Williams VS Amherst VS Swarthmore

College Search & Selection
41

<p>
[quote]
I have been to both Williamstown (I'm an alum) and Swarthmore, and in terms of the richness of the community and cultural offerings to students, they aren't close to being comparable.

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<p>I'm not sure that's accurate. Swarthmore students have available within 30 minutes of campus:</p>

<p>The Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Opera
The Pennsylvania Ballet
The Philadelphia Theater
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Barnes Foundation museum
The Rodin Museum
Philadelphia Eagles
Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia 76'ers
A very active independent theater scene
A very active independent rock scene with multiple venues
Every major rock tour
A very active restaurant scene in all price ranges
Ethnic neighborhoods including a major Chinatown</p>

<p>Plus easy access to NYC, less than two hours by Amtrak or $12 Chinatown bus.</p>

<p>Swarthmore students can and do take advantage of all of those "community and cultural" opportunities. The 5-college area, like all major college towns, has a variety of offerings. But, I don't think the opportunites can match those of a major metro area such as Boston, Philadelphia, NYC, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, etc.</p>

<p>For example, during just two years at Swarthmore, my daughter has visited (with other Swatties), most of the major museums in Phila/DC/NYC, gone to theater shows on Broadway (cheapo student tix), done observational research in a major urban rail station, interned in an urban non-profit organization -- all without a car.</p>

<p>Political activity is certainly not limited to campus. Swarthmore students and profs are very active in Pennsylvania politics. My daughter has also joined a busload of Swarthmore students in Washington for a major Sudan rally (key note speaker was a Swattie) and an afternoon of lobbying on Capitol Hill with representatives from each student's home state -- my daughter met with John Kerry's chief of staff. And, yes, she took course assignments with her to read on the bus on the trip home!</p>

42

<p>"Swarthmore students have available within 30 minutes of campus.."</p>

<p>Not my issue, but for "truth in transport"...</p>

<p>When I visited with my daughter I waited at the Swarthmore platform literally a half hour for the train. Then it took maybe 20 minutes to get to the Penn stop where we were staying, maybe more. Then we had to get from our stop to our final destination, another 10-15 minutes. Thank goodness we didn't have to switch trains, resulting in another waiting delay and more transportation time.</p>

<p>That's not a problem. I'm in a NYC suburb, and I could claim it takes me 30 minutes to get to NY from here. After all that's how long the train takes to get to Grand Central. But the truth is, to get to most actual destinations I'd best budget an hour or more.</p>

<p>Heck of a lot better than 4 hours from anywhere, in any event.</p>

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<p>Yes, of course. You have to allow more time for public transportation. But, that's not the only way Swatties go to Philadelphia. I think that everything I listed is within 30 minutes door to door by car (non rush hour) except the Barnes Fundation museum. It's not far, but you are not allowed to park at the Barnes Foundation, so you would have allow more time. It's only 10.5 miles from the Swarthmore campus to downtown Philadelphia. By comparison, it's 7.5 miles from Amherst to downtown Northhampton. I think the additional "community and cultural opportunities" in a metro area of 5 million people make the extra 3 miles a worthwhile tradeoff! Swarthmore runs college vans to downtown Phila. on weekends.</p>

<p>BTW, I'm not disagreeing that Northhampton offers a wide assortment of college town options. It certainly does. And, with the Clark Art Institute, Williams offers strong options in limited areas. I'm just questioning mini's assertion that Philadelphia offers fewer community and cultural options than the 5-college region of western Massachusetts. That would be like saying that someone living in Wellesley, MA has fewer cultural and community options than a student in Athens, GA.</p>

44

<p>-insert oft-repeated Eph rhetoric that if students are so keen to leave campus, it can't be much of a campus anyway-</p>

45

<p>count Middlebury in this comparison
i think Middlebury shares the same tier with Williams ,Amherst and Swarthmore</p>

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<p>Well, as long as we are bringing up similar LACs, I needn't remind everyone that Middletown is an actual, functioning county seat with real live restaurants, real live shops (for things you can use -- not just antiques), a first-class hotel, and a 12 theater cineplex all within a five minute walk from Wesleyan. A parent recently told me the story of visiting her daughter who was lamenting the loss of a button from her favorite sweater. The mother asked whether there was a sewing store anywhere. The daughter had no idea until they went downtown for lunch -- and, there it was staring them right in the face -- a sewing store.</p>

<p>But, no symphony orchestra. :(</p>

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<p>Yep that sewing shop is probably located right next the Middletown vacant buildings and housing projects that Wes' slightly rundown and poorly landscaped campus blends right in with.(JK)...though I think that holds some truth. But I like the fact that Wesleyan isn't located in pleasantville like so many other LACs. Wes students have better view of the world and more community service opportunities. But don;t go comparing Middletown to Northhampton, MA</p>

48

<p>I have a question.</p>

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[quote]
As a Massachusetts parent, the only way I would pay $40,000 a year for classes at UMass would be if Billy and Whitey Bulger sent their goons over to break my knees.

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<p>
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UMass has excellent programs in political economy, music composition, phage biology, Middle Eastern studies, and radio astronomy. Moreover, it extends the range of the possible - 5-college programs in early music and ethnomusicology, which are impossible at Williams and Swarthmore, are made possible by the shared resources of the 5-colleges, including the graduate departments at Umass.

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<p>Is UMass providing a better education opportunity for other 4 colleges because its graduation program? How many students are taking the advantage? Or it is disgraceful that other 4 colleges have to share their classes with UMass students?</p>

<p>My son is looking to major in computer science. I found that Amherst courses are limited. Yet I was excited that the Amherst CS students could take courses in UMass CS department, which is ranking top 20 in the nation. This will be a 40,000 X 2 question. Once he is a junior, is it worth to take advance level CS courses in UMass?</p>

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<p>I wouldn't put Middlebury in the same ballpark as the other three no matter how much they try to hide the fact that their SAT avg is 100 points lower.</p>

50

<p>And I wouldn't keep implying that Colgate is in the same ballpark as Middlebury and Bowdoin.</p>

<p>There has been and always will be a pecking order for colleges. Dartmouth can't compare to Harvard on many levels. Yet Dartmouth is still one of the top colleges in the country. To arbitrarily and artificially denote a cut off (AWS and nothing more) is ludicrous. Most people will eventually attend the highest rated college they get into (fin aid concerns aside). Middlebury has much more in common with Williams than Williams does with Swarthmore, yet people fixate on AWS, and apply to all three, because that's how the schools rank in U.S. News. Amherst, Williams, and Swat have several advantages over Middlebury, Bowdoin, Haverford, Wesleyan, etc., not the least of which are their billion $ endowments. But to suggest that a degree from Middlebury (or even, <em>gasp</em> Colgate) is "not in the same ballpark" as AWS is simply ridiculous.</p>

51

<p>
[quote]
My son is looking to major in computer science. I found that Amherst courses are limited. Yet I was excited that the Amherst CS students could take courses in UMass CS department, which is ranking top 20 in the nation. This will be a 40,000 X 2 question. Once he is a junior, is it worth to take advance level CS courses in UMass?

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</p>

<p>I'm sure that UMass has some good courses. However, that is the kind of question that your son really needs to ask of the Chair of the Computer Science program and senior majors at Amherst. There are restrictions on over-enrolled courses and, given the budgetary problems at UMass, I suspect they have gracious plenty over-enrolled courses.</p>

<p>Here are some stats for the 2004/2005 academic year from a Google cached copy of an internal report at Amherst.</p>

<p>These are total 5-college cross-enrollments covering all courses in both fall and spring semesters. With 1650 students and 8 courses per student per year, Amherst must have somewhere around 13,000+ total registrations, minus some for study abroad students.</p>

<p>5-college courses taken at Amherst</p>

<p>From Hampshire: 462
From Mt. Holyoke: 240
From Smith: 140
From UMass: 311</p>

<p>Total from other schools: 1153</p>

<p>Amherst courses taken at other 5-colleges</p>

<p>To Hampshire: 30
To Mt. Holyoke: 92
To Smith: 60
To UMass: 115</p>

<p>Total to other schools: 297</p>

<hr>

<p>So, it's fair to say that no more than 1% of Amherst students' classes are taken at UMass each year and that other students take advantage of Amherst's offerings more than Amherst students take advantage of the other schools. That, of course, makes economic sense considering that Amherst has the largest endowment and the highest per student expenditures of the five schools. Smith would be second and I think it has a huge net inflow as well.</p>

<p>In general, cross-registration programs are "sold" harder than they are actually used. I did see an interesting discussion of taking classes at UPenn by Swarthmore students on the Swat LiveJournal site. The experiences were mixed. One student found the courses at Penn to be weak compared to Swarthmore. Another found the small discussion courses in her (somewhat obscure religion field at Penn) to be pretty good.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
yet people fixate on AWS, and apply to all three

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<p>I don't think that very many students apply to all three. All indications I've seen are that Williams and Swarthmore don't have a lot of cross-applications. Even though about half of their student bodies could be interchangeable, the differences in location and campus culture are so significant and obvious that relatively few students apply to both.</p>

<p>Amherst has significant cross-applications with both. My perception is that Amherst competes with Williams for their significant athletic/preppie cohort and with Swarthmore for their signficant diversity cohort. I think this shows up in the Amherst campus culture where you see newspaper articles and stories of a heavy drinking culture AND a large demand for sub-free and minority theme housing. At Williams, the "sub-free/diversity" cohort is marginalized to some degree by the dominant athletic/prep campus culture. At Swarthmore, "athletic/prep" cohort is marginalized to some degree by the dominant "diversity/academic" cohort. That's how I see it; I could be wrong.</p>

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<p>arcadia, while it saddens me that Colgate has lost ground in comparison to Middlebury since my time, for once I would pretty much agree with everything you said. In fact, I was surprised about the title of the thread knowing how different Williams and Amherst are from Swarthmore and shows how people seem to be way too fixated on rankings. I guess when I said "ballpark" I meant the 12 (what, at least, I used to consider) tier one schools of which Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore were in and Middlebury and Colgate were not. I do agree that they are generally very similar and people can go do great things from all of them. One area where I would say there is a schism is in recruiting. Williams and Amherst, at least, (I've really hardly met anyone in the business world from Swarthmore) seem to do better with investment banks and much better with strategy consulting firms. It seems from the people I've known from Williams and Amherst that there was an easy and well-established funnel into some of these firms that only the absolute best candidates with an abundance of effort could access if they were from Colgate or Middlebury. From what I saw, the difference wasn't nearly as pronounced for investment banking positions. Who knows, I'm just reporting on what my experiences and observations were and the situation may not be the same anymore.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I guess when I said "ballpark" I meant the 12 (what, at least, I used to consider) tier one schools of which Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore were in and Middlebury and Colgate were not.

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<p>What are these 12 "tier one" schools you're talking about?</p>

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<p>Me2 babbled something about:</p>

<br>


<br>

<p>maybe you are joking (sarcasm doesn't translate well on the Internet), but it sez here, the crime rate is actually lower in Middletown even with its so-called "housing projects": </p>

<p><a href="http://middletownct.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://middletownct.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://northampton.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://northampton.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Have you ever actually BEEN to Middletown? Avoid Rt. 66 if you can because of all the construction. Rt 9 is better and brings you right into Main Street where you can have a brew and post us from Main Street: it's wireless.</p>

<p>And you really should try to make it to Wesleyan more than every ten years, the landscaping is quite nice this time of year:
<a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/masterplan/residential_life_facilities_details.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wesleyan.edu/masterplan/residential_life_facilities_details.htm&lt;/a>
:)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I've really hardly met anyone in the business world from Swarthmore

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<p>Actually, the founder of the firm that is considered to have started the leveraged buyout craze on Wall Street (Jerome Kohlberg of Kohlberg, Kravitz) is a Swat alum.</p>

<p>Swatties definitely go to investment bank and consulting firms every year. However, it is fair to say that Swarthmore has a lower percentage of students aiming for a Wall Street career than does Williams. With a higher percentage of fianancial aid students and a lower percentage of private high school students, Swarthmore probably has fewer sons and daughters of investment bankers, too -- although I'm not sure anyone tallies the data on that!</p>

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<p>Seems to me that someone might want to consider what they hope to study. There are at least 50 LACs with stronger programs in languages/area studies than Williams, and I doubt that, with the exception of one or two departments, Swarthmore or Amherst would break the top 10. Williams would be great place to study music, but Swarthmore? Williams is terrific for astronomy/astrophysics, but the other two? (though Amherst does have fine radio astronomy options through the five colleges.) Coastal and Marine studies at Swarthmore? Art history is justly famous at Williams, but why would you want to major in it at Amherst or Swarthmore when you could go to Vassar or Oberlin?</p>

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<p>12 schools:</p>

<p>Harvard
Stanford
Yale
Princeton
MIT
CalTech
Dartmouth
Brown
Duke
Amherst
Williams
Swarthmore</p>

<p>These were the schools I considered a cut above the rest. Unfortunately, I only liked some of them and could do no better than the wait-list at the ones I did. I realize that nowadays people may clamor for Columbia and/or Penn on this list, but didn't think it appropriate back in the days before the renaissance of the American city when Columbia's acceptance rate was triple what it is now and Penn was in the mid to high 40% range.</p>

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<p>In general, one doesn't go to a LAC because of a strength in one particular program, but for the whole experience. Especially relevant considering how often the average college student changes major. Something like music on the other hand, I grant you, is very specific. But something like languages that is more general, I don't know how important it is to go to the #1 school for languages vs say if Amherst is #14 for languages compared to other factors of why one would choose Amherst. Who's doing these rankings anyway? What are they based on and how is it really relevant to students's experiences?</p>

<p>I'm not saying that Swarthmore students don't have the ability to, nor that there aren't any that do go into IB or consulting. It's just, as you say, a much lower % do, which certainly makes sense in considering other stats I've seen on here showing how the % of Swat students who get a PhD in comparison to just about every other school. I think the numbers were close to double even Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, if I remember correctly.</p>

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<p>I don't mean to put you on the spot, but what decade do you go to college in? That Cornell, Columbia, and U Penn didn't make your list, but Duke (which has only really become competitive since the early 80s), Caltech, and AWS did, seems odd to me.</p>