Yale vs. Swat?

dadx3
Sat, 30 Mar 2013 07:30:39 +0000

You can look at this report to see where Swarthmore graduates have gone in their first year after graduating from college, arranged by major. http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/careerservices/Post-Graduation%20Plans%20by%20Major%202004-2012.pdf
You will see that many physics majors who go to grad school go to many of the top rated programs. Chemistry and Biology majors seem to get in to great programs, too. Math, not so much.

One of the differences between a great LAC like Swarthmore and a great research university like Yale, both real and perceived, is the opportunity for undergraduate research. At Swarthmore the professors do not have graduate students to work on their research. So for the experimental sciences, in particular, there are many opportunities for undergraduate research for essentially any student who wants to do research. But the research may not be as “cutting edge” as the research done at Yale. Of course at a research university, the best student opportunities for research are taken by the graduate students. How much and what kind of research is done by undergraduates at Yale? I don’t have first hand knowledge, so that is something you might want to investigate and compare with what you may be able to learn about Swarthmore.