Snobby people at Swat?

walkerita · 08-11-2009, 07:24 PM

I've been reading some pretty negative reviews of Swarthmore at **************.com. Current and past Swarthmore students seem to describe the student body there as self-righteous, snooty, back-stabbing, etc. Have any of the people reading this thread been to Swarthmore and experienced this or heard similar accounts from Swarthmore students? It surprised me to read such negative comments; I always thought Swarthmore students had a reputation for being kind and socially active.

Here's the website I was referring to:
http://www.**************.com/PA/SC.html

walkerita · 08-11-2009, 07:26 PM

Hmmm... I don't know why the name of the website disappeared. If you'd like to see the reviews I was talking about, go to Students Review .com and search for the Swarthmore page.

etselec · 08-11-2009, 07:50 PM

I think that these unhappy students are in the minority at Swat--sure, Swat has "flaws" (yes, it's small, we're socially awkward, there's grade deflation) but I personally think it's a great place where I've found close friends, engaging academics, a social scene that's lively enough for me, and a community of smart people who care about things. I'm happy with it, two years in, and I think that the majority of my classmates are as well. But the sour grapes are more likely to log in to some anonymous website and complain.

Forgetmenots · 08-11-2009, 10:00 PM

I think most Swarthmore students are kind and socially active - but, as etselec said, there are unhappier folk. Of all the "negatives" you could use to describe Swarthmore students (like the previously mentioned socially awkward), snooty and back-stabbing are really not among them. Going into my third year, I'm always surprised by how genuine people tend to be, even those you don't really know, since the small community really does bring us together. Regardless, I wouldn't take anything you read online as a sample size (especially not people who are so unhappy that they're drawn to places like that where they can vent), especially not when it comes to Swarthmore. :]

shellfell · 08-12-2009, 08:20 AM

S is a Swat grad who's spending his vacation this summer with 3 friends from Swat. Snooty & back-stabbing are not words I think he would use to describe students at Swat. I never got that impression from the Swat students I met either. Are there exceptions? Probably, but I don't think it describes the majority of students.

interesteddad · 08-12-2009, 07:41 PM

I wish someone had told my daughter that Swarthmore students were supposed to be "snobby" so that she and her friends wouldn't have always taken the Chinatown bus to NYC to save a few bucks over the train. I can't think of an elite college where snobby would be a less accurate description than Swarthmore. You can get a pretty good idea that the site you reference is unreliable by the number of posters who give poor to failing grades for Swarthmore's academics. Love the place, hate the place, students, alums, parents, faculty, hundreds of visitin honor examiners -- I have never heard anyone describe Swarthmore's academics as anything less than deserving of an "A".

Likewise, the description of Swarthmore as "competitive" couldn't be farther from the mark. From its widely acclaimed writing associate program to its new science study group initiatives (funded by HHMI) to its honors seminars, Swarthmore is hailed as a model of cooperative learning. Here's what the visiting accreditation team had to say about the collaborative nature of the Swarthmore community in their just completed accreditation report:

Visiting Team Report (PDF)

Quote:

From our brief but intense encounter with a sizeable cross-section of the
Swarthmore community and from a careful assessment of the self-study and ancillary
documents, we emerged with a strong impression that the college is, as it represents
itself, “exceptional,” “distinctive,” even “extraordinary” in many respects. We found
nothing to gainsay the college’s self-portrait as an ambitious and engaged community of
learners dedicated to “independent, rigorous and creative thought,” and to the production
and application of knowledge to advance the cause of justice, from the classroom, to the
campus, to the community, to the world.

We found a college that is excellent in every respect: in the quality of its faculty
and its students, in the dedication of its staff, the sophistication of its administration, the
leadership of its president, the successes of its alumni/ae, and the wisdom of its Board.
Evidence of these strengths was everywhere manifest. Less concrete, but equally
practical as a resource that characterizes Swarthmore, helps explain the College’s
success, and bodes well for its future were the unusually deep reservoirs of mutual trust
we found at every turn.

In virtually every encounter, we heard spontaneous expressions of faith in the
good intentions of others, and witnessed a willingness to be unguarded or vulnerable with
one another, an appreciation of mutually-interdependent relations, a preference for
cooperation over competition, and an interaction style that naturally and gently smoothed
incipient conflict before it became awkward or tense. Like the financial wealth that
buffers the College from economic perturbations, this relational trust buys
Swarthmoreans the time they need to deliberate thoughtfully and conscientiously–not by
applying abstract rules or forcing hasty compromises--but by knowing the rightness of
their actions by the integrity of the discernment process from which they spring.

tsprite · 08-13-2009, 12:07 AM

Hi Interested Dad!

They now have the "Bolt Bus" running from 30th Street to 34th and 8th, NYC.
Brand new buses, free wifi, outlets for electronics charging. A far cry from the Chinatown buses of the past! Oh! And all that for $10!!!!!

shellfell · 08-13-2009, 10:13 AM

tsprite: S took that bus to go visit a Swat grad friend who lives in the Philly area. He's cheap, so he was thrilled.

dchow08 · 08-13-2009, 12:32 PM

I agree with the two Swarthmore students and shellfell. I was also concerned about the reviews on that website, but I don't think it is representative of the general opinions of most of the students. If you're looking for reviews of Swarthmore, I suggest you go to College pro wler, or Uni go.

But I have to say, if I had to grade the academics so far here, I'd have to give it an A/A-, not an A. If I had to grade my professors so far, I'd give them A/A+ , A, A, A, A-, A-, A-, B+, B, B, B-. I had more professors because I took intro bio and there were 4 professors. There were more below A than A and above.

interesteddad · 08-13-2009, 02:28 PM

Academics includes far more than the professors. For example, grading Swarthmore's academics must include:

a) Consideration of a totally unique Honors Program that, to a great degree, introduced the seminar approach to American education and established Swarthmore as a highly collaborative (faculty & student, facutly & faculty, student & student) educational community. The hundreds of outside examiners, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars a year, provide an ongoing independent assessment and feedback loop of Swarthmore's students, faculty, and curriculum that is unmatched at the undergrad level. Bringing in outside professors to grade a third of your graduating class (and, in effect, to grade the professors who teach them) is a demanding standard and takes a lot of institutional guts.

b) National leadership in peer mentoring programs. Swarthmore's Writing Associates program, started in the 1980s, is THE model that liberal arts colleges seek to emulate. Nobody else is teaching a graduate level writing instruction course (for credit) to all of their student peer writing mentors. Nobody else is achieving the kind of integration of Writing Associates peer review and designated writing courses in every department. Read the academic strategic plans for for places like Amherst. They all look to Swarthmore's program as the gold standard. Williams doesn't even really have a Writing Center; their accreditation review encouraged the creation of one. The same thing is emerging with the new science peer study groups funded by the multi-million dollar HHMI grants. Similarly, the Student Academic Mentor program is starting to get some notice, especially now that live-iin SAMS are being assigned to each dorm.

We can say that, measured against some theoretical ideal of perfection, Swarthmore maybe merits an A- on academics. Back in the real world, compared against the universe of what else is out there, it's hard to imagine less than an A grade. In fact, Dchows A- after just one year (the least academically engaging year of the four) is an impressive grade. The "B" given by that student site is just absurd. Show me better -- and don't say Harvard, because I know that's not true.

arador · 08-13-2009, 11:08 PM

InterestedDad—one comment re: the Middle States accreditation report. I was rather unimpressed with the recent process. I was part of a small group of students that met with the head of the panel at one point, and I got the distinct impression that she was looking for certain responses from us. For example, she'd ask us to list the most important elements of Swarthmore, and people mentioned the students, diversity, etc., which she followed up by asking something like "and Honors right? Honors is important. And social justice?"

I'm abridging her comments, but it didn't make me feel like it was a truly impartial panel dedicated to finding out what students really valued about Swarthmore. So, while I do think the description is reasonable based on my own experience, I don't think MSA should be seen as an authoritative source more generally.

A.E. · 08-14-2009, 03:32 AM

Quote:

We can say that, measured against some theoretical ideal of perfection, Swarthmore maybe merits an A- on academics. Back in the real world, compared against the universe of what else is out there, it's hard to imagine less than an A grade. In fact, Dchows A- after just one year (the least academically engaging year of the four) is an impressive grade. The "B" given by that student site is just absurd. Show me better -- and don't say Harvard, because I know that's not true.

I went there for four years, and I don't give it an A at all. Not even an A-. You went there zero years, IIRC. As I've said many times before, the academics of Swarthmore just didn't live up to the expectations or the hype IMO. I can't unequivocally say there are better places out there, because I didn't go to every undergraduate institution in the world. I can only say that I hope there are, or it's a dark day for higher education.

That said, I did take classes at three other undergraduate institutions, one of which was also an LAC and two of which were public universities, and I didn't find my overall educational experience at those places to be decidedly better or worse, just different -- better in some ways and worse in others.

interesteddad · 08-14-2009, 11:32 AM

As a public service to those who are putting together their college lists, you should name the two public universities where you found the overall education experience to be comparable to Swarthmore. I'm sure that many people here will be eager to apply to those schools after evaluating student-faculty ratios, the class sizes, the quality of their TA instructors, the honors programs, and so forth.

A.E. · 08-14-2009, 04:04 PM

I didn't have any TA instructors. They were all professors, some considerably better than professors I had at Swarthmore.

interesteddad · 08-14-2009, 07:20 PM

No TAs. And, considerably better professors than Swarthmore professors. Sounds like the public university pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. You really must name these schools. I would recommend that everyone apply to them immediately.

We only looked seriously at a few state universities -- UNC-CH, UVa, and W&M -- none of which really measured up to the top LACs as far as undergrad eduction. We obviously didn't find the good ones.