Is William & Mary or Swarthmore better for undergraduate teaching?

The biggest practical tradeoff is scale and structure: Swarthmore is a small liberal arts college built almost entirely around undergraduate teaching, while William & Mary is a public university that still cares a lot about undergrads but operates on a larger, more varied model. If your top priorities are very small classes, close professor access, and a campus culture centered on teaching undergraduates, Swarthmore has the clearer edge. William & Mary also offers strong teaching, but the experience is less uniformly intimate because it has more students, more departments, and a broader university setup.

Swarthmore’s academic model is unusually focused on undergraduates. Nearly everything on campus is designed around bachelor’s students, so professors are teaching and mentoring undergrads as the core mission, not alongside large graduate programs. That usually translates into seminar-style classes earlier, more discussion-heavy coursework, and easier access to faculty for research, office hours, and advising.

William & Mary is also known for serious academics and engaged professors, and among public universities it has a strong reputation for undergraduate teaching. Classes are often smaller than at many other public schools, and students tend to describe faculty as accessible and invested. But because it is a public university, you are more likely to see a wider mix of class sizes, especially in intro courses, and the overall feel is a bit less consistently small-scale than at Swarthmore.

For the actual classroom experience, Swarthmore is usually the stronger answer. It is more intentionally built for the exact things you named: small classes, close faculty relationships, and a deeply undergraduate-centered academic environment. William & Mary is excellent and can absolutely deliver strong teaching, but if you are comparing only undergraduate teaching quality and intimacy of the learning environment, Swarthmore stands out more clearly.