Swarthmore is a highly-respected small liberal arts college Quaker values of scholarship, community, connection, and exploration. The college preserves a low student-to-faculty ratio of 8:1, prioritizes small class sizes, and a large percentage of Swarthmore graduates go on to pursue a doctoral degree. Campus is only 11 miles from Philadelphia, and is globally recognized as . The acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was only overall. Importantly, though, the Early Decision acceptance rate was 18%, emphasizing the importance of applying early if Swarthmore is your top choice.
Whether you apply early or regular, submitting SAT or ACT scores . They emphasize that not submitting scores will not hurt your chances of admission, but we know from experience that strong scores underline an otherwise impressive application. High scores won’t get you into Swarthmore, to be clear, but they can help. Ultimately, of admitted and enrolled first years submit scores. We coach our students to aim for an ACT of at least 34 or an SAT of 1530+.
As you prepare your application to Swarthmore, it’s important to start by in what makes Swarthmore distinctive as a small liberal arts college. Once you have a sense of the community and academic offerings, it’s time to dive into the supplement. In this post, we’re going to break down the Swarthmore supplement to help guide you towards your strongest possible application.
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The Swarthmore supplement includes two required questions that invite you to share who you are beyond your transcript. We love this, so let’s dig in.
SUPPLEMENT #1
Swarthmore College maintains an ongoing commitment of building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive residential community dedicated to rigorous intellectual inquiry. All who engage in our community are empowered through the open exchange of ideas guided by equity and social responsibility to thrive and contribute as bridge builders within global communities. Our identities and perspectives are supported and developed by our immediate contexts and lived experiences – in our neighborhoods, families, classrooms, communities of faith, and more.
What aspects of your self-identity or personal background are most significant to you? Reflecting on the elements of your home, school, or other communities that have shaped your life, explain how you have grown in your ability to navigate differences when engaging with others, or demonstrated your ability to collaborate in communities other than your own.
This is an amazing prompt — if you play it right. Some students read this prompt and immediately jump to either trying to come up with some way that they have experienced hardship or set-backs. Others create long lists of things that are ‘unique’ about them that they will try to pack into a small space. Neither of these are good approaches to this prompt. This is what we tell our students to do instead.
We work with our students to craft a compelling supplement centered on a single story that highlights a piece of who they are that is distinctive, but also something that they have taken control of. Writing about things that have happened to you in life is not compelling. Writing about how you have happened to life is much more compelling. How, then, have you been an active player in shaping or creating your reality?
This doesn’t have to be something huge, and is often even better if it is something focused and small. If you moved a lot growing up and want to focus on that, for example, you should start this supplement not by listing out all the moves but instead focusing on finding your locker in a new school for the eighth time. Most of this supplement would then dig into how these experiences have shaped your ability to build friendships and find community.
Or you could write about making a culturally significant treat with your grandmother, and use it as a way to tell a story about connection, coming together, and learning to make life delicious even when it isn’t easy.
As you brainstorm what small story within your life experiences you should focus on, remember that this is not a hardship contest. Sometimes it makes sense to write about a challenge, and sometimes it doesn’t. Do not, however, try to stand out for how much you have faced. There will always be an applicant who has had a harder start to life than you, so you need to stand out for who you are not simply what has happened in your life.
SUPPLEMENT #2
Swarthmore’s community of learners inspire one another through their collaborative and flexible approach to learning. Swarthmore students are comfortable with intellectual experimentation and connection of ideas across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and interdisciplinary studies through a liberal arts education.
Tell us about a topic that has fascinated you recently – either inside or outside of the classroom. What made you curious about this? Has this topic connected across other areas of your interests? How has this experience shaped you and what encourages you to keep exploring?
This is our favorite kind of prompt. Swarthmore is inviting you to be, well, you. In this supplement, you get to nerd out about something that you care about deeply. We advise our students to focus this supplement on a topic related to what you want to study at Swarthmore, but take it outside of the classroom.
For example, if you want to study engineering, the most popular course of study at Swarthmore, you could focus on something engineering-centric outside of school like a challenge at a robotics competition, a new bridge you watched go up in your town, or even where engineering and another interest intersect. If you are a bike nerd, you’ve definitely seen ways that biking and engineering are connected. You can write a supplement, then, that takes the reader on a bike with you or into your make-shift workshop.
The point is, really, to have fun with this. The reader should feel your enthusiasm and excitement. They should also see you envisioning your future. Where do you want to take this next? Take them on the journey with you.
The Swarthmore supplement offers lots of opportunity to share who you are with the admissions team — not simply what you’ve accomplished so far. To get into Swarthmore, you need to be more than numbers that fit on paper. You need to jump off the page. We can help make that happen.
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