Here’s the gist: I had too much time on mapfrappe.com and decided to make a bunch of little maps so that YOU could have an idea of how large (or really not that large) the campus is. To give you that sense, I overlaid 1) Campus 2) the route between Swarthmore and Downtown Philly and 3) the route between Swarthmore and PHL International Airport over some world sites to give you a sense of scale.

Firstly, here’s Swarthmore campus outlined (above). It turns out that this outline was very polemic and involved arguments between my coworkers and me about what constituted “campus”. The weird jut on the south end is trying to take into account Mary Lyon Dormitory and whether or not that dorm is an “island” or whether it is part of mainland Swarthmore. Also note how the western side of campus is just green. That is the Crum Woods. Go walk in the woods, like, actually. The woods are gorgeous.

Here is an outline of Swarthmore’s campus overlaid over the Brooklyn Bridge to give you a sense of how large the campus is.

The distance between the absolute most southern dorm (ML) to the furthest academic building (Science Center) is slightly less than crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here, the campus is overlaid over the Ancient Acropolis in Athens.

But it’s smaller the Washington D.C.’s National Mall.

Campus is slightly larger than the lake in Central Park, New York.

And it’s about the size of the Old City of Jerusalem.

But it’s bigger than Vatican City.

Here is the train route that connects Swarthmore to Philadelphia (and passes by University City along the way). Estimated travel time: 25-30 minutes.

This is the distance between Swarthmore and downtown Philadelphia laid over the San Francisco Bay Area. That trip would be like going from Piedmont to downtown San Francisco (so like Rockridge to Civic Center if you are going on BART).

And here’s the same distance, this time laid over New York City (Battery Park to Flushing).

But perhaps you are from Boston.

Or maybe you live in Washington DC or the Virginia suburbs past West Falls Church.

If you are from out-of-state, this map is really important. This is the distance between Swarthmore College and Philadelphia International Airport (Not that you would want to leave us… EVER!) Estimated travel time: 15-20 minutes.

Downtown to eastern East L.A.? In L.A. time that means like 23423423.243 hours of traffic but it’s 15 minutes on the Philly metric system.

That distance can not even cover the distance from O’Hare Int’l Airport to Chicago city center.

This is my biggest qualm. You see this? From Lisbon, Portugal to Slovenia? That is the distance between Swarthmore and the nearest In-N-Out (there’s an In-N-Out in Dallas, Texas).

And to finish off, here’s Swarthmore overlaid over Australia (Swarthmore is in northern South Australia below the “s” in “Australia”, that’s not just a speck on your monitor).