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<p>[Swarthmore</a> Registrar](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/registrar/page.phtml?sidebar=tricopenninfo&content=tricopennreg]Swarthmore”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/registrar/page.phtml?sidebar=tricopenninfo&content=tricopennreg)</p>
<p>Swarthmore students take courses at Penn every semester. Most Swatties don’t, but it’s certainly common for some to do so. The registration process is slightly more involved than registering at Haverford or Bryn Mawr – Penn is like the government, lots of red tape. Swarthmore will even pay the train fare to and from Penn (it’s about 20 minutes, direct route on the same line between stations on both campuses. </p>
<p>Now, as a practical matter, Swarthmore students don’t usually take courses at Penn unless it’s something in a fairly arcane niche. It is true that you can’t get approval to take a course at Penn if the exact same course is taught at Swarthmore. But, nobody in their right mind would want to do that, unless they are just looking for an easier version of the course. Many Swarthmore students find the Penn courses to be below the standards they are accustomed to.</p>
<p>If the Penn students were smart, they would sign up for courses at Swarthmore. But, I guess all the frat stuff keeps them pretty busy.</p>
<p>Swarthmore gets more Haverford and Bryn Mawr students coming in than Swarthmore has going to those two schools, which makes sense. Swarthmore has the broadest course offerings. The real back and forth action is between Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Both colleges have decided to simply not have certain departments and send their students to the other school for those courses…kind of in the same way that Harvey Mudd doesn’t have any arts or languages and Pitzer/CMC/Scripps rely on a skeleton shared “joint science” department for their science offerings.</p>