Decision input: UChicago vs. Swarthmore vs. Pomona

JHS
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:46:32 +0000

Those are three schools where the intellectual vibe is pretty similar, and they are all high quality, so you really can’t go wrong much. I don’t think it’s any secret that the opportunities and resources in math and physics at Chicago are several orders of magnitude beyond what Swat or Pomona can offer, but there’s no question that you can start at either of those places and wind up as a first-rate mathematician or physicist. Swat even has an accredited engineering program if you want engineering in an elite LAC environment.

Chicago as a major research university has more of everything, including graduate students and large classes (but not many of them). Swat and Pomona both solve that problem to some extent by being part of a consortium. It works much better at Pomona, where you can walk to the other colleges and they share a main library. But at Swarthmore you can take classes at Penn, too. It’s not totally convenient, but it’s doable – and that could be really important in math and physics, where you could get tired of the Swat faculty by the time you are a senior. Swarthmore’s honors program, by the way, which involves a real thesis defense and a committee including outside scholars, is the most impressive such program I know about.

It’s really easy to get into Philadelphia from Swarthmore, by the way – half the adult residents of the town do it every morning. It’s a 30-minute train ride from a station that is essentially on campus. The trains run at least once an hour, but cut off around midnight. Cabs are expensive, but doable if shared. The college also has a big zipcar program. And there’s a pretty big mall you can walk to from campus, less than a mile away.

Personally, I would pick Chicago in a heartbeat, but reasonable people could differ on this. In terms of quality of academic experience and of your fellow students, they are all so close that it’s completely legit to make your decision based on stuff like suburbs vs. city, LAC intimacy vs. research university energy, California vs. Midwest vs. East Coast, how much you like walking in Swarthmore’s gorge . . . .