<p>I am a freshman who may be majoring in Engineering (or basket weaving or interpretative bongo drumming…who really knows). Swarthmore has an excellent Engineering program IF you don’t know if you are sure you want to be an Engin major and IF you are planning on grad school. Engineering at Swarthmore is hard (it’s probably hard everywhere), and some of the professors are less than great. And, despite what the admission department would like you to think, a BS from Swarthmore does not make you as employable as say, MIT or CalTech. And its not as though an Engin major at Swat dabbles a little in every humanity or social science. There are over 20 required credits for Engin majors, compared to 8 for social science majors. Most Engin majors take 2, even 3 lab sciences at a time, leaving little time to really immerse yourself in that extra “elective”. The facilities here are amazing for a small LAC of less than 1500 people, but nowhere near comparable to that of a big university.</p>
<p>This makes it sound like I don’t like Engin at Swat, but actually I do. If I had gone to any other school, I probably wouldn’t have even considered an Engin major. Students are not competitive with each other the way they are at bigger universities. (In fact, I’ve found that classmates often bond together very tightly in face of the difficulty.) And, at Swat, at least you get the space for an extra class or two. I’ve heard that the alumni network works wonders and Swat students do go to good grad schools. And I came to Swarthmore, as corny as it sounds, for the people and the atmosphere and to become a more educated person, not just so that I could get a piece of paper that would get me more money in the future. So, I’m just saying that if you know you want to be an Engineer, a more specialized program would probably be better for your future prospects.</p>