Quote:Swarthmore College
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Swarthmore College
Formal Seal of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, USA.svg
Motto Mind the Light[1][2]
Type Private
Established 1864
Affiliation Non-religious
Endowment $1.955 billion (2017)[3]
President Valerie Smith
Academic staff
208
Undergraduates 1,620 (Fall 2016)[4]
Location Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Campus Suburban, 425 acres (1.72 km2)
Colors Garnet and Gray

Athletics NCAA Division III-Centennial Conference
Nickname The Garnet
Mascot Phineas the Phoenix[5]
Website swarthmore.edu
Formal Logo of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, USA.svg
Swarthmore College (/ˈswɔːrθmɔːr/, locally [swɑθ-]) is a private liberal arts college located in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles (18 km) southwest of Philadelphia.[6] Founded in 1864, Swarthmore was one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States.[7] It was established to be a college "...under the care of Friends, at which an education may be obtained equal to that of the best institutions of learning in our country."[8] By 1906, Swarthmore dropped its religious affiliation, becoming officially non-sectarian.[9]

Swarthmore is a member of the Tri-College Consortium, a cooperative arrangement among Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford Colleges. In addition, the College is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania through the Quaker Consortium, allowing for students to cross-register for classes at all four institutions.[10] It offers more than 600 courses a year in over 40 courses of study including an engineering program in which at the completion of four years' work, students are granted a B.S. in Engineering.[11] Swarthmore has a variety of sporting teams with a total of 22 Division III Varsity Intercollegiate Sports Teams and competes in the Centennial Conference, a group of private colleges in Pennsylvania and Maryland.[12]

The college was ranked the best liberal arts college in the United States a total of six times by U.S. News and World Report,[13] and as of 2018, is currently ranked 3rd best liberal arts college in the country.[14]

Despite its small size, Swarthmore's alumni have gone on to make advances in their field. Graduates include 5 Nobel Prize winners (2nd highest number of Nobel Prize winners per graduate in the U.S.), 11 MacArthur Foundation fellows (second highest per graduate in the U.S.), 30 Rhodes Scholars, 27 Truman Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, 201 Fulbright Grantees, and hundreds of prominent figures in law, art, science, business, politics, and other fields. Swarthmore also counts 49 alumni as members of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, the fourth highest ratio per graduates in the U.S.