HELP - transfer deciding: Cornell vs. Swarthmore

ohilkyusat
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:34:10 +0000

thankfully, I actually got into both this year.
Cornell has better name-tag huge research opportunities etc
Swat has better academic environment (student teacher ratio, small school, and everyone is elite, academically qualified students)
My impression is that Cornell is not as academically intense as Swarthmore. I really thought that swat students are very academic. Cornell is also an academic school but I thought there were much more people who actually put much more emphasis on non-academic stuff. (swat also has people who put lots of emphasis on non-academic stuff. I mean everyone is invovled with clubs/organizations and stuff)
I’m sure that they both are known for resisting grade inflation, so you will need to work your ass off wherever you go anywyas

See? they are both good schools and it really depends on how you fit to those schools.

personally, I had to choose between swarthmore/columbia
my asian korean parents really pushed me to go to columbia just because of its “ivy-ness”
but I didn’t like big undergraduate college experience and I really wanted to take all the advantages taht small liberal arts colleges give to their students. And I chose swarthmore.
But that’s just me. I’m not into theater stuff and I was never involved with that field.
But if you are a theater person, Swarthmore actually does provide lots of opporunities to those students too (I don’t have to talk about Cornell. It obviosuly does provide lots of opportunities as well, Cornell is HUGEEE)

My point is,
just ignore about theater and doing double major when you try to choose which colleges to apply.
As long as they provide lots of opportunities for theaters and offer double majors that you want to do, comparing them in this area become pointless in my opinion.

It all comes down to what kind of experience you want to have at your undergraduate institution.

small liberal arts college experience vs huge university experience
what do you like more?