Bryn Mawr v. Mt. Holyoke v. Smith

b_r_um
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:41:41 +0000

What are you interested in?

Bryn Mawr has the stronger programs in classics, philosophy, art history, archeology, urban planning, environmental studies, math and physics. We also have the larger pre-med program, the largest undergraduate robotics lab in the country and a school of social work.

Smith has stronger programs in theater, education, engineering, religion, music, fine arts, astronomy* and logic*. The programs marked with an asterix don’t exist at Bryn Mawr at all, though most of them (with the exception of logic and engineering) are taught at Haverford.

Bryn Mawr is closer to Haverford than Smith or Mount Holyoke are to any of the other colleges in the Five College Consortium. Haverford is only 5 minutes down the road and the academic exchange is almost seamless. We sign up for Haverford classes through Bryn Mawr’s online registration system, we get key-card access to their academic buildings, our Bryn Mawr student ID swipes us into their dining hall and we can even apply to live in their dorms!

Departments at Bryn Mawr and Haverford coordinate their course offerings. The two colleges together can offer a range of classes typically only found at much larger universities! For example, Haverford’s biology department focuses on molecular and cellular biology while Bryn Mawr covers the macro aspects of the subject (physiology, ecology, etc). From what I understand, Smith and Mount Holyoke do not coordinate their course offerings and end up duplicating a lot of courses this way (at the expense of offering fewer upper-level electives).

The University of Pennsylvania is a 45 minute commute, but there are trains into the city every 10-20 minutes and the college reimburses us for the train fares. Penn is popular for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level classes and classes that do not exist in the Bi-Co (e.g. film production, business, Hindu language).

We can also take classes at Swarthmore, but that’s a less popular option because the shuttle schedule is rather inconvenient.

Bryn Mawr also has a lot of money for students to conduct research or get unpaid internships during the summer. Funding is not guaranteed the way it is at Smith, but few students (mostly freshmen) have been denied funding in recent years and our funding rates are much higher: we get $3,600 to $5,000 in contrast to Smith’s $2,000. And unlike Smith students, we can get funding for multiple summers!

As for graduate schools, my science major friends at Bryn Mawr have gone on to Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Dartmouth, John Hopkins, UCLA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan at Ann Harbor and the University of Arizona. Note that this counts only students who have graduated in the past two years who I have known personally! Our science majors are also quite successful finding interesting summer placements. In the past two summers math majors have conducted research at Penn, Cornell, Michigan, Williams and James Madison, and have participated in math enrichment programs (for a pay!) at Princeton, George Washington University, the Park City Math Institute, the Mathematical Science Research Institute at Berkeley and the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Science Institute in Raleigh, NC.