Swarthmore senior will take questions

tsprite
Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:45:41 +0000

My daughter just completed her freshman year. (Hi Interested Dad and thanks for your help!).

Okay here goes:

RD Acceptance letters - She was an “early write” receiving a thin envelope in March. April 1st “this is the big fat envelope” followed.

She worked hard at Swat. In high school she was a brainy big fish in a small pond. At Swat she was an average small fish…
The workload is not easy and the grading tough (hence the tee shirts in the bookstore for sale that state, "Anywhere else it would have been an “A”.
I spoke with a Swat prof I met last week and she agreed the intensity is there. However, it is nit competitive between the students , rather self challenging. The students are very supportive of one another.
I’ve met many of her friends and they are intelligent (yet unassuming). The one thing that I felt from my contact at Swat was the passion of these students and their genuine desire to share it.

My daughter is a self proclaimed “nerd” in that she LOVES to learn and NEEDS challenge academically.
She does not party. However, at Swat she was constantly busy.
She not only had classes but managed to fit in campus jobs (tour guide, spec host and web ambassador), perform in so many Drama Board productions I lost count, write a charter with a friend and start a new club, write several stories for “The Phoenix”, write the “Pteradactyl Hunt” piece for the Swat website, perform in a friend’s film, deliver Ninja Grams, play Fall soccer, and join Swing Dance (they travel into Philly once a week and join UPenn’s and UDelaware’s clubs to dance.
That isn’t including all the “hanging out” times. Watching movies, playing board games, celebrating each others birthdays (they bake in the dorm kitchen), etc.
Her biggest problem was time management. Especially after catching swine fly and being immediately quarantined for a week. The first semester is pass/fail and I would imagine it is to allow the students to have the time to fully grasp the workload/intensity, time management etc.

She has made wonderful friends from all over. She was one of the lucky ones to have three of the best roommates ever. She had a single in the quad. She had it for the whole year because the roommates collectively decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of switching.

She is a CA this year so you incoming freshmen may be in her group.

On Move In Day - Parents are basically kicked out by 5. This is done to help them bond and acclimate. They have an intense week of orientation (so don’t be hurt -like I was lol - if you don’t hear from them much, if at all, that week. Remember when we return home and pass their empty room with a tear (or five) in our eye they have just been thrown together with all new people in a whole new place with a whole system to learn probably for the first time since kindergarten (and they got to come every day then!)