<p>Hello all:
I have been planning to apply to Swarthmore for a while now and I really love it for the following reasons, among others:
Culture of unabashed intellectualism
Wonderful History and Political Science Departments (what I plan to major in)
"Oxbridge style" Honors Program
Liberal Quaker influence
Lots of activism
Very LGBT friendly
Prestigious in academic circles
Great graduate school placement
Lovely campus
I also had a wonderful interview with an Assistant Dean of Admissions and when reading the viewbook, I really feel I could fit in at Swarthmore
The only thing I am worried about is size. Swarthmore has only about 1500 students, which I like because it means small classes and close community, but I am worried about a sort of "high schoolish" atmosphere in that everyone knows everything about everyone, cliques are formed, etc.
Is privacy an issue at Swarthmore? Are there enough people that you can find people with similar interests?
Thank you!</p>
<p>If you truly love Swarthmore for everything else it offers, the size should not be an issue. Students tend to make friends in small to medium (15 people) circles, but we certainly don’t know everyone. I’d be surprised if someone could even recognize the majority of faces on campus (over 750). Gossip is not a big issue; it’s spread only in a few cases of extreme party occurrences. If the small campus and surrounding town ever feel limiting, a train-ride to Philly is 25 minutes away. Even on campus, there is a lot to do. Students are involved in so many different clubs, and the administration readily funds students for activities and projects.</p>
<p>Best of luck with your applications!</p>
<p>College doesn’t feel anything like high school and going to Swarthmore feels nothing like going to a high school of 1500 people. One reason might be that in high school most of us hung out with the small group of people who were similar to us, whereas at Swat people hang out with a wider range of students. Also in high school there are people you’ve known for years and years, whereas people coming into swat knowing at most a few people. </p>
<p>LGBT friednly!!!</p>
<p>Current senior here…I usually don’t really do the whole CC thing but I couldn’t help but want to answer this one. Caveat though: I was at Swat during the “Spring of Our Discontent,” so I might be a little more jaded than Swatties who weren’t there that semester. </p>
<p>Swarthmore’s size is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great to be at a place that’s small enough so that you feel like you have a support network of people who actually care about you and who you actually care about. It’s hard to go somewhere on campus without running into friends, acquaintances (although I definitely don’t know everyone, it’s small enough that it has the <em>feel</em> of everybody knowing everybody), professors, deans/administrators, and other staff who I feel genuinely happy to see. To give you an idea of why this is nice, the history department’s administrator sent me emails while I was abroad just to see how I was doing and to send me recipes because she knew that learning to properly cook for myself was one of my abroad goals. (In contrast, the history department at the university where I was abroad was a horrible bureaucratic nightmare that made me want to hit my head against things.) Similarly, one of the people at the study abroad office treated me to lunch several months after I came back just to see how I was doing. One of the EVS staff members gives me hugs whenever I run into her. Last week, somebody at dining services who sees 1500 students every day made a joke to me about an extremely inane detail of my life from last semester that <em>I</em> didn’t even remember until he brought it up. I have close enough relationships with a handful of professors that we feel comfortable enough to poke fun at each other on occasion, and of course all the others have also been really open, friendly, and supportive. Lastly and most importantly, my friends are just absolutely the best people on earth (curious, thoughtful, open-minded, extremely intelligent, passionate, witty, supportive, and humble), and I really don’t think I’d feel so strongly about that if I had gone somewhere else. Of course that’s probably naive, but whatever. If there are cliques, they are overlapping and permeable, and Swatties are typically so curious about everything that chances are you probably have at least some similar interests even with most strangers; if not, people are happy to learn new things from each other.</p>
<p>That all being said, the school can be PAINFULLY tiny. Although Swarthmore is great for its “community,” it’s naive to think that everybody always gets along at all times or is even successful at gracefully avoiding one another. Not possible. I don’t consider myself a dramatic person in the least, but others will create drama around you, and at such a small school it can be hard not to get sucked in. Life happens; personalities clash; friendships fallout. Your freshman roommate is a decently good friend until she starts dating somebody and stops talking to you, but then you still have to awkwardly avoid eye contact with her almost every day in the ONE DINING HALL. Then to make matters worse, she starts hanging out with a friend of a friend, so when your friend stops to talk to her friend before you sit down at a table, you don’t know whether to make awkward small talk, stare at your shoes, or pretend to get toast. You find out that your really kind and emotionally supportive friend with a lot of white privilege doesn’t “see why Ferguson is a race issue,” and you’re so repulsed after the discussion you have about it that you can’t look at him the same way anymore, but you also don’t know how to friend-break-up. Sketchy things happen at parties. You hear rumors about uniquely egregious people (the ones Apollo 28 was talking about), and the next year, somehow all of them end up being your next door neighbors or they’re in your poli sci seminar. The one dining hall thing is seriously really just the worst. Everybody’s gotta eat. If there’s somebody you <em>really</em> don’t want to see, you have to go really early or really late, and if they don’t want to see you, there’s a decent chance you’ll just run into them anyway because they’ve adopted the same strategy. Oops.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to deter you. On the contrary, for me personally, the catty and awkward bits have at times been extremely frustrating, but overall the good parts FAR exceed the bad. I only mean to say that you should know what you’re getting yourself into, and that unfortunately for some people (for example, the handful of victims of the uniquely egregious people) the bad can outweigh the good. If you really like the school, don’t worry about the size; just prepare for occasional frustration, especially if you’re the type of person who would rather be in a big city experiencing the real world than dealing with petty drama inside of an elitist bubble.</p>
<p>(Also by the way, I really don’t know why everybody always says that Philly is “so accessible” because actually it’s $12 per trip plus money for whatever you decide to do there. It’s also time consuming, which can make it difficult to coordinate with friends. Also on weekends the train stops running at 11:00 PM, which can make it tough to have a “night out.” Consequently I probably only make it out there about 2-4 times a semester, tops.)</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
Hi! Current Swat freshman here. I just completed my first semester, and let me say that jari44’s message already resonates with me!
I went to a school with a graduating class of 78 people, so I wasn’t too worried about Swat’s size. In fact, I really enjoy how easy is to become close with professors, administrators, and yes, even the dining hall staff! jari44 did a good job of summing up what that feels like.
But I agree, the one dining hall thing is… not fun. On the one hand, I don’t have a problem going down there by myself, because I’ll always know I’ll run into someone I’ll want to eat with there. But on the other, about a month ago, I sat down for lunch, only to see the friends of a boy I’d had an awkward conversation the day before with sitting directly across from me. Wanting to avoid seeing him, and knowing he’d probably be sitting with his friends, I switched to the other side of the table so that my back was facing that table. And the second I did that, that very boy turned the corner and made direct, but brief, eye contact with me.
At my first hall meeting, someone asked my RA if he ever felt Swat was too small, and he responded, “You don’t realize how small Swat is until you date and break up with someone here.” That’s all too true. But I also noticed that as soon as I get to know a person, I notice them everywhere. The first time I met with my WA, I’d never seen him before. Now I see him at least twice a day. It’s definitely weird. But, my RA also said that “Swat is just big enough that you’ll be meeting people in your senior year that you’ve never met before.” Hopefully that’s true as well!
I don’t really mind the social smallness of it, to be honest. Oh, I forgot to mention this, but I haven’t noticed an ounce of cliqueyness. It is small enough, though, that someone mentioned “the girl with the doplhin laugh” on YikYak and I immediately knew who they were talking about. And the second you get out of the bubble, you notice the difference. The one part about the smallness I hate, though, is the food options. There’s the one dining hall, which honestly, isn’t that bad. But it’s the fact that it’s the ONE dining hall, that serves the same food over and over, that makes it so terrible. There’s a snack bar, too, which serves more traditional grill food, but it only takes meals when the dining hall isn’t open, and it serves basically the same food plus a few other weird things, so it really doesn’t feel that different. There are two cafe places (the science center cafe has the BEST HOT CHOCOLATE EVER just to let you know) that otherwise aren’t that good, and there are some perfectly adequate takeout places around, but about once a month I get fed up with it and insist on going to a good restaurant in Media with my friends. But I think that’s just me, since food is so important to me…
Well, anyways, hope I could help!
Our student does not find Swarthmore too small. If there was one period that tested that assertion, it was the spring of 2013. A recent submission to the Daily Gazette discussed the issues that were being debated during that semester: http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2015/02/20/carrying-it-forward-student-struggles-of-spring-2013/
I encourage prospective students to read it. What caught my attention was the opening paragraph of the first reply:
The poster did stress that the causes were noble (I agree with them myself), but the question remains whether different tactics would have been more effective. As you read the comments, you will see why some found the campus becoming very small. Much has changed in the intervening two years, though, so one should not expect a reprise.