<p>Is it because those who choose Swarthmore (or other top LACs) have the intentions of going to grad schools anyway? Or is it the atmosphere at Swarthmore that encourages its students to head to grad schools? Or is it because these days a graduate degree is almost a must for career advancement?</p>
<p>What do you guys think..?</p>
<p>i think it is because of the intellectual atmosphere at swarthmore and the fact that swarthmore tends to attract those kind of students who are interested in learning and knowledge to a very high degree. This thirst of knowledge leads many students to grad school. Also, those intereste in teaching in academia, which i suspect to be quite a few, need phds</p>
<p>and for some of us, well, we just have no idea what we want to do with our lives when we graduate :p</p>
<p>All of those reasons are correct. You take already academically-minded students, put them in an environment which encourages their academic growth, and advise them of the very real benefits and opportunities given by a graduate degree. </p>
<p>Stir well, bake at 350 for four years (375 for Honors students) and voila--lots of people want to go to grad school.</p>
<p>I think it also has to do with the structure of many of the classes at Swat, especially Honors seminars where the students have an opportunity to delve deeply into an area and then teach the rest of the group - closely modelling what it would look like to be a prof. My S is in the Honors History program, never thought much about grad school until he'd taken a few seminars and discovered that he really likes that form of collegiate teaching. Basically, they get to model college-level teaching as undergrads. Some love it!</p>
<p>it's also partly because the career services office is a joke, and despite swarthmore's stellar academic reputation, very few people in the "real world" have ever heard of it. finding a job can be difficult when no one realizes how hard you worked for four years and the job network is so small (a function of swarthmore's small size) and skewed toward academia (wherein networking isn't going to help someone fresh out of school anyway.) sure, swarthmore students tend to love learning, etc., but plenty of people with whom i graduated feel like they're not going to get anywhere unless they go to grad school. (that's why i did.)</p>
<p>nancy_reagan, why do you say the career services office is a joke? What's your experience with it?</p>
<p>Career services is VERY good at some careers/paths - social services, non-profits, law etc., and not fantastic at others (consulting/banking/etc.)This is, I believe, primarily because most Swatties aren't really interested in consulting/banking/etc., so CS's position is understandable.</p>
<p>They aren't too bad, though. I'm not planning to go straight to grad school and, as a rising senior, I'll be getting a nice job offer at a consulting firm (which Career Services found for me). So Nancy is being a bit overly pessimistic. </p>
<p>They might not bring in all the big names, but they do their jobs quite competently. I know they've helped me a <em>lot</em>.</p>
<p>nancy_reagan, are you serious? You'll scare away prospective applicants..</p>
<p>I read that 4-6 of the class of 2006 got into McKinsey.. that isn't too bad..</p>
<p>the career services office kept a pretty low profile outside of organizing "resume blitzes" -- there aren't that many events on campus and the erecruiting website that they maintain is pretty awful.</p>
<p>and if by saying that people are placed well into law you mean that gigi simeone (pre-law, pre-med advisor) does a good job, you're just wrong. one of my friends just finished at a top law school and approached swarthmore about coming and talking to prospective law students about his school. gigi simeone's response was that he could, but it would be pointless because no one from swarthmore could get into his school anyway (this position being contrary to fact: there were four swatties in his class of ~160). another friend was reduced to tears twice by gigi simeone before applying to med schools without advisement and getting into an md/phd at nyu. the woman is, from everything i've heard, out of touch with reality and universally reviled. and, sure: most swatties are more interested in the life of the mind than a career in banking, but i don't think that that justifies how invisible career services is. people who don't want to go to grad school are, in essence, second class citizens.</p>
<p>the question, though, is why so many swarthmore alums go onto grad school, and i think it's simplistic to say that "it's the honors system or whatever." i took four seminars and wasn't anymore enamored of learning at the end than i was at the beginning. that swarthmore students do skew toward the Academic type is true, and if you absolutely know that you want to go to grad school, it's hands-down the best place to go for undergrad. </p>
<p>that said, i think that another big part of it is necessity. swarthmore grads in the job market are at a competitive disadvantage against people from amherst, williams, or the ivies, who have bigger non-academic networks and vastly superior name recognition. it's clear that swarthmore's advantage is in the academic world -- almost everyone i know who is back in school, no matter what "kind" of student they were at swat, is in an excellent grad program. i'm in a masters program at an ivy, and am going to be applying for phd programs in the fall. when i went to talk with one of my professors about it, he asked where i went to undergrad, and said "that gives you an advantage -- everyone i know from swarthmore is very smart."</p>
<p>so why continue with the mediocre job you could get, coming from swarthmore, when you could instead do a really good grad program that would either 1) be a useful education while also providing greater name recognition and network opportunities in your chosen field, giving you an enormous leg up on a career, or 2) put you on track to join academia?</p>
<p>
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swarthmore grads in the job market are at a competitive disadvantage against people from amherst, williams, or the ivies, who have bigger non-academic networks and vastly superior name recognition.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That is complete BS. I am a Williams College grad, as is my wife. To say that Williams has wide name recognition is baloney. Having said that, a Williams degree helped my wife and I in specific job-hunting cases, just like Swarthmore helped my daugher with her first job. The think being overlooked here is that when you graduate from a top-LAC, you are not only attractive to your own college's alumni network, but to the alumni network of all LACs. For example, I was once hired by a Bowdoin grad who most certainly knew Williams. My daughter was just hired by a Dickinson grad who most certainly knew Swarthmore.</p>
<p>YOU: I suggest that you click on nancy_reagan's posting history.</p>
<p>Does Swarthmore not give enough support to undergrads in job hunting, though?</p>
<p>
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Does Swarthmore not give enough support to undergrads in job hunting, though?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not that I've heard or not that has been noted in any of the college's self assessment reports based on the surveys shared by all 31 COFHE colleges and universities.</p>
<p>It's fairly universal since the beginning of time for graduating college seniors to say career services could do more to find them a job.</p>
<p>Thx interesteddad.</p>
<p>Edit: I'm applying there mainly because I got a really good impression of the admissions dean.</p>
<p>thanks for weighing in, "interesteddad," and i'm glad to hear that the college hasn't identified that it has a problem with its career services office. but, i mean, would it? the career services office attached to my current program is absolutely outstanding -- i knew that swarthmore's wasn't exceptionally active while i was there, but seeing the lengths to which my current school goes to bring in employers and organize career events makes me realize that i had no idea what i was missing at swat.</p>
<p>it's easy to dismiss complaints about career services as "fairly universal" -- have you ever admitted that any complaint about swarthmore might be warranted and not just whining that would go on anywhere? whoever wants to check my post history, go ahead. i try to paint a fair and accurate picture of swarthmore, without glossing over the negative aspects. there are good things AND bad things. unfortunately, "interesteddad" not only ignores the latter, but vehemently denies that they exist. i find this particularly troubling coming from someone who spreads so much information to so many people on this forum and didn't even go to swarthmore.</p>
<p>and i stand by what i said: williams has better name-recognition and a bigger network than swarthmore. so does amherst (i have tons and tons of friends who went there and can attest to this) and so, indisputably, do the ivies. swarthmore's a good choice for a lot of things, but it's not the best choice if you know you don't want to go to grad school and want to position yourself for finding the best job possible straight after undergrad.</p>
<p>the advantage of a swarthmore education is NOT in giving one a superior ability to find a job post-graduation -- it's in it being an extremely intellectually stimulating place, a place that does an outstanding job of preparing one for grad school. one place can't be everything. is this difficult to understand?</p>
<p>Most of my friends (and I) were not interested in getting jobs at companies which would have recruited at ivies. For instance, many got research jobs for Hospitals or for the Federal reserve... which perhaps had an alum come and give an info sesssion, but did not formally 'recruit,' and many more got jobs at fancy name brand think tanks in dc, which don't recruit anywhere. </p>
<p>Many I-banks did recruit, and swatties did not have a problem getting jobs at I-banks who didn't (I don't believe mckinsey did the recent year that swat placed 5 people there) - just because a place doesn't send a recruiter, doesn't mean that they aren't impressed by the swarthmore name on a resume.</p>
<p>I'm not even sure the premise of this thread is correct. Do a higher percentage of Swatties go on to post-graduate degrees than other similar schools?</p>
<p>Here are the percentage of recent graduating classes who have actually attended grad school:</p>
<p>1999 57%
2000 44%
2001 40%
2002 46%
2003 45%</p>
<p>These numbers are high, but does anyone have any concrete evidence to suggest they are higher than other elite colleges and universities?</p>
<p>Swarthmore is known for its rigorous academics, symbolized and maintained by the faculty's resistance to grade inflation. [1] [2] The college is, after normalization for institution size, the third largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source with a liberal arts curriculum. [3]</p>
<p>from wikipedia, it is AHEAD of ALL liberal arts colleges including williams and amherst.. im not sure if they include law school tho.. but it won't affect the ranking much because it does seem that Swarthmore produce quite a lot of lawyers</p>
<p>Swarthmore is generally more academic than, say, UPenn or a state flagship. It takes more time to get a "nerdy" degree (MFA, PhD, law, med) than to graduate and go straight into the job market.</p>