<p>I’m coming from the East Coast, and I prefer Reed socially and for its location, but I’m having trouble deciding between the two, especially because I want to live and work on the West Coast after college (or grad school). </p>
<p>Reed was my first choice for a long time, but I got in to Swarthmore without expecting to. Both will cost about the same.</p>
<p>What do you think the most important differences are between Reed and Swarthmore?</p>
<p>Apart from the location, which you’ve already thought about, I’d say the social atmosphere is key. Swarthmore is a little more straight-laced, politically moderate (though still very liberal by national standards) and aware of the pressures of getting a real job and fitting in with the rest of society. While I hate to call people hipsters (because what the hell does that even mean?), Reed has a huge minority of students whom I can only characterize as hipsters, which is not the case as Swarthmore, from what I understand.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t know how accurate the recent media coverage of Swarthmore’s sexual assault response failure is–so I can’t say how huge the problem truly is on their campus–but that is one area in which Reed can proudly say it’s a national leader. Stuff like that–mental health counseling, sexual assault response and prevention, sex and body positivity, queer visibility–is what Reed is very good at, mostly because of its super liberal student body, which has fought for these things.</p>
<p>Reed is not as ethnically diverse as Swarthmore, however.</p>
<p>On the academic side of things, the two schools are probably very similar. Reed students tend to be oddballs and their interests and personal talents are more often the product of independent, self-directed effort. They tend to be very, very thoughtful and interested in their studies, compared to people at most other schools (the particular comparison I have in mind is with the Yale student body, which I had cause to make recently–even though Yale students are more academically accomplished on paper, they tend to be far less interesting to talk to than Reed’s stoner prophets). That is surely the case with Swatties as well, since Swarthmore has the same reputation for academic engagement as Reed, but what I’m trying to convey here is the capacity of Reed students to surprise and delight you with very unexpected knowledge and insight. You know what you’re getting with Swarthmore or UChicago students–someone really smart and probably very nice–but Reed students always come out with some crazy personal trait or interest you couldn’t have predicted. And I’m not talking about normal suburban high-achiever stuff like hula hoop prowess or great knowledge of the Star Trek canon, but about truly bizarre accomplishments, like taxiderming an animal for fun or working on a cargo ship or infiltrating a young conservatives’ retreat so that you can write a novel about it. It’s actually a little bit much for some people–but it’s a vibe you can’t get anywhere else, in my opinion. And it definitely informs the way class discussions are conducted.</p>
<p>But yeah, I don’t think there’s a significant academic difference, other than the senior thesis, which is mandatory at Reed and only expected of honors students at Swarthmore (Reed has no honors programs or merit awards or science courses designed for non-majors or any other curricular feature that implies different groups of students are held to different academic standards, which I really like), and the fact that Swarthmore has an engineering program and minors. In essence, you’ll study very hard wherever you go. I think the two schools will offer you similar academic resources.</p>
<p>The real difference is in the student bodies and maybe the campus vibes, if you care about that sort of thing. You sound like you’ve already visited both schools, so maybe you should just ask yourself which one you felt more at ease at.</p>
<p>I understand that students at Reed are very bright. But why is it rated much lower in the U.S. News and World Report poll. Swarthmore is #3 and Reed is #75 in LACs? That seems odd to me.</p>
<p>You can google that yourself, and discover the dozens of pages on the internet devoted to your question. There’s also a section of Reed’s Wikipedia article that answers it.</p>
<p>Yes, do google it.
But the short answer is Reed refuses to submit data to UN&WR because it doesn’t believe in the rankings game and especially disagrees with the methodology used in creating the ratings. Subsequently, its ‘ranking’ has suffered.
Here’s an article the former president of Reed wrote that explains some of the reasoning: [Is</a> There Life After Rankings? - Colin Diver - The Atlantic](<a href=“Is There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic”>Is There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>Also in response to the OP, if the academics at both are similarly rigorous, the cost is the same, but you prefer Reed socially and culturally, and you want to end up on the west coast, where Reed is located… hmmm… seems like Reed might be the best fit.</p>
<p>IMO, location DOES matter because I don’t feel like either of those schools are nationally known (and actually research shows the ‘biggest name’ schools are ones with good football programs), but they are regionally known. So having a Reed degree when looking for jobs/internships in the PNW/west coast would probably be more recognized and helpful than a degree from Swarthmore since it’s ‘local’ (plus west coast companies are more likely to recruit from west coast schools, professors will have connections to local/regional opportunities, etc). And vice versa, more people on the east coast will recognize Swarthmore over Reed, and it might be smart to go there if you see yourself living in Philly, NYC, Boston, etc after college.</p>