Quote:
|
By the way, I still haven't seen the hard data which supports the proposition that one gets a "better" education at Swarthmore.
|
I am not sure what kind of data you are looking for. I think med school/law school/grad school acceptance rates and Phd production should count as hard data.
As for anecdotes, I read this on the Law School forum "What are the main differences between undergrad and law school?", and thought that "what the Law school is like" on this thread sounded very much like what Swarthmore is like. And Swarthmore definitely is not anything like the "college" mentioned in that thread (which is supposed to be a "typical college"):
Quote:
2. College: Your assignment for a class is to read a chapter in a text book about 20 pages long, often takes less than an hour and you underline important parts and understand what you have read. Law school: Your assignment is to read 20 pages in a casebook along with reviewing numerous questions at the end of each case. You read it once and you have no idea what it is telling you. It is, in the words of Scott Turow, author of One L, "like trying to stir concrete with your eyes." You read it again and still have no idea. You keep going over and over it and after about five hours you think you now understand it and you do that for each class (but now go to 3).
3. College: You go to class and get a lecture, which you understand, and take notes and those notes become what you will need to study for the exam. Law school: You go to class and the professor calls on you and starts asking questions designed to see if you understood and can apply what you have read to hypothetical situations. Two minutes into that exercise, it becomes apparent that you didn't understand a word of what you read and you feel lost and embarrassed. That lack of understanding continues for about six weeks and then eventually, if you are one of the ones who will make it, light bulbs go off in your head and you suddenly understand what you read during the first week of class. You spend the rest of the first semester always feeling like you are five weeks behind on the learning curve.
4. College: you have at least three exams per semester that count toward grade and you may also have homework or other things, like quizzes, that count toward grade. Law school: your grade depends on one thing only -- how well you do on the final exam, the only test you get and the only thing you turn in all semester. To be able to do that exam, you will have needed to have made an outline of everything you learned during the semester and that should be something that is started early and continuously updated as the semester progresses.
5. College: students who actually go to class and study will pass; failure is usually due to not doing those things. Law school: you can go to all classes and study 80 hours a week and still fail despite that 3.7 GPA you had in college.
6. College: lots of free time during the semester, party on the weekends, not too much worry you will make it. Law school: enormous hours spent out of class trying to learn and understand the law, it starts to consume you and you start dreaming about it. Always worried, in first year, that you are not making it. Your one weekly release is Friday afternoon and evening after the week is over and you go to a bar with numerous other law students and drink yourself into a stupor while discussing law with those fellow students.
|