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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Trying to pull it all together with the "profoundly gifted" student who is in at Penn and Princeton, if that poster is not a troll, I'm assuming that the "formal letter" referred to is a "likely letter" from Penn not related to athletics.  The written statement from the coach, which is not binding, would be indicating that the kid can play his sport at Penn as a walk on.  The potential choice of Swarthmore over the other options is too confusing for me to make sense of.  It's definitely not a place a serious athlete would pick over Princeton or Penn. [/quote]

Further, no "profoundly gifted" student would choose Swarthmore over Princeton. Penn? Meh[/quote]

My guess is that the very top SLACs are picked over Ivies, including Princeton, fairly often.  At the Swarthmore, Williiams, Amherst level, I assume that happens fairly often---and i can see the attraction of those schools with a couple thousand intense undergrads as the entire campus versus some big research university with five to ten times as many students.  [/quote]

Probably not as many as you think. Especially against HYPS. I'd think no more than a handful, if money wasn't a factor. 
[b]
Research opportunities are far better at Princeton than Swarthmore[/b]. No knock on Swarthmore as it's a fantastic school, but there's a reason Princeton is Princeton and Swarthmore is not. For anyone wanting the benefits of a school with a strong undergraduate focus but with the stellar research and faculty of a larger university you'd be really silly to turn down Princeton for Swarthmore. For the same reason someone wanting to play higher caliber (recruitment quality) sports in college would be silly to turn down either Penn or Swarthmore for Princeton.

Maybe your kid is the Swattie model and will fit in with Swarthmore perfectly and that calls to him over Princeton, but one does then wonder why he didn't apply ED to start with. Otherwise just be realistic about what Swarthmore can offer that Princeton doesn't. And, of course, let's see if Swarthmore does accept him because if he isn't an African American genius then there's no guarantees. Swarthmore may write him off as a lost cause, someone most likely to be accepted by an Ivy and this reject him to protect their yield. [/quote]

As a professor, I think that this is a false comparison. Swarthmore is solely focued on undergraduates, whereas at Princeton undergraduates compete with graduate students for faculty time. Also, the culture at Swarthmore is much more academic than Princeton. According to the NSF, a significantly higher percentage of Swarthmore students end up getting PhDs compared to Princeton. (Swarthmore with nearly 23% of alum eventually earning PhDs is #3 according to the NSF; Princeton falls just outside the top 10 at #11 with 14%.)  Swarthmore is well known among PhD programs as a top caliber feeder into doctoral programs. Princeton students do well, of course, but with the exception of a few majors (e.g., math) students don't choose Princeton because they're planning on getting PhDs. Students who do plan on competing a doctorate OTOH do choose Swarthmore--or Reed, Carleton. The best SLACs do a superior job of getting their students into doctoral programs. [/quote]

Meh.

I think there's a lot of self-selection going on here that distorts the picture. Having seen both the top LAC environment and a major Ivy school, the latter had many more research opportunities available, with bigger departments, much bigger libraries, and many more specialist niches available for research. More money for funding, as well. Comparing Princeton and Swarthmore also means comparing the faculty between the two schools and Princeton has many more big names and that means potential opportunities to study with and even research for a big name.

Princeton is not a huge school either. Swarthmore has about 1600 undergrad compared to 5400 at Princeton (and Princeton has a further 3,000 grad students). It may seem much bigger, but it really won't feel like that. I do think Swarthmore is a fabulous school. And no one is hurt going to one over the other. At the same time I'd be careful about so decisively setting my heart on a PhD and researching with professors when you haven't even entered college! And the PhD track is one which many students regret going down. The major advantage of going to a bigger school, besides more resources, is that you have more opportunities in majors, courses, and yes, meeting people. A LAC, due to their small sizes, is just going to be much more limited.

Besides, if this woman's son is the genius she claims he is with likely letters prior to admissions, he will be one of the top of his class at Princeton (or Penn or any other big school) and in front of the queue to study and research with big name Princeton professors, so I would actually argue with much greater resources available to him at a bigger school, he should be looking at Princeton if he wants to make the most of researching as an undergrad with ultimately a PhD in sight.[/quote]
Having had experiences at both Swarthmore, Chicago, and Princeton, I’d recommend Swarthmore for an unparalleled undergraduate experience and then a research university for graduate school. If you don’t plan on graduate school, I’d say, sure, go to a university. Smaller does not mean fewer opportunities—especially when you’re talking about schools like Swarthmore, Carleton, Williams, etc. On the contrary, smaller translates into greater accessibility to faculty, funds, clubs, etc. You can experience both a college and a university if you start off at a SLAC and then go onto a uni, but if you start off at at uni, you’ll never have the unique experience of a SLAC education.[/quote]

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