What do you think is my chance at Swarthmore ED?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
1

<p>male caucasian from Chicago-area public school</p>

<p>ACT: 36
SAT Subject Tests: U.S History: 800, Math II: 800, Physics: 780
Class Rank: 3/927
GPA UW: 4.0
GPA W: 5.2?</p>

<p>Currently taking a calculus 3 class through U of Illinois</p>

<p>Great recommendations, at least one is really awesome</p>

<p>I spent a lot of time on my essays; they talk about my love of learning and my desire to be in a community of intellectuals with similar passion</p>

<p>Awards:
National Honor Society,
French Honor Society
Mu Alpha Theta,
National Merit Semi-Finalist, may soon be Finalist
AMC 3 years, AIME 1 year
AP Scholar with Distinction</p>

<p>EC's:
President of high school math team, 12th grade, competitor 2007-2011</p>

<p>Started a math team tutoring outreach group that will help students in math and science before school</p>

<p>Tutor 2-3 students after school as paid work, junior and senior years</p>

<p>Freshman year member of free tutoring club</p>

<p>Crosscountry competitor 4 years, although freshman year cut short by injury, 17:20/3mi 2010. Varsity letter, though I was a JV runner</p>

<p>Transportation news follower 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, reading articles and headlines and learning about high speed rail and urban transit</p>

<p>Created independent study senior year about passenger rail transportation (my love of this subject is the topic in my common app essay)</p>

<p>Piano lessons 1997-2010. I sent a supplemental CD with 3 piano songs</p>

<p>10 certifications through the National Guild of Piano Teachers, 7 of which were at the “national” level (10 or more memorized pieces for a judge)</p>

<p>Played piano during 3 student-of-the-month breakfasts and in several school shows</p>

<p>French Exchange 11th grade, which required teacher recommendations, hosted an exchange student for 10 days and lived with him in France for 9 days and stayed in Paris for 3</p>

<p>Jazz Band Club as a pianist: lower band 1 year, upper band 3 years</p>

<p>Played oboe in school band from 4th grade through 9th grade (1st chair all freshman year)</p>

<p>Marching band 9th grade--played cowbell and performed in a Disney World parade</p>

<p>Oboe lessons during summer 2009, 2010</p>

<p>Choir member 10th grade</p>

<p>Madrigals Choir member 10th grade, 1 of 9 boys/18 total based on audition</p>

<p>IMEA District Level participant 10th grade for choir</p>

<p>One of five-six co-hosts on the LT radio station’s News Show from 2009 through the end of 11th grade. Solo host of an hour-long news show I created 12th grade. At the John Drury High School Radio Awards last year (2009), our radio station, WLTL, won its 12th consecutive “Communicator Award of Excellence” and the “Best Radio Station in the Nation,” an award for which WLTL was tied in 2008</p>

<p>Voracious news reader</p>

<p>Member throughout high school of Church youth group, which performs community service from time to time. 9th grade I was my group’s representative to the organization's leaders. </p>

<p>12th grade confirmation sponsor</p>

<p>6-week unpaid internship at Environmental Law and Policy Center in downtown Chicago, summer 2010, 24 hours/week for 6 weeks. I got a supplemental recommendation from the Ph.D. that I worked/"researched" with. (I made excel spreadsheets and wrote excel code.)</p>

<p>5-day participation in free, engineering introduction program at University of Santa Clara summer 2010 for which 80 attendees were chosen from an applicant pool of 360</p>

<p>Summer work helping elderly people at local retirement home with computers</p>

<p>Thank you for evaluating me! I appreciate your time...</p>

2

<p>I really don’t see how you’d be rejected, unless your essay and recs were obviously last minute. 36 ACT and 4.0 UW GPA? Wow. Grats.</p>

<p>I’m trying to get in with 34 ACT, 2170 SAT, and 3.91 UW GPA. Whoa.</p>

3

<p>Hey–good luck. I’m glad to hear you be positive about my application, but I think Swarthmore really puts emphasis on the essay and recs, you know, as if to say, “test scores aren’t everything.” That is, there is more than one route in. I hope you make it!</p>

4

<p>dabigak:</p>

<p>I think you have a good to excellent shot based on what you’ve listed. Top class rank, strong test scores. The radio station work will likely strike a chord at Swarthmore, given the resources and pride in War News Radio (student production of news radio features). And, the academic interest in public transportation will likely seem interesting to a campus with its own rail station, where public transportation plays an unusually signficant role in student life (for a hoity-toit liberal arts college).</p>

<p>Just for reference, I’m a tough grader. I almost never tell students they are “locks to get in”, because I think that sets up unreasonable expectations in this kind of admissions environment. For example, if you added the fact that you are a third generation Sarthmore legacy, I might move you to the “lock” category. :slight_smile: Having said that, and factoring in early decision, I would say that you have the kind of resume (strong academics and interesting ECs) that Swarthmore tends to favor.</p>

5

<p>Cool! Now all I have left to do is wait and see…
Thanks</p>

6

<p>dab, what is it about Swarthmore that you like? </p>

<p>Am I understanding correctly that you applied ED ? What is it about Swat that made you select this college over others? </p>

<p>w/ your stats you could have gone close to anywhere it seems (H or Y or P or S, eg). Also, if my last stmt is true, why do ED? you wdnt be doing it for strategic purposes to add some advantage to your admission’s chances, I wd think.</p>

7

<p>roderick, although I am not the OP, I am somewhat intrigued by the implication of your question. Are you suggesting that a student with those kinds of stats should logically choose HYPS over Swat ED? I believe that my oldest son had at least as strong an application, if not stronger, than the OP and he applied ED to Swat.</p>

8

<p>I had the same thought as momof3sons. </p>

<p>Are you really not aware that Swat (like Williams, and Amherst, and so on) is full of kids who would have been highly competitive, viable applicants at HYPS (etc.), or, as you put it

? Maybe you just phrased your question poorly?</p>

9

<p>I take the question to mean what it says: You could have gone anywhere…so why Swarthmore?</p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that Swarthmore only admits a small fraction of the students that the HYSPs admit. And it receives far fewer applications. That’s not roderick who is opting out of Swarthmore. That’s other people. And that makes Swarthmore a slightly unusual choice – objectively speaking.</p>

<p>Like roderick, I think it’s interesting – when people have made a decision that doesn’t go with the flow – to find out why they took the alternate path, particularly when all of the options are available. The question itself makes no value judgments as to Swarthmore. It leaves that up entirely to the OP who, obviously, has made highly favorable ones.</p>

<p>This is different from "What in God’s name are you doing applying to Swarthmore?!?! {8-O</p>

<p>I think he just wants to know what makes the OP tick. And – knowing that the OP has chosen Swarthmore – he wants to know what things drove the decision and made it so clear cut. They’re probably things worth broadcasting. And if you’re on the fence about Swarthmore, they might help clear things up. I think it’s a great question.</p>

10

<p>OK, D’yer Maker, I’ll “bite,” although not the OP. I’ll take your interpretation of the question.</p>

<p>What drove the decision and made it so clear cut in this house? The head of college counseling at my son’s high school with 25 years experience in the business at an ultra-competitive, academic college prep independent school which regularly sent 1/3 to 1/2 of the senior class to the Ivy’s (is that descriptive enough ;)) told my son that he would not get a better undergraduate education anywhere else in the country. (Also included Amherst in that statement since that was the other school my son was thinking about.)
My son was looking for the most intense academic experience possible and thought that Swarthmore was the answer. Yes, he also looked at HYP. And, yes, there were kids in his class in high school who were stunned to find that he wasn’t applying to H.</p>

<p>I hope that the OP comes back to answer the question that roderick has posed.</p>

11

<p>Hi, to answer Roderick’s question,</p>

<p>I applied ED to Swarthmore because, to put it in one word, it’s more intellectual than many other schools, even HYP and S. People there are passionate about things that might seem weird, and they care about the community and world–that is, they aren’t both quirky and “isolated” in worldview… just quirky. I’m not interested in pre-professionalism, and I’m not interested in a hostile, competitive place. If I want something like that, well, there’s always grad school. I applied EA to Chicago, and I think that school is in the same vein. In addition, Swarthmore supposedly builds tight friendships that last later into life, and it’s really beautiful. Of course, I could say the latter about a ton of schools, but it is a nice thing.</p>

12

<p>You have a GREAT chance, I think, with your well-roundedness, great grades, and scores. “Voracious news reader” stuck out to me–I hope you communicated this in your essay! Good luck (I applied ED, too!) I hope that if Swarthmore adcoms are on drugs and decide to reject you, then you will find your place at Chicago!</p>

13

<p>I would like to comment here as well. My S is a very good but not truly excellent candidate. We have visited many schools and Swarthmore is a stretch for him. Nonetheless, we have made three trips there. He absolutely loves it - the quirky nature of many of the students, the collaborative and hard working academic climate, the attractive physical environment, etc. Since S has not decided upon a specific path, he wanted a liberal arts school with an open curriculm. After visiting so many schools, it became clear that he will feel much more comfortable in a small school. He wants access to a city but he doesn’t want to live in one. These and many other factors made Swarthmore an ideal choice and he has applied ED.</p>

14

<p>I’ll be shocked if you don’t get in ED.
And yes, there are people who choose Swarthmore over HYPS (including cross-admits).</p>

15

<p>dyer’s interpretation is exactly the spirit I had in posting the question. thanks for the answers. Any other input is welcome. I am the blind man trying to find out what this giant elephant called Swarthmore is.</p>

16

<p>roderick, I sent you a PM, but for you and others asking the question, some of the things I’ve heard my '10 and '13 EDers articulate about why they were so drawn to Swarthmore have to do with the lingering Quaker spirit of equality and the certainty that everybody’s voice should be heard. Others have to do with the spirit of cooperative learning and intellectual inquiry. And then there’s the Big Chair.</p>

<p>Both of them really clicked with the kids there, even though the two of them are pretty different.</p>

17

<p>

</p>

<p>I have a very hard time even coming up with one other school that is close to Swarthmore’s combination of those two attributes. Maybe a place like CalTech? I don’t know.</p>

18

<p>idad, it seems to me that a fair number of schools encompass both those qualities. “Cooperative learning” includes anything from small discussion seminars (which schools like Brown, Harvard, and Columbia include both at the freshman and upperclass level) to a community-wide collaboration across classes and between students and faculty. But perhaps you define it differently.</p>

<p>And I would say that any top-performing liberal arts college excels in intellectual inquiry. FWIW</p>

19

<p>

</p>

<p>I’m sure I do. </p>

<p>My alma mater, for example, does not even come close to the level of intellectual inquiry or collaborative learning that define Swarthmore’s campus culture. I mean, sure, there are isolated pockets at all schools, but I’m talking about a widespread defining characteristic. </p>

<p>I suspect that many subsets at Harvard match Swarthmore’s intellectual inquiry, but I’ve never heard anyone describe Harvard as a collaborative learning environment.</p>

20

<p>I don’t want to argue semantics, but I think that it’s important to note that both those qualities are, at least in part, relatively subjective. My school definitely encourages this sort of “collaborative learning,” and it’s very much part of our culture. Seeing as you and I have both generated different definitions for “collaborative learning,” it’s clear that people think about it, and perhaps value it, in different terms.</p>

<p>I came here primarily to say that subjective qualities such as “cooperative learning” and “intellectual inquiry” are principles that any school will claim. I have a friend who transferred from Swat. There were many wonderful things about the school, but she felt that some of these traits that Swarthmore holds aloft were not true in her experience. Sure, people cared about each other and wanted to help, but everyone was also stressed and bogged down by their work. Sometimes it was just about getting your stuff done. I think this is true anywhere.</p>