| "There are few opportunities to meet guys in more natural, everyday situations."
That can be true, and it may be troubling to some students, as it was for me. I thought that being at a women's college, in some ways, _increased_ the importance and status of men. Bryn Mawr and Haverford together are over 75% female, so while the community is nominally coed, men are kind of rare and special. It was SUCH a big deal when an all-male a cappella group (for example) came to campus.
Anna Quindlen, a Barnard graduate, compared a women's college to learning to swim while holding on to the edge of the pool: "I didn't learn the arm movements until after I graduated, but by then I was one heck of a kicker." That's a pretty good distillation of my experience, too, except that I was sick of holding on to the edge and wanted to try jumping off the high dive. Kids just need to figure out before they enroll whether they will find the women's college cozy or stifling. |