what makes swarthmore special

interesteddad
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:56:37 +0000

mike:

To amplify on Swarthmore’s Honors program. The time to make up your mind is when you are already a sophmore and have already seen seniors on your hall go thru the honors preparations. Some Swatties want to do Honors; others don’t. There are a lot of pluses and minuses that get hard to discuss without the context of a specific department. As an overall observation, the Honors program was started in the 1920’s by President Frank Adylotte, who actually agreed to come to Swarthmore specifically to experiment with a new Honors Program. He was the US agent for the Rhodes Scholarship committee and wanted to model the program after the tutorials at Oxford. The Honors Program is the reason Swarthmore is an academic powerhouse. Not only did Honors examiners visit Swarthmore and take good impressions (and future PhD students) home, but the whole small seminar approach of students and faculty learning together spread throughout the entire school in both honors and non-honors classes. It became the culture of the place.



As for social responsibility, I think you will find that Swatties have an above average interest in current affairs, both in the US and around the globe. There are a LOT of Swattie alums in Washington DC. There are a lot working for various NGO agencies – the guess the most famous right now being the head of the World Bank. You see it on campus with activities like War New Radio (weekly syndicated radio and podcasts on Iraq – kind of a student NPR type thing) and the Darfur Genocide Intervention Fund (started by several Swarthmore students, now in Washington). The school attracts a lot of kids who are interested in stuff like that.