Swarthmore vs. Penn

skyblu
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:44:48 +0000

It’s not the work that I’m afraid of, it’s the fact that “anywhere else, it would have been an A” might come back to bite me when I apply to grad school. And I’m a perfectionist, which just might kill me if I go to a school with more work than any other… ID, your daughter sounds really gifted in organization skills, which I’m seriously lacking in. If I was was more organized, I’d have no problem, because I know how to churn out large amounts of work, but my perfectionism paired with the fact that I can be so unorganized might pose a problem, and to be truthful, I’m scared.

Besides that, I like that Penn offers a submatriculation program, where you can get both your B.A. and your M.A. in four years flat. Still, when I went to Swarthmore, I fell in love with it, and in a way that hasn’t yet happened anywhere else. I love its location (near but not in a large city) and the people seem really genuine and sweet, and they seem to be a lot nerdier than their Penn counterparts, which really suits me, since I’m a pretty big lit nerd. Plus, I don’t want to be in a big city, just near one. But Penn has a much bigger linguistics department, and it has more courses in the type of linguistics I like. Of course, there is the consortium, so I could take those classes anyway. And there are a lot of grad students, which I’m sure changes the feel of the school, but how much of a difference will it really make in the humanities? I mean, how much funding do you really need to study literature? It’s not like in the sciences where you actually need those resources to learn…

I’m conflicted. I can’t decide whether the school for me is either of these two, or neither of them. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t want to apply early, but I really want to know where I’m going by New Year’s, so really, I have to decide now. Does anyone have any suggestions for other schools to look at? Wellesley and Barnard are also on the list (safeties include Mt. Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence and Bryn Mawr).