Swarthmore College, USA

Consistently ranked among America’s top three liberal arts colleges, Swarthmore is one of the few in the us to also offer undergrad engineering education

Sited on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Swarthmore College has for several decades been consistently ranked among America’s top three liberal arts colleges. In its 2006 ranking of America’s colleges, U.S. News & World Report rated Swarthmore the #3 liberal arts college in the US, behind Williams and Amherst. This private co-ed college which is regularly included among the Little Ivies, boasts a student-teacher ratio of 8:1 and offers over 50 study programmes to its 1,479 undergraduate students. With an endowment corpus of $1.69 billion (Rs.___ crore), Swarthmore is one of the few liberal arts colleges in the US to offer undergrad education in engineering in addition to its bachelor’s programme. 

Promoted in 1864 by the Religious Society of Friends (aka the Quakers) on a leafy green 357-acre campus, Swarthmore is particularly noted for its Oxford tutorials-style honours programme, which permits students to sign up for intensive double-credit seminars from their junior year to write extensive honours theses. Swarthmore is also a member of the Tri-College Consortium (TriCo) with the neighbouring Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges, which allows students from the triumvirate to cross-register for courses of the others. Moreover TriCo member colleges are additionally affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and students are free to register for courses there as well. Unsurprisingly, Swarthmore’s eminent alumni include eight MacArthur Foundation fellows and four Nobel Prize winners.

Philadelphia. The second largest city on the east coast, Philadelphia (pop. 5.8 million) also boasts the second largest number of colleges (over 50) in the US. A major cultural centre, its citizens have played a pivotal role in American history. The city’s oldest quarters are rich with monuments and streets from the era of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia is also home to more than 100 significant museums and historical sites.

But the favourite hangouts of Philadelphia’s college students are the city’s downtown restaurants, coffee shops, art galleries, cinemas and shopping areas. A large performing arts community offers not only the Philadelphia Orchestra but also the opera, ballet, jazz, contemporary and classical music and theatre. From the Swarthmore campus, Philadelphia is less than half hour by train.

The city’s climate tends to be cold from November to April. Summers are hot and humid and autumn and spring temperatures are moderate.

Campus facilities. Located 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Swarthmore’s idyllic, 357-acre campus is a designated arboretum, replete with rolling lawns, creek, wooded hills, and hiking trails. From its state-of-the-art science complex to its new, environment friendly halls of residence, Swarthmore’s buildings and architecture blend seamlessly with its green campus.

The college’s main bibliotheques are the McCabe, the Cornell Library of Science and Engineering, and the Underhill Music Library. Specialised collections include black studies of the Black Cultural Center, Jewish classical texts (Beit Midrash), the Friends Historical Library, the Peace Collection, and a Rare Books Room. These libraries together house over 750,000 print volumes, extensive collections of film and music, and an expanding digital library of over 10,000 online journal subscriptions, reference materials, e-books, and other scholarly databases.

Sports facilities include 12 outdoor and six indoor tennis courts; six full-length indoor basketball courts; ten outdoor playing fields; an Athletic Events Center with seating for 1,800; an indoor field house; an outdoor eight-lane, 400-metre Versaturf track; indoor swimming pool with electronic timing systems; five squash courts with spectator galleries; a New Fitness Center with aerobic and Med-X equipment; and a professionally staffed sports medicine facility.

Moreover there are more than 100 chartered clubs and organisations at Swarthmore, in addition to many other unchartered groups.

Admission. Swarthmore’s admission process is very competitive and selective. Of the 4,850 worldwide who applied for admission in 2006, only 897 were admitted. Successful completion of Plus Two or equivalent is the minimum eligibility criterion for admission into the college’s undergrad programmes. Other application requirements include: an admission application, a student essay, high school academic records, extra-curricular activities profile, recommendations, official transcripts of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT I and II tests) and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and an application fee of $60 (Rs.2,760).

Admission applications must reach by January 2, 2007 for the academic year beginning September. For further information contact Swarthmore College, Admissions Office, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081. Ph: 610 328 8300; Fax: 610 328 8580; e-mail: [email protected]; website: www.swarthmore.edu.

Accommodation. Most students live on campus in one of the 14 halls of residence that range from small (eight students) to large (214) and offer a variety of housing options. Students dine together in a common central dining hall. Moreover coffee and snack bars are open until late and serve everything from burgers to lattes and sushi.

Degree programmes. Swarthmore offers more than 600 degree programmes including 50 study courses; an exceptional honours programme; individual special majors; a programme in education leading to Pennsylvania secondary school certification; and undergraduate research opportunities in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and engineering (see box). 

Summiya Yasmeen