Swarthmore is consistently rated as one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country. In its most recent ranking, U.S. News & World Report ranked Swarthmore as the number two liberal arts college, with an overall score of 98/100 in its annual "America's Best Colleges" issue. (Swarthmore ranked behind Williams College and was tied with Amherst).

The school is particularly noted for its External Examiners Honors program, which allows students to take intense, double-credit seminars from their junior year and start writing honors theses without any immediate examination. At the end of their senior year, the honors students take oral and written examinations conducted by outside experts. Unlike the vast majority of liberal arts colleges, the school has an engineering program , recognized by the US News and World Report as one of the top undergraduate engineering programs in the United States. Swarthmore is a member of the Tri-College consortium of liberal arts colleges, along with Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. The consortium as a whole is additionally affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.