Haverford

bclintonk
Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:29:03 +0000

My D1 is a freshman there. Outstanding academics, one of the highest percentages of its grads going on to get Ph.D.s of any college or university. It’s very strong in sciences, but strong in humanities and social sciences as well. My D likes the small, intimate atmosphere in which, a little more than halfway through her freshman year, she already knows a sizable fraction of the students on campus, and is on a first-name basis with a bunch of top professors. From her perspective it’s a great location—lovely, leafy, bucolic campus, but conveniently located 20 minutes by train from center city Philadelphia. Students can also take unlimited classes at Haverford’s sister school Bryn Mawr, a high-quality women’s college located a mile away with a free shuttle running continuously between the two campuses, which effectively doubles the curricular offerings. The two schools (“the Bi-Co”) operate a fully integrated course registration system, so when you’re registering for classes you can easily mix and match Haverford and Bryn Mawr classes to get the schedule you want. There are approximately 2,000 cross-registrations between the two schools each year, so this isn’t just a nominal thing, most students end up taking at least one class on the other campus, and many do a lot more than that. Bi-Co students can also take classes at Swarthmore, another outstanding LAC about 20-25 minutes away by shuttle; logistically that’s a little more daunting because of the travel time but many Haverford students do end up taking a class or two at Swat, sometimes more, sometimes just for the experience or sometimes because there’s a class (e.g., an advanced linguistics class) or professor not available at Haverford or BMC. And for any class that’s not offered within the Haverford-BMC-Swat Tri-Co, students can take the class at Penn at no extra charge; the college will even pay their train fare.

If I recall correctly you’re interested in engineering. Haverford also has a 3-2 engineering program with Caltech, 3 years at Haverford and two at Caltech and you come out with degrees from both institutions. Also great study abroad options.