended major as well as overall for your first semester and a half. It was this unique Honors program, formally called the External Examination Program, which drew him to Swat. More information on the Honors Program can be found on the Swat website if you go to the section on Academics. If you have more specific questions, I can probably get answers from my S for about the next week before he takes off for his summer employment.</p>
<p>
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where do you obtain this trove of knowledge???
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<p>There is a coffee-table book, "Richard Walton's Swarthmore College: An Informal History" published in 1986 for some kind of endowment campaign. It is long ago out of print, but my wife has a friend who dabbles in used books. He had tracked down a copy of it for a niece attending Swarthmore a few years back. When he heard that our daughter had been accepted to Swat, he tracked down a copy for her. </p>
<p>Because the Honors Program is so integral to the unique history of the school, there is a whole chapter on the President Frank Adylotte and his creation of the Honors Program. It was really the thing that put Swarthmore on the map, giving it the reputation for being an academic powerhouse. (along with the Swarthmore team winning the popular College Bowl tv game show in the 1950s). Not only do you have the Swarthmore students interacting with the outside examiners, but the 100+ professors at other schools get a first hand look at Swarthmore and its students. Probably goes a long way towards explaining why Swarthmore is so well respected in the academic community.</p>
<p>There is very cool stuff in the book. One of the more interesting pictures is Swarthmore benefactor, Eugene Lang, as a teenage undergrad in the 1930s, sitting on a chair on the porch of Parrish in the background of a picture of Albert Einstein, visiting campus. The pictures of Parrish with out a tree in sight except for the row of saplings just planted along McGill walk is kind of interesting. The whole campus was originally open farmland.</p>
<p>I'm sure that McCabe Library has copies of the book.</p>
<p>How many kids at Swat do the Honors program? And how much is it a benefit for future job or grad school placement?</p>
<p>I ask this because at the moment, I have no desire to do the Honors Program. It doesn't really fit my style of learning, and also limits me from taking the plethora of classes I'm interested in at the school.</p>
<p>I don't think the Honors Program is a 'prestige' thing at Swat. Many very bright kids don't do it. They might be looking for more breadth than depth in subjects, that's why Honors does not suit them. Have you seen the Swat DVD? One of the kids there says she is not doing Honors because she would like to explore many subjects and Honors will restrict her. Honors will not help you with job placement. Grad school placement, it might - since it shows you can do exploration and research into a subject.</p>
<p>This link shows the percentage of Honors program grads each year since 1970.</p>
<p>There is a second column "Distinction in Course". In course is Swat-speak for regular courses, not the honors program. The distinction in course was dropped in the mid-90s, along with a fairly significant update to the Honors Program in response to declining participation. </p>
<p>You'd have to look up the details, but basically they cut back the number of honors "preparations", giving honors students a little more time to dabble outside their major. Also, honors students started receiving grades on the transcripts for the first time.</p>
<p>Swatties are split on the honors program. My sense is that it is cool if you want to do it; cool if you you don't. There are pros and cons. You get very in-depth study and independent research in the honors program. You get broader exposure to more courses in the regular program. The honors program is definitely a real kick in the seat of the pants in terms of senior workload. Final semester, preparing for the outside examinations is pretty much hibernate in McCabe Library for the duration. </p>
<p>The honors percentage currently stands at about 35%.</p>
<p>interesteddad, you should be on payroll at Swarthmore admissions office:).</p>
<p>achat,
My S will be doing the Honors program in part because he is looking for the biggest challenge he can find, (very Swarthmorean) and in part because he has been waiting "his whole life" to study what he wants to study in depth, without someone telling him what he must study. As to the breadth of courses being limited by the Honors Program, I am sure that is true to some extent, but during the course of his first two years he managed to take classes in math, astrophysics, economics, religion, chemistry, physics, history, music and political science, if I am remembering most of them. For him, it's the right mix.</p>
<p>Phoenix article on Honors program:
<a href="http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2004/2004-04-22/news/14015%5B/url%5D">http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2004/2004-04-22/news/14015</a></p>
<p>momof3sons, is your son doing Honors in both the majors - or one? Wow!! </p>
<p>My son is thinking of doing Honors in Poli. Sci too. And he's also had a chance to sample many courses this academic year.</p>
<p>Here's an article on Pres. Frank Adelyotte and impact on Swarthmore.</p>
<p>They key point, I think, is that Adelyotte's Honors Program, now in place for 80+ years, has shaped the entire approach to teaching at Swarthmore. The whole notion of an "active" education (as opposed to passively listening to a lecture) is totally ingrained in the college culture.</p>
<p>In many departments, there really is no difference between the honors program and "in-course" except for the outside examiners and the number of thesis-style senior papers. In the few large departments (poli sci, econ, bio), there is probably more of a difference and there is the perception that honors students in these departments get "most-favored nation" status. However, in most departments, the vast majority of upper-level courses are seminars, regardless.</p>
<p>From an historical perspective, Adelyotte's notions were pretty radical. Remember, this was in the 1920s when the concepts of teaching were still in the "ruler on knuckles if you don't memorize these facts" stage.</p>
<p>Mine says that she does not want to do honors...and she sounds pretty sure at this point. She has logical reasons, one of which is that honors makes doing a semester abroad very difficult.</p>
<p>It's an issue that I'm 100% neutral on.</p>
<p>hi achat,
your question prompted me to ask S to explain the two departments Honors program. Apparently, you can only be an Honors major in one department, and then you can do an Honors minor in another. So, he will be a political science Honors major, and take 3 of the double credit seminars in that department, and a history Honors minor and take his 4th double credit seminar in history. One semester when he will be taking two double credit seminars, (each the equivalent of two courses) he was planning to add a fifth course, and his advisors in both departments said that they would absolutely NOT give their approval to him to add a fifth course. He was told that even if he could get a high grade in all the classes, if he added a fifth course he would not not be putting in enough time to the double credit seminars.</p>
<p>I think the honors program sounds interesting and very rewarding, and I can certainly see how it would be perfectly suited to someone who wanted to do pursue a Ph.D. in the honors field. I know that Swarthmore has a great number of students getting Ph.D.s, and I'm curious whether most of them did the honors program while they were undergraduates, or whether there's a mix of honors and non-honors in those who go on to graduate school. Does deciding not to do honors put a student at a significant disadvantage in applying to graduate school?<br>
My D's (a rising HS senior) current aspiration is to teach at the university or college level, but I think she also will have some logistical reasons for not participating in the honors program, such as study abroad and just too many other subjects that interest her. I think it would be a really tough decision to make.</p>
<p>It is possible to do Honors and study abroad, It just takes more planning ahead. If you go abroad in the spring of sophomore year, it does not interfere with honors at all. But I am sure that you don't have to do Honors in order to go to grad school. If there is a strong correlation, it's probably because it is the same type of academic pursuit, so the same people choose to do it.</p>
<p>nceph,</p>
<p>FWIW, my DD is in a very good grad program in a foreign language, a second year doctoral student...she double majored at Swat, and did not do the Honors program in either. I didn't get the sense that that hurt her in any way when she applied.</p>
<p>At this point, I think she is glad she did the "regular" degree, as she likes the typical larger classroom approach to learning. Of course her upper level courses at Swarthmore involved smaller settings, and now all of her grad classes are very small seminars. </p>
<p>Clearly the tutorial system does appeal in some ways to folks, but it has a sort of stress in that you simply cannot hide! My DH earned a degree from Oxford and describes the pressures as pretty intense. I don't think I would have liked that method, but some people clearly thrive in that sort of environment.</p>
<p>Agreed that you can participate in the Honors program and study abroad. As suggested, it can certainly be done second semester sophomore year. It can also be done junior year as long as you arrange one semester where you aren't taking any of your double credit seminars. I think that students choosing to pursue the Honors program or not really doesn't have a lot to do with visions of grad school. My sense is that this really comes down to what kind of experience a student is looking for. As "intense" as Swat already is, there are those 33% or so each year who find it somewhat enthralling to ratchet up the "stress" a notch or two. But what my husband or I might consider to be stress, our S considers to be fun! That's what makes a Swat student. His attitude is "bring it on!"</p>
<p>NCeph:</p>
<p>The percentage of students doing the Honors Program had fallen to 10% by the early 1990s. I don't think there was ever any corresponding drop in PhD production at Swarthmore. That seems to have been consistently high dating back half a century and remains high today. So that would undercut the idea that the Honors program is essential to grad school admissions.</p>
<p>To the extent that the students who embark on the Honors track may be among Swarthmore's top students to begin with, there may be some incidental correlation. But, I think the valid way to view the two tracks is simply that they offer two somewhat different approaches to the final two years of study. There are pros and cons to both approaches. From an academic standpoint, those largely center around issues of breadth versus depth. </p>
<p>The relative merits of the two tracks will vary a bit from department to department. Even in the non-honors track, many departments require a double-credit senior thesis or research project, which is a one-on-one tutorial with a thesis advisor professor in the fall and spring of senior year. So, it's not like the "in course" option isn't exposing students to grad-school type independent research. In those cases, it's a choice between one of those and four of those. In fact, that kind of research starts freshman year. One of my D's freshman seminars this year included interning at a local organization and a final "case study" paper on that organization, including interviewing the head of that organization.</p>
<p>I don't think a decision needs to be, or can be, made on honors until at least the end of freshman year. By that point, you will, in all likelihood, have been sharing a hall and a bathroom for 9 months with juniors and seniors following both tracks, so you'll have a real-world look at both options and a real-world view of the various departments. As a prospective applicant, it's a plus (IMO) that there are two different options and it's probably important to understand the role the unique honors program has played in shaping Swarthmore for 80 years. But, I think it would be a mistake to try to "project" a decision from afar. I actually think the biggest mistake I see high school kids make here is trying to project too many decisions without even a day of exposure to college academics.</p>