Swarthmore's fortes

interesteddad
Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:31:05 +0000

Calicollegegirl:

I’m pretty much useless on Vassar questions. My daughter visited Vassar and had it on her short list to consider had she not been accepted ED to Swarthmore; however, my sense in the final month or so before applications, was that Vassar was dropping down her list. But, to be honest, she had really not focused on ranking the schools on her list after Swarthmore. She thought all of them would be places she could be happy and there wasn’t much sense in picking favorites until she had acceptance letters in hand.

I didn’t visit Vassar with her and really don’t know enough about the school to offer much of an informed opinion. I know my daughter liked the campus. Just based on statistics, I don’t think I would pick Vassar over Swarthmore. The biggie is per student endowment ($246k per student versus $800k at Swarthmore), but the same can be said of Swarthmore versus most colleges. I do think that Vassar would be a top alternative if I liked Swarthmore, but didn’t get accepted. I am also sure that it has specific programs that are broader/deeper than the corresponding departments at Swarthmore – in part, due to its much larger size.

Quite a few students here on College Confidential have been accepted to both Swarthmore and Vassar over the last few years. My sense is that the overwhelming majority have chosen Swarthmore in that matchup. The one or two I can remember who chose Vassar were uncomfortable with Swarthmore’s reputation for being academically challenging. That’s a perfectly rational reason for choosing another school.

I think all prospective Swarthmore students should have, and probably do, have a heart-to-heart talk with themselves about that issue. In fact, the last thing my daughter and I talked about before she did her overnight was for her to really talk to students, sit in on a couple of classes, and think about her comfort level with the workload before applying ED.

My daughter has found Swarthmore to be challenging, but not impossibly difficult. Part of that is that she is pragmatic in her course selection – she and her faculty advisor (and upperclass students on her hall) have talked explicitly about balancing heavy reading courses with problem set courses, easier professors with harder professors, etc. Part of it is that she’s realistic in her expectations. Part of it is taking Prof. Burke’s honesty to heart (“Professors assign more than you can possibly read in any normal fashion. We know it, at least most of us do. You have to make strategic decisions about what to read and how to read it.”). From what she has described to me, she has learned how to figure out what she has to read, what she can skim, and what can slide when things get a little hairy.

Having said that, I’ve said many times that it wouldn’t make sense to go to Swarthmore unless working pretty hard and being challenged academically are things you are comfortable with. So, I have no beef whatsover with someone choosing not to go to Swarthmore because they have decided it’s just too much, academically. There are schools where it is easier to slide into the woodwork in class.