Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College Introduction

When I first came to Swarthmore, a lot of little things around the campus struck me as very intellectual. Phrases like “Use well thy freedom” and “To thine own self be true” were carved into the walls of its buildings. Every tree, shrub, and flower on the campus was labeled—in Latin. And best of all, there were dozens of fantastic places on campus to sit alone and read, the grandest of which was the amphitheater, with its grassy terraces and canopy of ancient trees.

But even though I basically had the right idea about Swarthmore—that it was, indeed, very intellectual—I hadn’t a clue what that meant, or what four years at a place like that might mean. What I didn’t get yet was this: Being genuinely committed to learning isn’t about sitting alone under a tree absorbing the wisdom of the masters. It isn’t about sitting at all. It’s much more than that. Swarthmore, for me, was about arguing passionately, questioning constantly, pushing my limits, failing, and, eventually, succeeding. And it happened among the students themselves as much as between the students and the professors—in the dorms, on the playing fields, and in late-night meetings of virtually every imaginable activity, Swatties teach each other, and they pull each other through.

Founded by Quakers in 1864, Swarthmore College is a diverse community of some 1,500 students and 165 professors in southeastern Pennsylvania. Despite being an easy twenty-minute commuter-rail ride from Philadelphia, the campus itself is a lushly suburban, 357-acre arboretum. And even though it might look like a country club, its clientele isn’t quite the country club set—students from all fifty states, more than forty foreign countries, and an exceptionally broad range of backgrounds call this green haven home. They also call it, affectionately, “Swat.”

Swat is small by design. When you sign on as a Swattie, you commit to four years of what might be called, for better or for worse, intimacy. On the bright side, classes are usually marvelously small. With a student:faculty ratio of eight to one, everyone can speak in class and everyone can claim a sizable hunk of the professor’s attention. On the slightly dimmer side, everyone at Swat seems to know everything about everybody else. Questions like, “Hey, did you hear that thing about Dave?” are usually answered in the affirmative.

Swat does liberal arts like no one else does liberal arts. This is due, in part, to the exceptional range of courses, majors, and concentrations that are available, from Interpretation Theory to Psychobiology. While majors like English and biology seem to be perennial favorites, it’s never unusual to see students double-majoring in physics and philosophy, or creating their own majors. In addition, unlike most other liberal arts colleges, Swat has a very highly regarded engineering program.

As you might have heard, Swat is tough. The unbridled pursuit of knowledge seems to be, in fact, its primary purpose for existence. The two main libraries on campus probably get more foot traffic per day than those of most schools twice its size. Professors are very accommodating; students collaborate rather than compete, which takes the edge off stress. Raising the stress factor, around thirty-three percent of all Swatties elect to undergo the unique External Examination Program, taking tiny, double-credit seminars for their last two years, and facing ultimate evaluation at the end of their senior years by experts from other universities.

Yet, as much as Swatties lament the amount of work they have to do, it’s tolerable; virtually everyone makes it through just fine. Despite what some jaded seniors might tell you when you first arrive, you don’t have to spend every weekend behind the bars of McCage (proper name: McCabe Library). But there is no denying that being a student at Swarthmore is an intense experience. The intensity spills out of the classroom and into the hallways after class, into political debates in dormitory lounges, into numerous campus activities and activist organizations, and into energetic athletic rivalries. And as far as interests go, there seems to be something for everyone (not to mention someone for everyone, considering that nearly one in five Swatties eventually marries another Swattie).

If students who come to Swarthmore have anything in common, it’s that they want to be in the middle of things academically. They have intentionally avoided the anonymity of large universities because they want to know each other, and their professors, very well. It becomes clear over the course of four years that this is a school where everyone has an opinion on everything. During the course of four years, you will develop an opinion on everything, too. At Swarthmore, you cannot hide. You also cannot ever be lost.

As with most everything else in life, what you get out of Swarthmore depends a lot on what you put into it. Intimate, liberal, and intense in every way, Swarthmore requires of its students a very personal, four-year investment of time, creative energy, and, above all, self. In return for this investment, Swatties get a diploma, a set of friends for life, an acute understanding of themselves and their fields of study, and a profound sense of accomplishment at having done it all. That’s the deal.

That said, it is perhaps just as important to understand what you won’t get at Swat. Even though Swat was recently number one on U.S. News & World Report’s list of liberal arts colleges, a Swarthmore degree won’t command the kind of immediate respect from the general public that a degree from a big Ivy League school will. If you choose Swarthmore, you won’t always feel confident, and you won’t leave college with exclusively sunny memories of carefree days and wild parties. And no matter how much Swatties try to explain their experience to friends and colleagues, some people out there will never appreciate what a challenge this little Pennsylvania college can be. In general, if you want to get the greatest acclaim for the least possible pain, you might want to avoid Swat. Similarly, if you don’t really enjoy losing yourself in your reading, your writing, or your calculations, Swarthmore isn’t the place for you.

But despite what you hear from guidebooks like this one, there’s a lot more than just dry studying going on on this campus. Beyond the memories of papers, exams, and stress, Swat alumni treasure the memories of certain little ceremonies and traditions, some of which are so much a part of everyday Swat that they go unappreciated until after graduation. For instance, at midnight the night before finals begin every semester, all 1,479 people on campus lean out their dorm windows and join the primal scream. Every April Fool’s Day, a set of students (often the engineers) puts together a programmatic plan of pranks that affect—and amuse—the whole campus. At the end of every semester, professors invite all of the students in their seminars to their houses for homemade seminar dinners. And every year on graduation day, the seniors pick roses from the Arboretum’s prized rose garden and pin them onto their graduation gowns.

When it’s all said and done, Swarthmore remains highly admirable year after year primarily because of the special batch of young people it attracts. Energetic, diverse, imaginative, and always inquisitive, the students of this little college consistently teach each other—and often their professors—a lot about both books and life.

When things got tough academically, and they did get tough, my father liked to remind me why I had chosen Swarthmore in the first place. I wanted, for the first time in my life, to be average. I wanted to be around people who performed better than I did, people from whom I could learn. I wouldn’t recommend Swarthmore to everyone, but for those made of Swattie material, it’s right, and it feels like coming home.

Swarthmore College Academics

If you’re really serious about applying to Swarthmore, you probably turned to this section first—after all, this is what it’s all about. Swatties think; therefore they are. They elect to spend their college years at a school that has a long-standing, well-deserved reputation for being academically grueling, and most of them love it. Well, perhaps more accurately, most of them have a love/hate relationship with it.

Luckily, there are enough things to study that most students can find something they really want to devote hours to. The curriculum is disproportionately large—more like what you’d see at a school with 2,000 or 2,200 enrollment. Swat offers B.A. degrees in the more than two dozen fields in the arts and sciences and a B.S. degree in engineering, just about six percent of the student body pursues (usually a very bonded and very clever group, the engineers posed on stage at graduation a few years ago with a large sign that read, “Now our B.S. is official.”) In addition, students can add one of almost fifty minors onto their majors, with themes like public policy, women’s studies, peace and conflict studies, and black studies. If none of the above appeal to them, they may also work with faculty members to create their own interdisciplinary special majors. The most populated departments on campus seem to be English Literature, Political Science, Economics, History, Mathematics, and Biology. Almost half of all students choose to escape Swat altogether for at least a semester, either studying abroad in the country of their choice or participating in a domestic exchange.

Of course, students are required to try a little of everything first. In addition to taking at least twenty classes outside their majors, Swatties have to take at least three courses in each of the three divisions—humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Three of these classes must be W(writing) courses or seminars, and those three must include work in at least two divisions. Students are also required to complete a Natural Science and/or Engineering practicum/lab course. Before graduation, Swatties also have to pass a swimming test (we’re not kidding), and complete phys ed classes.

Class Size and Professors

While some first-year classes can have thirty students or so, most classes and labs have fifteen or fewer. Due in part to the quality of the students and in part to the efforts of the professors, the classroom experience is both challenging and familiar. A majority of classes are quite small, discussion- and question-oriented, and heavy on reading and writing. Swatties pass a common milestone the first time they discover that they have to read not just particular sections from a book, but the entire book, before the next class. In addition, professors assign frequent papers, with which students often find competent help from Swarthmore’s Student Writing Associate Program, the largest of its kind at comparable liberal arts schools.

Academics at Swat are very personal, in part because of the extraordinary way students and professors relate. Professors choose to teach at Swarthmore because they are more interested in their students than in potential research opportunities at a larger university. Over the course of my four years at Swat, I formed genuine and lasting friendships with many of my professors. Because they really have respect for their students, discussions with them often seem more like an interchange of ideas between equals than a lecture from someone who knows to someone who doesn’t. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve found that Swarthmore professors look out for their former students more than I could have possibly anticipated. They invest a lot in them and want to see them do well. They honestly see maintaining these connections with students as one of the great joys of their jobs. That’s part of what makes my Swarthmore education the most valuable experience I’ve ever had.

External Examination Program

About one-third of students choose to spend the last two years at Swat in the External Examination Program, a plan of study unique to Swarthmore that’s colloquially called “honors.” Instead of regular classes, honors students take half their courses as double-credit seminars (and often write double-credit theses and create their own double-credit class combinations), usually with fewer than eight students per seminar. Sometimes held in special seminar rooms and sometimes in professors’ living rooms, seminars meet once a week for several hours, focusing discussion on papers written by the seminar participants. Between weekly meetings, students are usually assigned upwards of 500 pages of reading and are encouraged to explore all of the other literature on the special shelves in the library reserved for their seminars. After two years of this, the program culminates in one very manic, anxious week when professors from other universities administer both oral and written tests to honors students. Although honors students do receive grades from their professors every semester, the final level of honors they graduate with (highest honors, high honors, honors, or none) is determined entirely by these outside examiners.

The honors program has its pros and cons. As an introduction to the kind of writing and thinking students will need to do in graduate school, it’s second to none. Students develop a kind of intellectual independence through the program that’s hard to come by elsewhere, and the program is well known and respected among graduate schools. Because seminars are so uniquely student-led, seminar quality depends less on the professors and more on the quality of the students who choose to take them. Plus, the final week of exams is nerve-racking. Emphasizing depth over breadth, the program offers students the absolutely unique educational experience of sitting in a professor’s living room with one another for five hours every week, eventually arguing their way to their own personal truths.

Swarthmore College Admissions

There’s a rumor afloat that the hardest thing about some prestigious schools is just getting in—the four years thereafter, presumably, are a breeze. Though few graduates would argue that this is the case at Swat, the competition for admission may still seem daunting to potential applicants. One recent freshman class’s average SAT verbal and math scores were both around 700, and ninety-five percent of them were in the top fifth of their high school class. But it’s hardly a lost cause; not as many people out there have heard of Swat as have heard of the big Ivies, so year after year, Swat accepts about twenty percent of those who give application a try.

The secret to admission is being yourself, and being it in excruciating detail. The admissions officers aren’t just number crunchers. They ask for the usual stuff, of course, like an essay, recommendations, transcript, and SAT and SAT Subject Tests. But beyond that, they look for students with remarkable talent, creativity, passion, or motivation. You may impress them if you’re a student council president or a valedictorian, but you may impress them a lot more if you taught yourself Greek or started a community organization or took college physics for fun while still in high school. Or, they may see something in you that you don’t even see quite yet— a significant proportion of Swatties spend their first year wondering why exactly they were admitted to this assembly of minds at all.

If you’re considering a four-year immersion in Swat, you may want to test the waters for a couple of days first. The Admissions Office encourages applicants to visit the campus, sit for an interview, observe classes, and maybe most importantly, stay the night in a dorm with real, live Swatties to see what the place is all about. Prospective students, dubbed warmly “prospies,” regularly make their way to parties, club meetings, and (of course) the cafeteria alongside their Swattie hosts. If you can’t visit campus, you might want to schedule an interview with an alumnus or alumna who lives near you. In general, the Admissions Office wants applicants to find out as much about Swarthmore as Swarthmore wants to find out about them.

When I was considering Swarthmore in my senior year of high school, I stopped by Swat’s table at a local college fair. I approached reluctantly, expecting to be intimidated. When it became clear to the man from the Admissions Office that I didn’t really know what I was supposed to ask, he started asking me questions: what I wanted to study, what I liked to do outside class, and what I was looking for in a college. More at ease, I had a nice discussion with him and left feeling good about the school. I felt even better when, to my surprise a week later, I got a packet in the mail with more information about everything we had spoken about, and a handwritten personal note from him, thanking me for my interest.

Tucked in a little pocket of suburban Philadelphia, Swat is home to precious few students actually from Pennsylvania. Though the mid-Atlantic states are well represented, Swatties hail from every state in the union and from more than forty foreign countries. Many first-year roommates and hallmates find that they come from almost different worlds. Unlike at many other top private colleges, around sixty-five percent of the student body comes from public high schools. And, also unlike at many other top private colleges, approximately thirty-five percent of the students, not including foreign students, which are six percent of the student body, are nonwhite, due in part to the college’s extraordinary outreach efforts.

Decision Plans

Fully eighty-three percent of students accepted at Swat in a recent year applied in the regular admissions round, in which applications are due January 2. The remaining students applied through one of two available Early Decision plans: the fall plan, in which applications are due November 15 and decisions made by December 15, and the winter plan, in which they’re due January 2 and decisions are made by February 15. If Swat is indeed the one and only school that you want, it is generally in your favor to demonstrate it to the Admissions Office by applying early. Of course, these Early Decision plans are binding, so you need to be very sure about your decision. You are required to withdraw all of your other applications if you’re admitted to Swat and can afford to attend—it may be a strict policy, but it gives you the pleasure of sending Princeton and Harvard a few rejection letters of your own.

Swarthmore College Financial Aid

With an over $1 billion endowment and a commitment to completely need-blind admissions, Swarthmore’s not a bad choice for those whose finances aren’t quite as stellar as their SAT scores. As part of its commitment to diversity, Swat tries to attract bright students from all kinds of financial backgrounds, and retain them with rather generous aid. In fact, more than half of the student body—including many international students—receives some kind of financial aid, whether in the form of grants, loans, or work study. And the campus jobs students use to pay the bills aren’t that bad either; working as research associates with their professors, at the libraries, as tour guides, and as assistants in administrative and academic departments, students get pretty useful work experience along with much-needed cash.

The average financial aid award at Swat is $30,126—most of it in scholarships. To give you an idea of how far this aid goes, in 2006, tuition, fees, room, and board together totaled $43,532. The average amount parents of aided students are expected to pay is $13,281 (median is $11,960). The loan component of Swarthmore’s aid awards is intentionally low—an average of $2,332 each year—so that students will be free to make decisions about major and career without worry about debt repayment. Because the load burden is so low, a significant number of Swarthmore students are able to go on to careers in teach, research, social service, and the like.

In addition to regular aid, Swat offers two major scholarships: The McCabe Achievement Awards and Evans Scholarships are given every year to incoming students with superior leadership qualities. The Lang Opportunity Grants for Social Action (part of the $50 million Eugene Lang has donated to date) provide support for social service projects, for students with strong community service backgrounds to sophomores.

Swarthmore College Students

The first person to say, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans” must have been a Swattie. At Swarthmore, social life is what happens while you’re doing everyday things like checking your mail in Parrish at noon or gathering around the dinner table at Sharples in the evening, both of which you can expect to do upwards of a thousand times in four years. It also happens in dorms (in which ninety-five percent of all students live), in the midst of meetings of all kinds of organizations, at weekend parties, and at sports matches and practices. As a rule, socializing is both informal and intimate.

Even outside of classes, Swarthmore challenges its harried students’ convictions in every way possible. It’s not uncommon for a classroom discussion to spill over into an analogy-filled debate in the dining hall about topics as common as income taxes and as obscure as exactly how mimsy were the borogroves. Because Swat is such an academic institution, its whole atmosphere is born of the students’ shared need to learn and to teach.

Student Organizations

On this campus of some 1,480 people, there are just over 100 student organizations. As a point of comparison, Penn State University’s main campus has 30,000 undergrads and 400 student organizations. Of course, like everything at Swat, many of its organizations are pretty small. Vocal and instrumental music groups, student publications, and ethnic and gay/lesbian groups attract a loyal following, as do less traditional groups such as men’s and women’s rugby, the volunteer firefighters, Motherpuckers (ice hockey club), Swarthmore Warders of Imaginative Literature, Vertigo-go (improvisational comedy), and Ultimate Frisbee. Every fall, these and other campus organizations gather at the Activities Fair, where they set up their tables in a big circle and recruit new students. This happens, like most everything else at Swat, on Parrish lawn, or beach, as the locals like to call it. It gets its name in part because people tend to read, sleep, and sunbathe on it in the warmer months, and in part because it’s equipped with massive white Adirondack chairs in which to see and be seen.

In general, campus clubs and organizations thrive because they involve almost everyone. Aspiring professional musicians and actors obviously won’t be turned away, but most people who participate in these activities are aspiring doctors, economists, and writers who just happen to be amateur singers and actors.

Politics

When they’re not studying or playing, some Swatties are off trying to change the world. By any measure, Swarthmore is politically active. Environmental, human rights, and women’s groups write letters and organize boycotts while several volunteer groups travel to nearby Chester and Philadelphia to offer food and tutoring to those in need. Politically, the students (and faculty) are legendary for leaning to the left. In a case that amused the local press a few years ago, there was heated debate among the students over whether to raise an American flag over Parrish; some students said it represented values they didn’t share. Of course, some groups, like the Swarthmore Conservative Union, aim to change the world by first changing Swat. Through their organization, such prominent conservatives as William F. Buckley, Jr. and Phyllis Schlafly have made their way to campus on speaking tours.

Parties

Finally, Swatties let off steam every weekend at parties. As with on-campus lectures, performances, and other events, parties at Swat are almost always free of charge. Most parties are hosted by clubs or informal groups of friends. (There are two fraternities on campus, but they’re tiny, nonresidential, and nothing like Animal House.) As far as parties are concerned, the good news is that there are several interesting get-togethers each weekend, and the bad news is that they are usually at the same half dozen places with all the same people. During your first few years at Swat, you will probably enjoy these places and these people and everything will work out fine. Sometime around junior year, you and your friends may choose instead to spend your precious free time at off-campus parties and in coffee shops in Philly, a short ride away on the train. And, in case you wondered, there’s littlein the way of bar-hopping to do in the village of Swarthmore.

Swarthmore has been nicknamed “the Quaker matchbox,” but that’s not entirely accurate—even though the college maintains some Quaker philosophies and traditions, I’ve noticed few actual Quakers here, and even though some people make matches and go on to marry each other, there is very little casual dating. In general, I think Swatties would probably rather spend two hours talking about the business environment in Hungary with a friend from their economics seminar than head out to a fraternity for a few beers. That doesn’t mean we don’t have social lives; it just means our social lives are a little unusual at times.

Places to Explore

There are some interesting places to explore at Swat when you’re not in the library.

• The extensive Crum Woods, featuring Crumhenge, a large circle of stones that are there for no particular reason.
• The nineteenth-century Sproul Observatory, featured in the film Addicted to Love with Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan.
• The verdant Scott amphitheater, in which everyone eventually gets a diploma.
• The Arboretum’s prized rose garden outside Parrish.
• The “ruins garden” outside Kohlberg, built where the old Parrish Annex once stood.
• Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, via Swat’s on-campus train station.

Swarthmore College Athletics

More than twenty percent of students find time to compete on one of twenty-two varsity teams in the NCAA’s Division III. Needless to say, these aren’t nationallytelevised games, but many of the teams advance to regional and even national competitions. Just as impressive is the fact that almost a third of the campus competes in interscholastic play. The swimming, men’s and women’s tennis, field hockey, and men’s lacrosse have seen post-season play in recent years, and many other teams have been competitive. There are varsity teams, club teams (which compete with other colleges and clubs, but are student-run) and a whole host of intramural sports on campus. All students who don’t participate in inter-scholastic sports are required to spend two semesters taking such physical education classes as weight training, swimming, or dance.

Swarthmore College Alumni

Having made the transition to adulthood together in classrooms, dorm rooms, and Sharples dining hall, Swatties tend to grow in the same directions even many years after graduation. About a quarter of current alumni have chosen academic careers of some kind, be they as professors, researchers, teachers, or authors. Others land jobs in government, medicine, journalism, and business, often in offices and agencies alongside one another. Whatever their individual experiences may have been at Swat, most alumni expect that students coming out of Swarthmore are first-rate; a lot of Swatties get their first jobs (and even summer internships) from older Swatties. It may be a kind of nepotism, but it’s not a bad route to take.

Immediately after graduation, about twenty percent of grads go directly to graduate and professional schools. Among those who don’t go to graduate school right away, jobs in research, consulting, and teaching are popular. The college’s Career Services Office has extensive resources and coordinates several rounds of on-campus recruiting for seniors. Within five years, a stunning over half of Swatties are back at the books, whether at graduate school, law school, medical school, or business school. Clearly a cerebral bunch, alumni of Swarthmore include five Nobel Laureates, nineteen recipients of MacArthur genius grants, thirty-six members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and more Ph.D.s per capita than almost any other school in the country. Not bad for a group of 18,000.

Just as admirable is the fact that alumni all over the country regularly make their names and addresses available to other, especially young, alumni who may want a place to stay while traveling through. They’re a closely knit crowd, probably because there just aren’t that many intensely studious, liberal, somewhat neurotic people out there in the general public.

Every June, approximately 350 people join the ranks of Swarthmore alumni. A few leave intellectually exhausted, wondering whether they might not have fared better as bigger fish in smaller ponds. But despite being pushed to their limits, most Swatties are energized by the experience, and roll that energy into building promising careers.

Prominent Grads

• Michael Dukakis, Former Governor of Massachusetts and Presidential Candidate
• Eugene Lang, Founder of the I Have A Dream program
• Carl Levin, U.S. Senator
• James Michener, Author
• Alice Paul, Suffragist, Author of the Equal Rights Amendment
• Molly Yard, Former President of the National Organization for Women

Carnegie Foundation Classification

Baccalaureate Colleges — Arts & Sciences

General Characteristics

Highest offering	Bachelor's degree
Calendar System	Semester
Years of college work required	N/A
Variable Tuition

Special Learning Opportunities

Distance Learning
ROTC — Army / Navy / Air Force	— / /
Study Abroad
Weekend College
Teacher Certification