Swarthmore College Top Questions

Classes are very small, and all professors who I have had a class with know my name. Students usually spend a lot of time studying. I must admit that the education here is geared towards learning for its own sake, because not as much time is spent on real-life situations. The computer science departemnt is very small, but classes are still pretty hard.

Professors and students are so incredibly close here at Swarthmore. I've gone to a few professors' houses to cook and have class over dinner (Just like they said in the brochure!) They all know my name and it's not unusual for students to call professors by their first name. Some classes have even just 8 people. Good for discussion, bad for trying to pretend you did your reading. Discussion is a big part of Swarthmore classes, and it's great here because the classes are small enough so that you'll feel comfortable participating regularly. I've had some classes that were so amazing I would basically walk out the door and have my head explode with all the insight and information I gleaned from that one class. Professors here truly love the material they're teaching, even if it's Faulkner for the 80 billionth time, they literally get excited. One professor actually clapped his hands in glee once during discussion when a particularly salient point was made. The thing is, it's true, Swarthmore academics are really rigorous. I've definitely been in some dark places when finals or midterms collided together. Realize that you need to budget your time wisely or suffer the consequences. And at times, you're going to have to sacrifice your free time and extracurricular activities. And sometimes, bathing.

So far, I haven't really experienced anything that's felt like a "world class education." I took two semesters of Intro Bio, which were huge. The class is split up into labs, where the professor knows your name. Bio 1 was awful because my lab professor was a terrible teacher and also kind of mean-spirited, but I like Bio 2 much, much better. I've also taken Calculus and Stat, which were both typical math classes with limited professor-student interaction (although both professors knew everyone's name). I've taken two semesters of Spanish, which I loved. The languages here are really time-consuming because they meet every day, but so worth it because they really improve your study of the language. Last semester, I took a first year seminar, which was really good and probably my favorite class so far. It was called "Women and Popular Culture" and we studied novels and movies and other media designed for women. The Professor was amazing and I still talk to her to this day. Coming from a high school where I did minimum work for maximum grades, Swarthmore has really taken me down a few notches. I spend a lot of time studying, between 30 and 40 hours a week, aside from class time. Other students also study a lot, but I haven't encountered very many competitive people. Most people compete with themselves to do the best that they can, but usually people aren't concerned about how other students are doing. The education at Swarthmore can be geared toward getting a job. A lot of people, especially Econ majors and Poli Sci majors, and pre-meds, will go on to have great, lucrative jobs and Swarthmore will do whatever is necessary to get them to that point. I get the sense that most people go into some sort of graduate school after graduation to continue learning, but I don't really know that much about it.

The academics at Swarthmore are very good, but given the hype about them incoming freshman should not expect to have a life-changing intellectual experience their first semester. The truly excellent classes (honors seminars, other extremely small and intense classes) are limited to upperclassmen. Students should take a language class at some point as it can be a tremendous fun and is a nice change of pace from paper-writing.

all my professors know my name. my favorite class is a tie between fiction writing workshop because it allows me to explore a side of me that gets lost amongst all those premed courses, or it's religion in america because it allows me to learn about different cultures, which i find fascinating.

tough, tough, tough... there isnt a whole lot of time left in your schedule if you are trying to pull of decent grades

My professors know my name. My favorite class is analysis. My least favorite clas is mathematical methods in physics. Kyle Skolfield does not study al the time. And he is a swarthmore student. class aprtitipation is common. We have intellectual discussions but they are bad. And not ery serious or thought out. But they're fun i guess. We are not competitive except for me wanting to improvise better then soren larson. the most uniques class i have taken is reason power and happiness which is pretty much like what it sounds like. My major department is interesting subjectwise but has mad douches. I spend time with some professors ouside class but some are dead inside so i do not bother. Our requirements are ok. My educations is way pre-professional (said professions being that of a professor) but thet is atypical.

Let me share an anecdote from my first semester bio class. being an intro lecture class, much of the raw material is similar to what many of us saw in ap bio. on the first day of class, one of the lecturing profs took a few minutes to explain why a student ready to take the ap exam with ambitions and expectations of a 5 would fail our final. "In ap bio, you were taught to look at the left side of the elephant. you spent lectures learning all about this side of elephant and hours outside of class studying so that on the ap test, you could draw the left side and impress the graders. Well, in this class, we are going to show you the same left side of the elephant, but our test are going to ask you to explain the right side, the top, the bottom, the front, and the back of the elephant."

Classes here vary. Mainly, keep in mind the size of the school. I love the Bio department, everyone in there is great. But no one specializes in what I want to study. I'd love to do Honors, but I'd have to do honors in an area that one of the faculty is an expert in. And you really don't get much variation of expertise in such a small school.

Participation is a part of most grades here. I think that it is a great way for people to share their perspectives as well as other people to perhaps rethink their own. Profs are approachable and are very nice and enthusiastic about their subjects.

It's true that the classes are Swarthmore are generally very tough. There really is a lack of grade inflation; I've been supremely grateful for a B sometimes even after putting loads of work into the assignment. But the relationships with professors and the camaraderie (and lack of cut-throat competition) really makes things seem less bleak. The general enthusiasm of students drives the work forward, and makes things far less painful than they could be if everyone were just pushing for the best grade. It makes the rigorous atmosphere much more manageable when people are excited about the subjects. I really support the distribution requirement system, how everyone has to take three classes in each of the three disciplines. It's driven me to go outside biology and history and other pre-med courses; Contemporary Japanese Visual Culture was an amazingly fun and informative class taught by a fresh, excited, new professor. Sometimes classes draw small groups of students that are just in the class to pass out of the requirement and will run discussions so that they can control the difficulty of the class, but this is rare and usually professors can keep a lid on this sort of manipulation.

Professors know my name. In my biggest lecture class of about maybe about 100 kids, the teacher knew all of us by name by the second meeting. I don't know if she sat and studied names or something but that was pretty cool. Class participation is common--sometimes too common. Sometimes I want to hear the teacher talk, not some student's opinion. If I want to know his opinion, I'll ask him outside of class. That happens a lot and you hear people talking about academia outside of class all the time--in addition to the best tv show ever (Battlestar Galactica) and how to play with Pikachu in the new Super Smash Brothers Brawl. The education seems to be aimed at learning for the sake of learning, not for a job. Which is good because most people (I think) go off to earn graduate degrees.

Professors are generally quite good, though many on tenure are a bit absent minded and can be out of touch with current events and technology. Competition is pretty much under the radar, and some people get quite upset if you start comparing grades. Also, remember that a B is now a pretty decent grade for many subjects. A's in anything are coveted. Engineering is one of the tougher majors in Swat in terms of time commitment and high count of lab courses.

For the most part, all my professors have known my name. My favorite classes are usually dependent on who the professor is. Students tend to study a lot. If they're not studying, they're reading the impossible amount of reading that is assigned. Class participation is common and outside of class, Swarthmore students tend to talk about "intellectual" subjects. Students here aren't competitive with each other in terms of grades (no class rank), but seem to be competitive to do their personal best. I've spent time hanging with professors outside of class--going to field trips, watching a film for class, eating lunch, etc. Though I complain about it, I think that Swarthmore's academic requirements are pretty relaxed. The education at Swarthmore is definitely about learning for its own sake--we're a liberal arts school, we like to read.

academics in swat are soooooooooooo hard!

Heidi is the smartest girl i've ever met in my entire life. She makes me feel stupid sometimes.

So I'm a theater major, where all the professors are called by their first names. So I co-opted this practice into every other class. I got to know a new professor last term, all the while calling him "Dan" (Hey Dan, see you later Dan, what's up Dan, etc). Never once did it strike me odd that that's what I called him. Then someone called him Professor in front of me and I got really worried that I had been disrespectful. But I chalk it up as a quick orientation to the feeling of Swarthmore. Some professors give a distinctly "Professor so-and-so" air, but most are just people who have earned your respect. Chances are you'll earn theirs too. Is class participation common? Is there any class without class participation? Seriously? Swarthmore student have intellectual conversations outside of class. Yes they do. Everywhere. All day. In the middle of a party. Over dinner. On the lawn. At the coffee bars. In the hall outside your door at 4am. Intellectual conversations are a good half of the conversations that happen. And they're normal. And interesting. And engaging. They make Swarthmore Swarthmore.

Though I once had a professor who made it a point to notify us on the first day of class that he would NOT be bothering to learn all of our names, Swarthmore is generally a small, close-knit community where everybody knows your name, or at least what you look like (and everybody remembers the embarrassing thing you did at a Paces party last Saturday, as well). For a small school, a wide variety of classes are offered and studying is a prominent fact of life for many students. Class participation is imperative, especially in small seminars which may only have five or six students. Intellectual conversations outside of class are commonplace, though academic competition is nearly nonexistent. This is not a school where students are selfishly ripping pages out of the books in the library during finals week. Swarthmore is definitely geared towards the pursuit of knowledge (as opposed to the pursuit of a job) but I feel our career opportunities as Swarthmore graduates are plentiful, nonetheless. Swarthmore is also a good place to be for incoming freshmen as there is no specific "core curriculum," and many first year seminars are offered to allow freshmen the opportunity to experience the small class size that is normally offered to upperclassmen only at other academic institutions.

Except in big lectures (~100 students), where students easily blend into a crowd, professors usually know students' names. And since all professors have office hours, it really isn't hard for students to become acquainted with their professors. My favorite class is my Music Theory class. All of the students are taking it because they want to take it, and not because of some requirement. The music classes and major are particularly demanding at Swarthmore because of the great requirements of the department. However, the professors are so clearly passionate about what they teach that students never forget (despite enduring complaints about the workload) why they enrolled in the classes. Students are incredibly smart, driven, interested, and quite intense people.

Academics are excellent, especially if you are planning to be a professional intellectual. Students study like mad, and the professors willingly pile on more work than you can really handle. Personally I favored lecture-style classes (learning from professors), over the more-common discussion format (learning from classmates). Hardly anyone that I knew learned a useful trade at Swarthmore, but we definitely gained lots of knowledge. Knowledge can be just as handy in the real world if skillfully deployed. I only wish that there had been more information about the courses available to take at Bryn Mawr and Haverford that aren't available at Swarthmore (for example, archaelogy).