<p>To tie up some loose strings…</p>
<p>1st, “Pecking orders”, you know, are really for “peckers”.</p>
<p>People like Dudvinci and the SC Alum who wrote that he “inflicted an education” on himself represent the socially awkward and backwards that, although a small contingent at Swat, are more present than elsewhere. My advice to Swat kids with normal and normalish social skills is to lock your doors at night, hide under the covers and keep an eye on your interpersonal skills and make sure that some of your colleagues’ (-) quirks don’t get you when you’re not looking. :)</p>
<p>ID: In re-reading your responses, I couldn’t help notice the testiness with your words. Now, I love verbal jousting as much as the next person but please note that any unwarranted barbs you toss my way or that of HC, I can probably throw back with equal/greater velocity and precision if I have the time and lose my patience… until then…</p>
<p>1) ID: “Swat EVEN has BASIC athletic facilities like a swimming pool that Haverford does not.” </p>
<p>If you notice when I discussed the MD vs PhD advisor thing, I tempered it by saying that most other colleges have PhDs as advisors. Yes, Swat is larger than HC and that allows it some things that a smaller college cannot afford… for the same reasons, Williams and Middlebury have ice rinks while Swat does not. Smallness, however, can provide for a different educational experience and relationship with peers that may be better for some students. If kids want to compete in “water sports” :), they shouldn’t go to HC… but this is a small minority of kids. For everyone else who may want (and have the time!) to swim… once every 2 weeks… , BMC is a convenient blue bus ride away and has a nice pool that’s usually empty. That’s one of the strengths of the Bi-co. Also, considering there was a very active and funny thread here some time ago of Swat kids screeching like frightened cats that they have to pass a swimming requirement (treading water or swimming 1 lap?)… I question how much the presence of a pool impacts most kids. </p>
<p>2) ID “When more than 1 out of every 10 members of a typical graduating class is accepted into med school, it’s very difficult to suggest that there is any significant impediment. Any differences in med school admissions rates among any of these schools are irrelevant”.</p>
<p>Hmmm… this sounds like something I wrote earlier in regards to your PhD rankings.</p>
<p>“While I do certainly appreciate I.D.'s effort with calculating these figures, I’m not sure if ranking the schools from 1–>100 is fair. For example, HC has 15,000 living alums so a “rate” of 4.3 would yield 65 language PhDs in the HC alumni population. Some people would then say, “Well, if HC’s language department was “stronger” like… Yale’s, then we’d have… 80 language PhDs (rate of 5.3 per 1000 x 15,000)”. This is the difference in rankings from #8 to #18. However, is a difference of 80-65 or 15 more PhDs out of 15,000 people significant??? As the fortune cookie says, “Numbers don’t lie but they can certainly mislead”.”</p>
<p>3) ID “I also feel quite confident that the presence or absence of an “Honor Code” has little or no correlation with stupid college behavior. In fact, I dare say that Haverford has probably had an incident of stupid college behavior once or twice during its history.”</p>
<p>Like I said before, there’s very little a non-HC person can say to a HC grad about such things that haven’t already been debated by the time of our 1st legal drink. </p>
<p>“Clearly, one can be very successful and honest without having to go to a school with an honor code and I think it has more to do with your upbringing than anything college can teach you. However, because HC distinguishes itself from the others because of the code, there is likely a greater concentration of people interested in these goals that at other places and I think, for me, being in that environment made my college years a little more meaningful.”</p>