Newsweek Ranks Swarthmore #1 for Activists

Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.

According to Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Swarthmore ranks first among schools for activists.  Newsweek explains how they calculated the scores:

To find the best 25 schools for activists we used four metrics: each college’s score for diversity and campus strictness from College Prowler (a higher campus strictness score indicates a less-strict campus culture, and takes into account administration leniency toward political activism); to measure the overall political knowledge and political culture of the student body we tallied the percent of total bachelor’s degrees awarded for 2009 in political science or government, with data from the National Center for Education Statistics; and to measure the opportunity for activism, we measure the number of registered organizations on campus as a percentage of the undergraduate population, with data from CollegeView. Each category was weighted equally.

Almost 10% of Swarthmore students are political science majors; there are 150 registered organizations on campus, and campus strictness and diversity earned A+ rankings. In the Newsweek/The Daily Beast college rankings, Swarthmore ranked #5 for international students,  #7 for brainiacs, #15 for most rigorous, #23 for return on investment,  and #24 for horniest.