Dartmouth vs. Swarthmore

interesteddad
Wed, 02 May 2007 17:09:11 +0000

From following the action at College Confidential for several years, waitlist acceptances often are offered long before the May 1st date.

The reason is simple. Waitlists are primarily used to “top off” the freshman class with students having specific interests. To use a shopworn analogy, if a school finds out on April 5th that the “oboe player” decided to go to Harvard, the admissions office might well turn immediately to the oboe player on the waitlist.

As for Swarthmore versus Dartmouth, the two schools are so radically different in terms of campus culture and those differences can be so easily discerned based even on guidebook blurbs that I think each student really has to trust his or her gut.

I have close relatives currently enrolled as juniors in both schools so have had the opportunity to hear the “war stories” from both.