<p>In your opinion, which school has the most top-notch academics? If you had to compare Swat and Wes to Ivy schools, which would you compare them to? Purely out of curiosity. For the most part, I don’t particularly care about parties; I’m more of the discussion/chilling type. I want intense academics because I love learning, and I’d like a school where other people are as interested in just general intelligent conversation as I am. Which school best fits this criteria?</p>
<p>Also, slightly off topic, but do you think someone politically center would do alright in these schools? And yes, I realize there are numerous threads on the political climates of these colleges already, but any fresh or new, insightful/helpful thoughts on this would be fantastic. Thanks.</p>
<p>All three are excellent schools and how your college career would go at any of them would be determined by things you can’t possibly consider or even know, now.</p>
<p>Having said that, there is no stronger undergrad education in the United States than Swarthmore, if you value a highly interactive learning environment where students and faculty teach each other. There’s nowhere that focuses more intensely on the undergrad experience. It is known for being what you say you are looking for. The new President may be just blowing smoke, but she says that she has never seen anything like the enthusiasm for learning at the other schools where she has been: Emory, Yale Divinity School, Colgate. I went to Wiliams, which is a pretty darn good school academically, and I’ve never seen anything like it.</p>
<p>It also has by far the largest per student endowment. Three times larger than Brown’s. Four times larger than Wesleyan’s. Financial strength is particularly important in this economic climate as it dictates how severe the budget cutting will be over the next five years.</p>
<p>I think that opinion can be based safely on a little more than hearsay. All three are excellent, highly selective schools (each with its own pros and cons). However, Swarthmore has some features that set it apart from all but a very small number of other colleges. The one that comes first to mind is its honors program: [Swarthmore</a> College | Academics | Honors Program](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/honors.xml]Swarthmore”>Honors Program :: Swarthmore College) </p>
<p>Neither Brown nor Wesleyan, as far as I know, has anything like that program. The one school I can think of that has a similarly rigorous program is Reed College, which requires not only a senior thesis but also qualifying oral exams at the end of 3rd year (which can cover material from any course the student took in the preceding years). The Reed requirements are for ALL students, not just “honors”. But Reed’s program does not include examination by outside scholars, and it has been a somewhat less selective school than Swarthmore. If you really really like Swarthmore but it’s a high reach for you, Reed College might be a good low reach.</p>
<p>I think Chicago could be said to rival Swat for academic quality and intensity, and for the atmospherics interesteddad describes. It has the advantage of first-rate graduate programs in many fields, but not a Swarthmore-style honors program. While not large by university standards, it has a much bigger campus and student body than Swarthmore’s (small being good for liberal arts undergraduates, in my book.)</p>
<p>Then there is interesteddad’s alma mater, which also integrates Oxford-style tutorials into its programs.
[Williams</a> College Tutorial Program](<a href=“Williams College”>Williams College)</p>
<p>Wesleyan is regularly compared to Brown; both have long histories of experimental approaches to education; both began their existences as the flagship colleges for expansive protestant denominations (Methodism in the case of Wes; Baptists, in the case of Brown.) Henry M. Wriston, a Wesleyan alum, was arguably one of Brown’s greatest presidents.</p>
<p>I agree with the Chicago/Swarthmore analogy, the appreciation of learning as a way of life is keenly felt at both places.</p>
<p>In answer to the OP’s last question, I think there are plenty of happy middle-of-the roaders at all three places. I think if you scan the many activities that catch the attention of the entirely student-run blog at Wesleyan, the overwhelming majority of them are non-political in nature. Music, especially, seems to be the great unifier: <a href=“http://wesleying.org/[/url]”>http://wesleying.org/</a></p>
<p>She got her PhD at the University of Chicago and has been honored with distinguished alumni awards. She recounts a recent conversation with a “famous UChicago professor” who called her to congratulate her. He talked about Chicago being the best university in America to get a PhD and Swarthmore being the best school in America to get an undergrad education. Of course, he’s probably biased since his daughter is a Swarthmore student.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Williams is a fine school. Excellent students. Excellent professors. Best sports teams in Div III. If you are talking undergrad academics and a student body/faculty that is highly engaged with learning, ideas, and a culture of intellectualism, it’s not Swarthmore. I could go down the list from the much heavier investment/commitment to community service with the Lang Center (with students being honored for projects started around the world), to innovative interactive learning programs like War News Radio, to leading academic support programs like the Writing Associates program that is viewed as a model around the country, to the very high per capita PhD production rate, to the high percentage of students majoring in math and sciences. If you want a school with the biggest commitment to athletics, Swarthmore can’t compete with Williams. If you are looking for commitment to undergrad intellectual pursuits, there is no comparison – and that’s not to take away anything from Williams’ excellent academics.</p>
<p>During deadtime on D1s college visits I would check out the the bookstores and look at the math & physics texts they were using. I recall that my impression from this was Swarthmore’s classes in these subjects were probably at the level of MIT’s. (eg Kleppner & Kolenkow for intro Mechanics, Apostol for calculus, etc)</p>
<p>I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to talk to him, but FWIW, on my first Swarthmore tour there was a prospective transfer student from Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Of the three, I’d pick Swarthmore, but of course, I’m biased, being a Swarthmore student. I honestly don’t know a whole lot about Wesleyan and Brown, but I remember a Swarthmore professor’s saying that Swarthmore is much like Wesleyan in that students at both places want to use their education to effect positive change, but that Wesleyan has more weed. A friend of mine, who is certainly intellectual and who cares about learning, goes to Brown, and he absolutely loves it. And based on what I know about him, he probably wouldn’t like Swarthmore that much because of the location and the small size.</p>
<p>Most students here by far are liberal, but you’ll be fine being moderate.</p>
<p>monydad: Yes, Apostol’s Calculus is being used in Professor Grinstead’s honors Multivariable Calculus class. I think most people are dying in that class–the textbook mentions math concepts that most people at Swarthmore don’t learn about until real analysis. Not every professor uses the same text; last year Professor Hunter used another textbook for the same class, but it is also used at MIT.</p>
<p>Makes more sense that the honors sections are the ones doing that, that’s the way it is at my alma mater Cornell. But the point would be this level is available at Swarthmore at least for those who want it. You would have to check if Wesleyan offered this level, they don’t all do it, I don’t think D1s LAC did, for one.(or at least the same level texts weren’t in the bookstore there). The physics texts at Brown were identical to the ones I used at Cornell. I would assume they too have honors sections of these classes.</p>
<p>The theme was does it offer “top notch academics”, and in these fields that’s about as high-level as it gets, at intro level. As for whether that’s “better” or not is another matter, as you said people die in some of these classes.</p>
<p>And that’s not to say they are equally top notch in the advanced years, one would have to look into the breadth and depth of advanced level courses they offer in each field, the frequency those courses are offered, and the number of sections available, to minimize conflicts so that you have the best chance of actually being able to take the advanced level courses when offered. It’s hard to call a program that offers comparatively few courses, comparatively few times, “top notch”, truly, even if the (comparatively few) courses they do offer are challenging and the students are good. A “top notch” program in a particular should have a “top notch” likelihood of meeting your intellectual needs and interests as they develop, which requires them to offer many upper level courses. IMO.</p>
<p>As a practical matter at Swarthmore, you pick your main courses for junior and senior year when you submit your plan for your major(s) and minor(s) at the end of the sophmore year and write your sophmore paper with your faculty advisor. You already know what courses will be offered for the next two years. The challenge is not finding 16 more courses, but cutting down to just 16 courses to take. And, for saavy students, the decisions are really about which professors to take more than which courses. You are required to take 20 courses outside your major, so that puts a limit of 12 courses in your major (for an average load of 32 courses), so it’s not like you can take two electives every semester.</p>
<p>In most majors, it would be folly to offer every course every year. There wouldn’t be enough students to fill the courses and it’s not a case where juniors and seniors are getting shut out of courses.</p>
<p>So, putting the electives on a two-year rotation doubles the number of options for the students and keeps the faculty teaching them from going stir-crazy teaching the same course year after year after year. </p>
<p>The total number of couse sections available in a given semester is determined by the ratio of teaching faculty to students. For a given ratio, the only way to offer more elective courses in a semester is to increase the class sizes for a number of other courses. It’s not like big universities with a lot of electives have more teaching faculty for every ten students. There’s no free lunch here.</p>
<p>There are occasional students who will run out of courses at a school like Swarthmore. For example, if you’ve already taken four or more semesters of college math in high school, then you will probably need access to grad school courses as a math major. You might be able to do that at Swarthmore with the honors seminars (which are really chef’s choice topics each year) and directed reading courses (one on one with a prof). Or, in your meetings with the faculty while college hunting (as anyone in that situation should be doing), they might tell you you need to go to a larger university. That’s a pretty atypical situation, but it happens – sometimes in math, sometimes in languages. For the most part, very few students graduate from Swarthmore feeling like they haven’t been adequately challenged.</p>
<p>Anyone who took Apostol calculus, or Kleppner & Kolenkow Mechanics, in yr 1 would be a likely candidate to be wanting to take many upper level courses throughout the last two years of their undergraduate career, IMO.</p>
[Emma</a> Watson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“