by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities in its annual rankings and ranks them in a variety of ways, including most diverse, best overall quality, best for non-traditional students, and much more.
Swarthmore College was awarded 460 badges in the 2024 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is general economics.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked Swarthmore as #46 out of 2,217 colleges and universities in the country on its 2024 Best Colleges list. This lands it a coveted spot in the top 5% of all colleges and universities in the country. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Swarthmore held the #53 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Swarthmore is also ranked #3 out of 109 schools in Pennsylvania.
Even if you have the best grades and high test scores, that may not be enough to get into Swarthmore since the school has one of the most selective in the country. Its acceptance rate is a mere 8%, so there's no shame if you don't get in. Be sure to apply to other schools just in case.
About 39% of students accepted to Swarthmore submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 710 and 770. Math scores were between 720 and 790.
The student to faculty ratio is often used to measure the number of teaching resources that a college or university offers its students. The national average for this metric is 15 to 1, but at Swarthmore it is much better at 8 to 1. That's good news for students who want to interact more on a personal level with their teachers.
Another measure that is often used to estimate how much access students will have to their professors is how many faculty members are full-time. The idea here is that part-time faculty tend to spend less time on campus, so they may not be as available to students as full-timers.
The full-time faculty percentage at Swarthmore College is 91%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Swarthmore College has a freshmen retention rate of 95%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At Swarthmore the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 86%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Swarthmore College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 1,437 full-time undergraduates at Swarthmore.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4,594 | $4,012 | $11,521 | $28,214 | $43,586 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Swarthmore, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
It's not uncommon for college students to take out loans to pay for school. In fact, almost 66% of students nationwide depend at least partially on loans. At Swarthmore, approximately 7% of students took out student loans averaging $9,904 a year. That adds up to $39,616 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at Swarthmore is 0.7%. This is significantly lower than the national default rate of 10.1%, which is a good sign that you'll be able to pay back your student loans.
Get more details about the location of Swarthmore College.
Contact details for Swarthmore are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 500 College Ave, Swarthmore, PA 19081 |
| Phone: | 610-328-8000 |
| Website: | www.swarthmore.edu/ |
| Facebook: | https://www.facebook.com/SwarthmoreCollege |
| Twitter: | https://twitter.com/swarthmore |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Economics | 60 | $56,029 |
| Computer Information Systems | 59 | $97,897 |
| General Biology | 42 | $34,425 |
| Mathematics | 36 | $59,964 |
| Political Science & Government | 23 | $43,119 |
| General Engineering | 23 | $68,963 |
| Peace Studies & Conflict Resolution | 22 | NA |
| Child Development & Psychology | 22 | NA |
| General English Literature | 17 | NA |
| Romance Languages | 13 | NA |
Online learning is becoming popular at even the oldest colleges and universities in the United States. Not only are online classes great for returning adults with busy schedules, they are also frequented by a growing number of traditional students.
In 2020-2021, 31 students took at least one online class at Swarthmore College. This is a decrease from the 1,437 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 31 | 0 |
| 2019-2020 | 1,437 | 1,011 |
| 2018-2019 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017-2018 | 0 | 0 |
| 2016-2017 | 0 | 0 |
If you’re considering Swarthmore College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Swarthmore? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.