<p>Descant, My daughter's overnight last year was during midterms. Not the best time, perhaps, but that's the only time it worked out for her. And it turned out to be a good time to go--she got to see first-hand what the stress level during test-taking time was. Her host had the time to take her around the school and go to some ec meetings with her. When she had to study, someone else was always available to escort my daughter to where she was going. Most of the doors on the hall were open and the kids were dropping in for visits qua study breaks.
And, now that she's a first-year student at Swat, she has started watching tv, something she hasn't done since she outgrew Sesame Street.</p>
<p>Good Luck, Descant!</p>
<p>Most of the claims for and against Swarthmore as a back-breaking academic institution are true. That being said, I believe that yes, even at Swarthmore, you can slack off, but you can also excel while still creating time to do a host of other things.</p>
<p>My first two semesters were hell. I wasn't ready for college, and I lived in ML. Two very compelling reasons to take a semester-long break to do some good old relaxing, soul searching, and then working hard to change myself as a person. Even while slacking off my first two semesters, social as well as academic pressures made that experience much more difficult than does the situation I find myself in today.</p>
<p>I came back to Swat ready to work. I take 5 courses, have 1000+ pages of reading a week in addition to an introductory engineering course, and I still find time to play 8-10 hours of video games a week (including weekends) with my boyfriend, chatting with friends, watching the occasional movie, participating in a time-intensive group, and going to most of the on-campus events that are within my realm of interest (typically once every 2-3 months).</p>
<p>Yes, Swat can be very difficult, but I think it's important to emphasize that I do all of the above without skipping any of my readings (as an English major, I think it's just my nature to forgo skimming). Trust me, it's a lot more enjoyable when you're ready and willing to do the work, plus you find the time to do it all and really enjoy those wonderful class discussions at a depth only experienced by engaging with the course and the work.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to know which colleges or universities were considered by current Swarthmore students prior to matriculating at Swarthmore. Which colleges or universities are considered to be similiar academically and/or socially? Vassar? Wesleyan? Chicago? Grinnell? Yale? Macalester? Brown??? At the risk of offending, unintentionally, some students and parents, it sounds like some students at Swarthmore were not well prepared for an academically elite and demanding college. I noticed that many of the elite prep schools rarely have students enroll at Swarthmore; this is not meant to be critical, just as an observation and it may be due to a number of factors including size, opportunities to attend Ivies, repetition of experience of an academically intense boarding school, among other reasons. Academically, Swarthmore may be quite similiar to Groton, St. Paul's School, Andover & Exeter as well as Roxbury Latin (a Boston area day school).</p>
<p>Someone posted an old GPA adjustment index used by Berkeley's law school a while ago, and Swarthmore did have the highest GPA adjustment factor of any school listed (which included all of the most elite colleges and universities in the country). So, it probably is the hardest undergraduate academic experience a student in America is going to have, period. I think prep school students consider Swarthmore a safety school. People who end up at a top-flight prep school are exactly the type of people who want (or whose parents want) "Harvard" or "Princeton" on their resum</p>
<p>
[quote]
It would be interesting to know which colleges or universities were considered by current Swarthmore students prior to matriculating at Swarthmore.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That information on cross applications is published each year and readily available.</p>
<p>^^^
Where at?</p>
<p>Ask AE or HC Alum. </p>
<p>If I post it, I'm sure one or the other will just beat the crap out of me because I didn't say what a hell-hole Swarthmore is or add fourteen legalistic footnotes about frickin' Haverford.</p>
<p>Screw it.</p>
<p>lol
can you pm it to me?
lol</p>
<p>Persistently trying to shoehorn Swarthmore into the same category of school as Amherst and Williams (use of the anagram AWS, misappropriation of the term "Little Three", etc) I think misleads many cross-admits into thinking they will have the exact same experience at all three schools. It's obviously not true and as far as I know never has been. They are different schools with some things in common (academic rigor, billion dollar endowments) and others, not so much (emphasis on sports, "well-roundedness", pursuit of non-academic interests.) One could easily create a nine page -- and much more useful -- thread on the many differences among small, American LACs.</p>
<p>Point of interest: When the Wall Street Journal recently ranked prep schools in terms of proportion of graduates enrolling in top colleges/universities, they employed a core index set of 8 "elite" colleges, one of which was indeed Swarthmore (in addition to Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, U Chicago, Johns Hopkins).</p>
<p>I'll comment on this thread not as a Swarthmore kid, but as a U Chicago kid-- while I personally didn't consider Swarthmore (too close to home, too small) I certainly think the schools are comparable in the academically rigorous category.</p>
<p>For the sake of discussion, though, I'd like to add a thought or two about the mixed anecdotal accounts of Swat (which sound, to my ears, much like the mixed anecdotal accounts for Chicago):</p>
<p>First, an academically rigorous environment is right for some people and isn't right for others. It's not even a matter of whether you're smart or not, or how well you performed on your SAT's. It's a matter of wanting to be immersed in academia, and it's something I very badly wanted. So I got it. I'm happy.</p>
<p>Second, your approach to your schoolwork is key. I'm in an unusual position in that I enjoy doing schoolwork and schoolwork almost rarely stresses me out (rarely rarely) so I don't perceive academic rigor as "high stress." I also don't keep track of my grades and I'm not particularly invested in getting high ones, so academic performance isn't an issue for me either. Que sera sera.</p>
<p>Third, work/life balance is important. What sorts of things do you do and can you do to remind yourself that there's more to life than just schoolwork? For me, I hang out with friends, work out at the gym, watch TV, and volunteer. All of these activities are refreshing to me.</p>
<p>Anyway, my apologies for hijacking this thread, but I hope my comments were helpful to onlookers and I'll try to stay in my own sandbox more often.</p>
<p>unalove - it's impossible to hijack a two year old thread. someone rescusitated it, so your .02 is just as welcome as anyone else's ;).</p>
<p>icy9ff8 - I would agree with unalove, that Swarthmore has a great deal in common with Chicago, but in a small college environment. I'd add Reed, if someone were really looking for someplace with a similar history as Swarthmore, and perhaps not the same crap shoot getting into.</p>
<p>Not only resurrected a two-year old thread, but a two-year old thread from some 17 year old dweeb who went out of his way to post a dire warning about Swarthmore despite the fact that said dweeb didn't apply to a single small college, instead applying to these:</p>
<p>WM
UVA
VTech
Northwestern
Cornell
Brown
UMichigan</p>
<p>The real connection to LACs is evidenced by this list, right?</p>
<p>And has history shown said dweeb to be an expert on college dissatisfaction? Apparently. After not getting accepted by Brown, he attended Northwestern, pointing out that it is ranked ahead of Brown in "prestige". But, alas, our dweeb was so miserable by December of freshman year that he was plotting a transfer application back home to UVa.</p>
<p>And yet, this dweeb's two-year old third-hand (I knew somebody on the internet who had a friend who's cousin...) warning about Swarthmore gets resurrected.</p>
<p>More name calling, interesteddad?</p>
<p>Calling the kid a dweeb is giving him the benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>Alot with regard to workload in college depends on the major--we have come to realize that engineering--be it Swarthmore or any other college is just hard! It is extremely demanding with not much room for variation of classes; the curriculum is very rigid. Therefore, consider the major when evaluating workload!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Calling the kid a dweeb is giving him the benefit of the doubt.
[/quote]
No, it's not. It's engaging in juvenile argument fallacy. It's pure ad hominem. It's my opinion that people should, in the interest of intellectual integrity, attempt to discuss subjects and make logical arguments without resorting to personal attacks. If you really want to be helpful around here, then why not lay off the attacks and just state your case? Throwing constant personal attacks into your posts is just going to turn people off of your advice and make your positions look weaker; it colors your words with anger and irrationality.</p>
<p>Just a suggestion, take it or leave it.</p>
<p>If you want to sling personal attacks around, Swarthmore has a forum for that, and it's called the Daily Jolt. If that's what you like, please go have at it.</p>
<p>Well, there really IS a first time for everything. I have to agree with AE this time. </p>
<p>Calling kids names is not contributing to anyone's understanding of anything.</p>
<p>Sorry. I can't help but notice the irony. Our little 17 year old, comflsomh, starts his first ever College Confidential thread in January 2006. A hit and run attack on how Swarthmore is such a miserable school, full of miserable people, with miserable social lives, miserable professors, all told to him by former Swat football player who probably got caught up in the killing of the football program -- a group of people who devotees of the school know are the most angry alumni on the face of the earth. Ask Neil Austrian.</p>
<p>So this little precious posts his drive-by shooting on college satisfaction, which the moderators graciously sticky to the top of the Swarthmore forum for the last two years. </p>
<p>And, with all his insight, how happy was our little comflsomh with his school? So happy that he was preparing a transfer app before Christmas. I can only imagine how miserable he would have been at Swarthmore. I mean, he probably would have been preparing his transfer app by Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Sorry, I don't think we owe the drive-by shooter anything.</p>
<p>BTW, my guess is that the motivation behind comflsomh's drive-by shooting was that he applied early decision to Swarthmore and got rejected on Dec 15th, 2005. Otherwise, why would a 17 year, in the middle of completing college apps, stop for a driveby shooting of a college he's not even apply to?</p>