<p>kx,
my D is not currently at Bryn Mawr. Like you she’s a HS junior, thinking about applying. Penn is about 20 minutes by train from either Bryn Mawr or Haverford, plus a 5-10 min walk depending on exactly where you’re going on the Penn campus. The transport seems a little easier than Swat, actually. Cross-registration at Penn is “technically difficult,” as we understand it, only in the sense that you need to show the courses are not offered in the BiCo; then there’s some paperwork to get through, but once you’ve done it, Bryn Mawr even pays for your train tickets. The schedule may or may not work for Portuguese and Hindi; we really don’t know. But we did talk to several Haverford and Bryn Mawr students who took course at Penn, who all said it’s doable. These sorts of opportunities are not available at the Claremont colleges. If you want to study Portuguese and/or Hindi, you’re looking at maybe a couple of dozen leading research universities. If you want to combine those things with a LAC experience, you’re looking at the Quaker Consortium; Barnard-Columbia; or the Five Colleges (Amherst-Smith-Mt Holyoke-Hampshire-UMass Amherst). For a lot of reasons, the Quaker Consortium at present seems like the best fit for my D, subject to change before the apps go in, of course. Opportunities may vary in other fields.</p>