@auntiek
We live in New York so we can tolerate but my D keeps complaining the weather here and that’s the reason she applied quite a few southern schools. I guess with winter break and study abroad she won’t feel the four years cold that much after all.
She’s not an active person and that’s why I wanted her to be at a warm place so she would even cosider going outside.
When you visit Sunday, I would at least drive through Bryn Mawr , Swathmore and Penn because she’ll have bus service and class availability to all those schools.
My 2 cents about Haverford. Small school, loved the honor code and the way students interacted with professors (know on a first name basis). We found more a friendly relationship between students and professor .
Our reason not to attend due to lousy financial aid (read none) was given. They also have UPenn relationship which is interesting (certain major only).
Duke - I already have my feelings known about that school so I won’t get into that. Emory no idea but I do hear its great school in south.
Good Luck!
Re: 21
Better yet – if you have time, take the train to Penn; see if you can take a bus or some other shuttle service to Swat (Swarthmore); and walk to Bryn Mawr. If I’m not mistaken, those are the most common modes of travel to the other schools in the consortium, so you have a chance to really see what it’s like to visit those schools the way a Haverford student most likely would.
(Regarding the walk to Bryn Mawr: I hear the space between the schools is gorgeous, so it’s probably a pleasant walk)
You can probably walk through Bryn Mawr, it’s very close. Haverford and Bryn Mawr students are pretty much mixed up - they can easily take courses, join clubs, eat meals at the other school. See if she can take the shuttle to Swarthmore.
Penn is a tad trickier - take the SEPTA train and walk from 30th Street station to 34th and Walnut, which is the start of Penn’s campus. Or drive.
Most students take the Blue Bus between Haverford and Bryn Mawr which runs constantly all day but it is walkable. You’ll see more students taking classes between these two colleges given the close proximity than taking classes at UPenn or Swarthmore, both of which are options but require more effort/time.
Also, be sure to drive along Lancaster Ave between the towns of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Ardmore to see all that is accessible to students in terms of shopping and dining either by foot or by bicycle. If you have free time and are into art, I recommend checking out the Barnes or the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Re: post #22, Haverford is need blind so not sure what that posters need was as determined by the school. It’s a moot point for the OP anyway since her daughter has acceptances in hand and they all seem like viable options financially.
I think it’s absolutely fair to scrutinize how students from each college on the list fair in the job market. This is doubly true for students with majors in humanities, as their “employability” in lucrative and/or prestigious career paths drops precipitously with the rank of the school (as a rule, at least). I have a friend who is still treading water, a few years after graduating from a top LAC. I am not saying that I know much of anything about Haverford’s placement of humanities majors, but I think comments about how she’ll get a great education at all schools on the list are misplaced given the specific concern stated in the original post.
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To # 25 @doschicos - I would not recommend to go to Haverford if we have to pay full ride or close to it.
Look Emory/Duke my 2 cents. Agree with #26 @worth2try
@LisaNCState I think the OP should pick between Duke and Haverford simply because they are so different. It makes no sense for him/her to attend Emory over Duke. Everything that Emory does well Duke does significantly better.
@worth2try What you’re describing is not unique to LACs but I have observed that my friends who graduated from top LACs (Middlebury, Bowdoin, Amherst etc.) are having a harder time than those who graduated from elite research universities (Yale, Duke, Chicago etc.)
I know that anecdotal evidence doesn’t count for much but we also see this reflected in the data on starting salaries, ROI and B-school placement.
Your daughter is interested in humanities? All 3 schools have excellent humanities departments.
I live nearby Philly and the first time I drove by Haverford, I almost missed it. I mistook it for a high school. If your daughter wants small, it doesn’t get much smaller than H’ford.
Duke is a much larger campus, and for some reason if she changes her mind, plenty of opportunities to choose other majors and interests.
Many of the top firms interviewing at Duke may not interview at Haverford. That could affect the jobs data.
If cost is comparable, and given how OP’s daughter seems to respond to Hford, it seems like a straight forward decision. H’ford is a gorgeous campus, with the Duck Pond, Nature trail, the library that looks like a chapel, Founder’s Hall. The pillars on Lancaster Ave that mark that entrance are easy to miss, but I don’t know many high schools – other than top boarding schools-- that could be confused with the Ford. Size of student population is not as small as it seems bc most BiCo students cross register on both campuses, so there is a bigger “student” population than just Hford students. Not to mention the expanded academic offerings bc the two schools coordinate their strengths and areas of specialty.
We get the Hford alumni magazine (I’m a BMC grad), and those students are doing impressive, wonderful things.
Congrats to the OP, great options!
For crying out loud! Haverford is a great LAC with a stellar reputation among people who know anything, probably better than Emory (which is very good), at least in the Northeast, and only a tad less impressive than Duke. The notion that going to Haverford would hurt you in the employment market is just ludicrous. While there’s plenty of overlap in the types of students at the three colleges, on average they appeal to very different students, especially Duke vs. Haverford. Duke has lots of engineers, and lots of people who are interested in high-pay careers like finance and consulting. It is fratty and sports-focused. Haverford is deeply Quaker. It doesn’t have frats, it barely has sports, and it has a much higher proportion of students looking for a career in public service or humanitarian work than Duke or Emory. (I’m sure, though, that it has students who want to be rich, too – just not quite so many of them!)
My best friend who went to Haverford is a very successful public interest lawyer who has represented poor people exclusively throughout his career (and makes a very good living at it). He is deeply loyal to Haverford – it completely changed his life to go there. (He was originally from a small town in Arkansas.) My kids’ friends who went to Haverford are doing things like music promotion and teaching at a charter school in the inner-city neighborhood where the person grew up. No one is living on his or her parents’ couch. They are not on Wall Street, and never wanted to be. But they have classmates who are.
@cattiger Based on your posts here, I’d suggest Haverford if D loves it during Sunday’s visit. Otherwise, Duke. Though Emory is a fine school, I’d go to Duke over Emory – especially since D does not seem overly enamored with the latter. Though Duke may have some aspects that D is not fond of (frats, large campus), I’m sure she would find her tribe at Duke and it’s an amazing school.
@mathprof63 You are absolutely right! Firms like McKinsey simply do not recruit at Haverford.
This is what comes up when you search for Haverford on their website:
http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/your-career/mckinsey-on-campus/other-schools
“While we do not have a formal recruiting presence at your campus, we always are excited to receive applications from talented students.”
In contrast, they have 5 pages dedicated to Duke (PhD, undergrad, law, business, medicine)
http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/your-career/mckinsey-on-campus/schools/ba/duke-university
Haverford is an open book on their post graduate placement:
https://www.haverford.edu/sites/default/files/Center/CCPA/Class-of-2014-Career-Plans.pdf
https://www.haverford.edu/sites/default/files/Center/CCPA/Class-of-2015-Career-Plans.pdf
Hate to be a smart#$@, but you aren’t the one going…
For what it’s worth, recruiting and interviewing is shared among the consortium, and Mckinsey does recruit at Bryn Mawr across the street.
Looked at the links you posted. No students at McKinsey, Bain or BCG.
None at Morgan Stanley, Apple, Facebook, Oliver Wyman, Deloitte, GE, Tesla, Microsoft, EY etc. etc.
One at Google and JP Morgan
So?? They aren’t the meaning of mankind. So the kids at Haverford have different opportunities. Please, enough with the unsophisticated fetishizing of certain industries / companies as uniformly desirable when they are only desirable to the people who care about them in the first place.