<p>What are the main differences between these top liberal arts colleges?</p>
<p>Mainly in academics, sports, social scene, special programs, overall atmosphere, and financial aid?</p>
<p>I also want to learn about the differences among these three LACs. From my research, I found Amherst to be my best match. Everything really depends on what you prioritize. I prioritize the local atmosphere and diversity.</p>
<p>HPM, what did you find out about the 3 and from where?</p>
<p>Go to the Princeton Review website (<a href="http://www.princetonreview.com)%5B/url%5D">www.princetonreview.com)</a>. There is a ton of valuable information there. You can read "What Students Say" about each school and get a real feel for the campus atmosphere and the kind of students it attracts.</p>
<p>here's a very good 2 year old thread on this subject....I don't think that much has changed:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=11914%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=11914</a></p>
<p>All three are excellent liberal arts colleges with huge endowments, huge per student spending numbers, and superb academics. I don't think it's possible to say one is better than the others in a universal sense. They are just somewhat different and those differences lead to campus cultures that will appeal to different students.</p>
<p>Location: Williams is extremely remote, offering beautiful mountain scenery, but the most isolated campus of the three. Amherst offers the pluses and minuses of a big state university college town. Swarthmore offers a stunningly landscaped setting in a suburban setting -- walking distance to malls, 20 minute train from campus to downtown Philadelphia.</p>
<p>History: Williams and Amherst were all-male until very recently (one generation ago). Swarthmore was founded as a co-ed college and its bylaws have always required equal numbers of men and women on the Board of Managers. With its Quaker roots, Swarthmore has always had an element of "social justice". Its founders were active abolishists and two of of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement were Swatties (Lucretia Coffin Mott and Alice Paul). That tradition continues with "ethicial intelligence" as a favorite buzzword of the president and it tends to attract "concerned" students. Williams does not express a similar focus. Amherst is probably somewhere in the middle, although it has taken a visible stance in promoting diversity and seem to be consciously trying to reposition the school from its former preppie image to a diverse image promoting issues of social justice.</p>
<p>Campus Culture: Williams is by far the most athletically focused of the three and has the most prominent drinking culture. Swarthmore is the least athletically focused (no football) and the lowest rate of "heavy" drinking. Amherst is in the middle, with students from both camps. Swarthmore has the most public school students and the most financial aid students. Williams the least. Amherst in the middle. Swarthmore is probably the most "academically-focused" of the three. On average, its students work hard -- students and professors are demanding of each other. It's not a good school to attend if you are looking to coast to a "gentleman's degree".</p>
<p>Unique academic programs: All three are really top-notch across the board. However, Williams has an art history program that is really exceptional. Swarthmore has engineering and linguistics programs that the others don't have plus very strong social science departments. I'm not aware of a particular program at Amherst, but their grads stand out in History. Williams has the January Winter Study term. Swarthmore has a unique honors program defined by small seminars and written/oral exams by outside experts. The honors program is very grad-school like, which may explain why Swarthmore produces the most PhDs of the three -- percentagewise, the third highest in the country behind CalTech and Harvey Mudd. All three have huge med school placements and produce a lot of future lawyers.</p>
<p>Great summary. Some quibbles: I think the campus culture at Williams and Amherst is actually very similar in terms of athletics and drinking, based on the experience of kids I know now at both schools. Prospective students should do overnight visits to assess for themselves.</p>
<p>In terms of history, Williams has been co-ed for slightly longer than Amherst; the frats were abolished at Williams in the late 60's and at Amherst in 1984, and I think this helped co-education go more smoothly at Williams in the beginning ... but really this is a long time ago and I don't think it's all that relevant in terms of what campus life is like at both schools now.</p>
<p>And I think the tutorials at Williams are a very special unique academic program.</p>
<p>S tells me a lot of the Swarthmore kids are coming in to Penn to party because it is more fun.</p>
<p>As far as special programs at Amherst, there is the 5 college consortium, as well as majors in Neuroscience and Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought (LJST).</p>
<p>I have gone on the PrincetonReview site, but i didnt wanna base assumptions on what 2 students at each school said lol. So Swarthmore is the more academic, William the more athletic/party and Amherst in between?</p>
<p>I'd say they are all equally academic; the campus cultures are different though. I think Williams and Amherst are pretty similar, and Swarthmore somewhat different from the two others.</p>
<p>Go visit - an overnight at the ones you are interested in is going to give you a good idea.</p>
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I think the campus culture at Williams and Amherst is actually very similar in terms of athletics and drinking, based on the experience of kids I know now at both schools.
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<p>Fair enough. Both certainly have some serious drinking issues. The reason that Amherst is so difficult to get a handle on is that it's almost two schools in one. </p>
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In terms of history, Williams has been co-ed for slightly longer than Amherst; the frats were abolished at Williams in the late 60's and at Amherst in 1984, and I think this helped co-education go more smoothly at Williams in the beginning ... but really this is a long time ago and I don't think it's all that relevant in terms of what campus life is like at both schools now.
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<p>I disagree. A male dominated governing board and alumni base establishes a different set of priorities for a school. Those priorities directly impact the campus culture. For example, somebody made the decision to heavily emphasize athletics at Williams. Swarthmore's decision to end football because of its impact on admissions would NEVER have been made without strong female representation on the Board of Managers. Even beyond that, I think that the campus cultures at all of these schools are the result of their long histories. The reasons that the cultures are different is that their histories are different.</p>
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I disagree. A male dominated governing board and alumni base establishes a different set of priorities for a school. Those priorities directly impact the campus culture. For example, somebody made the decision to heavily emphasize athletics at Williams. Swarthmore's decision to end football because of its impact on admissions would NEVER have been made without strong female representation on the Board of Managers. Even beyond that, I think that the campus cultures at all of these schools are the result of their long histories. The reasons that the cultures are different is that their histories are different.
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<p>I'd say that's pretty much a slam dunk.</p>
<p>Amherst is unique amongst the three for its open curriculum.</p>
<p>Williams has been co-ed since 1971. I think at this point it's a stretch to say the alumni base is male dominated, especially given how much larger the classes are from the 70's forward. An all-male governing board made the decision in the late 60's to abolish frats in anticipation of going co-ed - Amherst probably should have taken the same approach but didn't. We're now 40 years later. While today just 6 Williams trustees out of 24 are female (geez, you should nominate me in the next election), nearly all the trustees attended a co-ed Williams, and the ones I know personally are supportive but not at all rabid fans of athletics at Williams - they are far more enthusiastic about the tutorials (which all of them experienced personally in a demonstration for the trustees). Morty is the one I've seen standing on the sidelines at football games. </p>
<p>The distinction I was making for co-education was between Williams and Amherst, not Williams and Swarthmore. In the late 70's and 80's this was a meaningful difference between the two schools; I don't think it is today.</p>
<p>And don't you think getting rid of football at Swarthmore was attributable to (1) the smaller classes at Swarthmore - an awfully large % of the class had to be football players which would certainly impact the school culture; and (2) the mediocrity of the program over many years? I wouldn't lay the responsibility on the women on the board of managers. But I do agree that the different cultures of the schools (Williams/Swarthmore) go back many years.</p>
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And don't you think getting rid of football at Swarthmore was attributable to (1) the smaller classes at Swarthmore - an awfully large % of the class had to be football players which would certainly impact the school culture; and (2) the mediocrity of the program over many years?
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<p>Yes. But, those same conditions apply at many schools. Amherst included -- a school that is not that much bigger than Swarthmore, a school that has similar demands on admissions slots for diversity purposes, and a school that has zero chance of being competitive in the NESCAC. The had an athletics committee study about the same time as Swarthmore's and saw the same problem with committing a signicant chunk of "low-stat" slots to football. The difference is that Amherst could never even discuss dropping football.</p>
<p>It wasn't easy at Swarthmore. For only the second time in memory, board members demanded a vote, unable to reach a concensus. At least one board member resigned - Neil Austrian, former President of the National Football League. At most of the formerly male schools, it's not even a discussion can be had. Heck, Dartmouth's admissions dean was all but run out of town on a rail for writing a personal letter to the President of Swarthmore praising the decision to drop football and saying that there isn't an admissions dean at an elite college who doesn't recognize the impact of football recruiting on admissions goals.</p>
<p>Going back even further, the decision that probably made Swarthmore Swarthmore more than any other was the implementation of the Honors Program in the 1920s. There was signficant Board objection to the program (this was the height of the Joe College/Football/Frat era). From what I gather, the female members of Board supported the emphasis on rigorous academics.</p>
<p>Amherst and Williams are much more similar to each other than they are to Swarthmore.</p>
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Amherst and Williams are much more similar to each other than they are to Swarthmore.
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<p>I agree with that. However, there is significant overlap in admissions between Amherst and Swarthmore. Very little between Williams and Swarthmore -- although that may result as much from the rural isolation versus city access issue as anything else.</p>
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A male dominated governing board and alumni base establishes a different set of priorities for a school. Those priorities directly impact the campus culture. For example, somebody made the decision to heavily emphasize athletics at Williams.
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Why automatically assume that any decision to emphasize athletics must have come from men?</p>
<p>Everyone knows that Williams has a reputation for athletics. But most people don't realize that this reputation is primarily sustained by female athletes. Williams is now a predominantly (52%) female school, and the womens sports are, in general, more successful than the mens.</p>
<p>In 2005, for example, Williams won the NACDA Directors Cup (for overall performance in NCAA Division III sports) for the 10th straight year. If you review the Cup scoring, you will find that Williams women outpointed Williams men by nearly a 2-to-1 margin: 9 womens sports earned 597.5 points, while 5 mens sports earned only 323 points. This has apparently been a normal pattern in recent years.</p>
<p>Traditionally, college athletics have been most closely associated with men's team sports. But Williams is not particularly dominant in such sports. Last year, only one Williams men's team (soccer) earned any Director's Cup points at all. Traditional high-interest men's sports (football, basketball, lacrosse, ice hockey, baseball) contributed absolutely nothing towards Williams' #1 position in the Division III Cup standings.</p>
<p>For comparison, the women's soccer, basketball, field hockey, rowing, and softball teams all earned Cup points. If there is a male dominated power structure at Williams that puts undue stress on athletics, then it has created an environment where female athletes flourish to a greater degree than their male counterparts.</p>