Swarthmore College

Visit Report by interesteddad (Member since August 19 2004 with 6549 posts) Visit Date - July 2008

15 of 17 people found this visit report helpful
Visit to Swarthmore College in July 2008 by interesteddad ()
Visit Activities:
Admissions Interview: Yes - Conversational interview with a current student. Information Session: Yes Campus Tour: Yes Classroom Visit: Yes - Doestoevsky in translation. Professor e-mailed the short novel assignment to read in advance. Very small, discussion oriented class with a lot of particpation and debate.
Swarthmore College Campus:
Friendliness/Courtesy of Students: 5 - Excellent - Easy to make friends as a freshman, both with freshmen and upper class students. Friendliness/Courtesy of Staff: 5 - Excellent - Incredible. Easy to get professor recommendations. Participate in fireside chats with prospective dean candidates. Two days of chicken soup and TV in a private room at the health center during a bout with the flu. Very student centered school. Appearance of Campus: 5 - Excellent - Incredible. The buildings are all variations on gray stone -- some old and gothic, some new and sleek. Campus is an arboreteum and landscaped to the max. Huge lawns, courtyard gardens, outdoor classrooms, trees galore. Building/Facilities Maintenance/Cleanliness: 5 - Excellent - By college standards, the maintenance of the buildings and grounds are top shelf. Dormitories: 4 - Very Good - A range of older and newer dorms. Most have large lounges with big-screen TVs, public computers, kitchenettes. Security/Safety: 5 - Excellent - Extremely safe. Overall Campus Impression: 5 - Excellent - Showplace.
Off-Campus:
Area Immediately Around Campus: 3 - Good - Immediate neighborhood is wealthy, heavily wooded, older neighborhood. Basic businesses in the "Ville" -- bank, pizza, Dunkin Donuts, etc. Half mile away is commercial strip (mall, Target, Best Buy, Starbucks, restaurants). City/Town/Community: 5 - Excellent - 12 mile commuter rail trip to downtown Phila from a train station in the middle of campus. Restaurants, art museums, symphony, ethnic neighborhoods, professional sports, concerts, etc.
Campus Visit Notes for Swarthmore College:
Visit Description: These comments are based on daughter's high school visits and two years as a student at Swarthmore. Campus: Just stunning. Heavily landscaped wooded campus built on hillside surrounding a huge open space. Dorms and dining hall grouped on one side of campus; academic buildings on the other. Most buildings (including the academic buildings) have a gathering place: outdoor couryards, lounges, coffee bars, etc. Spend an afternoon walking around the campus and the academic buildings and its easy to see the impact of the huge per student endowment. It's a showplace. Housing: Dorms are nice. Most have public computers and big screen TVs. Freshman live in doubles in eight of the dorms mixed together with upperclass students; this contact with upperclass students provides real-world mentoring for learning how to be a college student. Sophmores live in doubles. Juniors and Seniors live in singles. Lottery system after freshman year with seniority by class. Expect to live in a different dorm each of the four years. No theme dorms or de facto segregation. No official "substance free" dorms, although some are quieter than others (or vice versa). All dorms are 50/50 male female except Parrish Hall which is all male on one wing and all female on the other. All dorms are non-smoking except on small dorm and one floor of another (depending on demand). Classroom: Very small classes with a large number of seminars capped at 12 students. Interactive education with a lot of contact with professors, discussion, peer learning, etc. Many departments have a cap on enrollment in any course of 25 students. The only really large courses are Intro Psych, some of the Intro Science courses for non-majors, and Art History survey courses. All discussion sections and labs are taught by professors. Out of 368 course sections, only 1 had 100 students last year; only 13 had 40 or more students. 34% had fewer than 10 students. 42% had 10-19 students. Academics: Challenging. The small class sizes and campus culture result in a fairly heavy workload. Definitely don't consider Swarthmore if you want to be a slacker. Do the work, go to class, participate in the discussions, and make an effort on papers and you'll get decent grades. Most Swatties seem to really enjoy some of their courses. The better professors are both amazing and thought provoking. Undergrad teaching is the emphasis. The professors bend over backwards to work with students: extensions on papers, etc. First semester freshman year is pass/fail to get your sea legs. Honors Program: A separate academic track that involves four 2-semester intensive seminars; three in the major plus one in a minor. Capped off by a two-semester senior thesis and oral/written exams by outside professors. About a third of Swat students do the Honors track. Study Abroad: About 40% of Swatties study abroad, in a wide range of programs, run by Swarthmore and other schools. Pay Swarthmore's normal tuition (minus financial aid) and Swat pays for the program, transportation overseas, plus incidental expenses. Campus Culture: Very diverse student body. An emphasis on issues of social justice, international cultures, etc. A lot of students with strong opinions who love to debate them. Students are expected to behave responsibly and there are few regulations on alcohol, etc. Parties with alcohol are plentiful enough, but heavy drinking is lower than the national average. All parties and events with college funding are totally free to students. Sports are fairly low-key; no football. About 21% of students (male and female) play on a varsity sports team. Two small fraternities, about 10% of the male students, mostly athletes. They sponsor parties open to the campus. Each has a small lodge on campus for parties, but frat members live in the regular dorms. No sororities. Location and Transportation: Heavily wooded old neighborhood about 12 miles from downtown Phila. Train from campus to downtown or to airport. From downtown, Amtrak (or cheaper Chinatown bus) to NYC or Washington. Idyllic wooded campus but with easy access to city life and the "real world" when the need to escape the Ivory Tower rears its head. In addition to the train, the college runs shuttle vans to the nearby mall and Target plus a downtown Phila van on weekends. College vans to and from the airport around breaks or you can go door to door to the airport on the train.
15 of 17 people found this visit report helpful