Haverford

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Quirky students. Not Ivy and too expensive for what you get when you graduate.

No football, no frats, student-run "honor code." Not simply liberal, but years ago a very conspicuous pothead/tie-dye culture that you could spot in ten minutes. Know of several very nasty stories about treatment of students who don't conform to the hippie culture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So Haverford is ok for prelaw but not STEM.

Depends on your ultimate goal. If it's a research career, there's a lot to be said for a SLAC like Haverford, where you have very close contact with full professors and the opportunity to get involved in their research beyond the glassware-washing you're sometimes relegated to as an undergrad at larger schools. Can't speak to the lack of engineering opportunities, but if you are going to a SLAC with interest in liberal arts and engineering, you're a bit of a hybrid anyway, and will be looking for atypical experiences.

--Bryn Mawr grad with STEM PhD

Another cheap shot. Do you think the kids at MIT are glasseware-washing in their STEM classes? The obnoxious comments on here say it all. If you go to a very small school that a lot of people never heard of you will constantly be defending your school being ok. large schools people know their reputations.

+1

Clearly, PP hasn't been an undergraduate at other highly-rated STEM programs. Sometimes you can have close contact with professors, make meaningful contributions as an undergrad, AND have world-class resources and opportunities.

"Sometimes"?

You guys seem like the defensive ones here. How is the idea that a SLAC might be a good school for a STEM-interested person a threat to you? Sure, if you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead and compare Haverford to MIT. You're the first to do so, others have been comparing it to big 10 schools. Do you think all STEM majors at Penn State are doing theses and working one on one with full professors?

Ultimately your undergrad institution only matters in STEM because of where it gets you into grad school. Haverford and its ilk are plenty good enough to get a motivated student into any grad school they want.

[Anonymous]

My husband went to Haverford. I went to Bryn Mawr, but graduated two years after him. We were friends in college, both of us dating other people (we even double-dated once, with different people). Started dating the first time he came up to visit friends a few months after graduating. A cappella is HUGE on both campuses, and he was in one of the groups at Haverford. He also played ultimate frisbee, was on the cricket team (as a frosh, he and three of suite mates dared each other to try out for the team as they had never tried it, and fell in love with it). He has super-fond memories of his college days and still has over 20 people he still keeps in touch with from there. The kids study hard there, but it's a little more laid-back than say, Swarthmore. It is a small school and since I went to Bryn Mawr, I took some classes there, and sometimes you were sitting around a big oak table with maybe 12 other students and the teacher talking about politics, social justice or the English literature of the week. I wrote for the school paper while there. The campuses both get into social justice and civil rights issues a lot as Haverford is a Quaker-based school (my husband just happens to be Quaker). When the weather is nice, lots of professors hold class outside. Haverford has a distinctly different feel than Bryn Mawr and it starts with the architecture – Haverford is more modern, red brick and white columns, while Bryn Mawr is distinctly "old English castle" with all stonework, arches, a giant clock tower, I guess very Hogwarts-seque. Haverford, despite not having a football team, was the much more athletic of the two. It's baseball team is actually really good, and a lot of the guys go around with their flannel shirts on over graphic t-shirts and their baseball hats on backward (big joke about it at Bryn Mawr). And yes, the good ol' Blue Bus runs between the two colleges until very late into the night – many a night there were groups of us walking home to Bryn Mawr at 1:30 in the morning because we missed the last one.

There's a LOT of camaraderie on the campuses, a lot of traditions, and a lot of inside jokes. Haverford used to be all-guys and Bryn Mawr is still all-women, so there are jokes about the Haverford women disdaining BMC women and vice-versa (true, not-true). While there is definitely brother-sister rapport between the campuses, many folks do end up dating cross-college and have gone on to marry (obviously!).

[Anonymous]

There is no one size fits all solution here. I know a kid who went to a leading LAC, blew through all the math and physics courses in the first couple of years, and was very frustrated. To progress, he ended up spending his summers helping researchers at our state flagship physics lab. He did get to do a PhD at Princeton and is now tenured in a top five department. It worked out OK in the end, but he might have saved his family a lot of money and himself some frustration by going to a big state school. Another kid I know had the opposite experience -- didn't do as well at HS, really became inspired at a mid-level college and is now doing a physics PhD at MIT and doing well. For him the college was worth every penny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So Haverford is ok for prelaw but not STEM.

Depends on your ultimate goal. If it's a research career, there's a lot to be said for a SLAC like Haverford, where you have very close contact with full professors and the opportunity to get involved in their research beyond the glassware-washing you're sometimes relegated to as an undergrad at larger schools. Can't speak to the lack of engineering opportunities, but if you are going to a SLAC with interest in liberal arts and engineering, you're a bit of a hybrid anyway, and will be looking for atypical experiences.

--Bryn Mawr grad with STEM PhD

Another cheap shot. Do you think the kids at MIT are glasseware-washing in their STEM classes? The obnoxious comments on here say it all. If you go to a very small school that a lot of people never heard of you will constantly be defending your school being ok. large schools people know their reputations.

+1

Clearly, PP hasn't been an undergraduate at other highly-rated STEM programs. Sometimes you can have close contact with professors, make meaningful contributions as an undergrad, AND have world-class resources and opportunities.

"Sometimes"?

You guys seem like the defensive ones here. How is the idea that a SLAC might be a good school for a STEM-interested person a threat to you? Sure, if you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead and compare Haverford to MIT. You're the first to do so, others have been comparing it to big 10 schools. Do you think all STEM majors at Penn State are doing theses and working one on one with full professors?

Ultimately your undergrad institution only matters in STEM because of where it gets you into grad school. Haverford and its ilk are plenty good enough to get a motivated student into any grad school they want.

LOL, certainly no "threat". Just checking the speculation/arrogance. There are plenty of opportunities out there and a motivated student will do well most anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes Bryn Mawr an all girls school can take classes at Haverford it's a bus ride away and its reciprocal. Haverford is half girls and half boys. Bryn Mawr is all girls. So the campus becomes 4 girls for every 1 guy. Great if your kid is a straight male. Your son would love it.

Bryn Mawr is a WOMEN's college. Not a girls school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So Haverford is ok for prelaw but not STEM.

Depends on your ultimate goal. If it's a research career, there's a lot to be said for a SLAC like Haverford, where you have very close contact with full professors and the opportunity to get involved in their research beyond the glassware-washing you're sometimes relegated to as an undergrad at larger schools. Can't speak to the lack of engineering opportunities, but if you are going to a SLAC with interest in liberal arts and engineering, you're a bit of a hybrid anyway, and will be looking for atypical experiences.

--Bryn Mawr grad with STEM PhD

Another cheap shot. Do you think the kids at MIT are glasseware-washing in their STEM classes? The obnoxious comments on here say it all. If you go to a very small school that a lot of people never heard of you will constantly be defending your school being ok. large schools people know their reputations.

+1

Clearly, PP hasn't been an undergraduate at other highly-rated STEM programs. Sometimes you can have close contact with professors, make meaningful contributions as an undergrad, AND have world-class resources and opportunities.

"Sometimes"?

You guys seem like the defensive ones here. How is the idea that a SLAC might be a good school for a STEM-interested person a threat to you? Sure, if you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead and compare Haverford to MIT. You're the first to do so, others have been comparing it to big 10 schools. Do you think all STEM majors at Penn State are doing theses and working one on one with full professors?

Ultimately your undergrad institution only matters in STEM because of where it gets you into grad school. Haverford and its ilk are plenty good enough to get a motivated student into any grad school they want.

LOL, certainly no "threat". Just checking the speculation/arrogance. There are plenty of opportunities out there and a motivated student will do well most anywhere.

Exactly! So what is the issue? How is your "sometimes" different from my "sometimes"? Where is the arrogance in saying a SLAC can work fine for STEM (which a pp had asserted was flatly untrue)?

[Anonymous]

This is an eye opening thread for me. I always saw Haverford as but one step away from Williams and Amherst. That may be because I am from PA. Bit are most people placing it below all the other NESCACs also in terms of reputation, prestige?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So Haverford is ok for prelaw but not STEM.

Depends on your ultimate goal. If it's a research career, there's a lot to be said for a SLAC like Haverford, where you have very close contact with full professors and the opportunity to get involved in their research beyond the glassware-washing you're sometimes relegated to as an undergrad at larger schools. Can't speak to the lack of engineering opportunities, but if you are going to a SLAC with interest in liberal arts and engineering, you're a bit of a hybrid anyway, and will be looking for atypical experiences.

--Bryn Mawr grad with STEM PhD

Another cheap shot. Do you think the kids at MIT are glasseware-washing in their STEM classes? The obnoxious comments on here say it all. If you go to a very small school that a lot of people never heard of you will constantly be defending your school being ok. large schools people know their reputations.

+1

Clearly, PP hasn't been an undergraduate at other highly-rated STEM programs. Sometimes you can have close contact with professors, make meaningful contributions as an undergrad, AND have world-class resources and opportunities.

"Sometimes"?

You guys seem like the defensive ones here. How is the idea that a SLAC might be a good school for a STEM-interested person a threat to you? Sure, if you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead and compare Haverford to MIT. You're the first to do so, others have been comparing it to big 10 schools. Do you think all STEM majors at Penn State are doing theses and working one on one with full professors?

Ultimately your undergrad institution only matters in STEM because of where it gets you into grad school. Haverford and its ilk are plenty good enough to get a motivated student into any grad school they want.

Penn State has an excellent engineering program. Penn State has a phd program for engineers. Penn State's engineering program tops an extremely small liberal arts school for engineering without a doubt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So Haverford is ok for prelaw but not STEM.

Depends on your ultimate goal. If it's a research career, there's a lot to be said for a SLAC like Haverford, where you have very close contact with full professors and the opportunity to get involved in their research beyond the glassware-washing you're sometimes relegated to as an undergrad at larger schools. Can't speak to the lack of engineering opportunities, but if you are going to a SLAC with interest in liberal arts and engineering, you're a bit of a hybrid anyway, and will be looking for atypical experiences.

--Bryn Mawr grad with STEM PhD

Another cheap shot. Do you think the kids at MIT are glasseware-washing in their STEM classes? The obnoxious comments on here say it all. If you go to a very small school that a lot of people never heard of you will constantly be defending your school being ok. large schools people know their reputations.

+1

Clearly, PP hasn't been an undergraduate at other highly-rated STEM programs. Sometimes you can have close contact with professors, make meaningful contributions as an undergrad, AND have world-class resources and opportunities.

"Sometimes"?

You guys seem like the defensive ones here. How is the idea that a SLAC might be a good school for a STEM-interested person a threat to you? Sure, if you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead and compare Haverford to MIT. You're the first to do so, others have been comparing it to big 10 schools. Do you think all STEM majors at Penn State are doing theses and working one on one with full professors?

Ultimately your undergrad institution only matters in STEM because of where it gets you into grad school. Haverford and its ilk are plenty good enough to get a motivated student into any grad school they want.

LOL, certainly no "threat". Just checking the speculation/arrogance. There are plenty of opportunities out there and a motivated student will do well most anywhere.

Exactly! So what is the issue? How is your "sometimes" different from my "sometimes"? Where is the arrogance in saying a SLAC can work fine for STEM (which a pp had asserted was flatly untrue)?

Different poster here. No arrogance in your SLAC remark. You guys are in the same book, different pages. That said, remember that some people just like to keep sh!t going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband went to Haverford. I went to Bryn Mawr, but graduated two years after him. We were friends in college, both of us dating other people (we even double-dated once, with different people). Started dating the first time he came up to visit friends a few months after graduating. A cappella is HUGE on both campuses, and he was in one of the groups at Haverford. He also played ultimate frisbee, was on the cricket team (as a frosh, he and three of suite mates dared each other to try out for the team as they had never tried it, and fell in love with it). He has super-fond memories of his college days and still has over 20 people he still keeps in touch with from there. The kids study hard there, but it's a little more laid-back than say, Swarthmore. It is a small school and since I went to Bryn Mawr, I took some classes there, and sometimes you were sitting around a big oak table with maybe 12 other students and the teacher talking about politics, social justice or the English literature of the week. I wrote for the school paper while there. The campuses both get into social justice and civil rights issues a lot as Haverford is a Quaker-based school (my husband just happens to be Quaker). When the weather is nice, lots of professors hold class outside. Haverford has a distinctly different feel than Bryn Mawr and it starts with the architecture – Haverford is more modern, red brick and white columns, while Bryn Mawr is distinctly "old English castle" with all stonework, arches, a giant clock tower, I guess very Hogwarts-seque. Haverford, despite not having a football team, was the much more athletic of the two. It's baseball team is actually really good, and a lot of the guys go around with their flannel shirts on over graphic t-shirts and their baseball hats on backward (big joke about it at Bryn Mawr). And yes, the good ol' Blue Bus runs between the two colleges until very late into the night – many a night there were groups of us walking home to Bryn Mawr at 1:30 in the morning because we missed the last one.

There's a LOT of camaraderie on the campuses, a lot of traditions, and a lot of inside jokes. Haverford used to be all-guys and Bryn Mawr is still all-women, so there are jokes about the Haverford women disdaining BMC women and vice-versa (true, not-true). While there is definitely brother-sister rapport between the campuses, many folks do end up dating cross-college and have gone on to marry (obviously!).

Cool story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband went to Haverford. I went to Bryn Mawr, but graduated two years after him. We were friends in college, both of us dating other people (we even double-dated once, with different people). Started dating the first time he came up to visit friends a few months after graduating. A cappella is HUGE on both campuses, and he was in one of the groups at Haverford. He also played ultimate frisbee, was on the cricket team (as a frosh, he and three of suite mates dared each other to try out for the team as they had never tried it, and fell in love with it). He has super-fond memories of his college days and still has over 20 people he still keeps in touch with from there. The kids study hard there, but it's a little more laid-back than say, Swarthmore. It is a small school and since I went to Bryn Mawr, I took some classes there, and sometimes you were sitting around a big oak table with maybe 12 other students and the teacher talking about politics, social justice or the English literature of the week. I wrote for the school paper while there. The campuses both get into social justice and civil rights issues a lot as Haverford is a Quaker-based school (my husband just happens to be Quaker). When the weather is nice, lots of professors hold class outside. Haverford has a distinctly different feel than Bryn Mawr and it starts with the architecture – Haverford is more modern, red brick and white columns, while Bryn Mawr is distinctly "old English castle" with all stonework, arches, a giant clock tower, I guess very Hogwarts-seque. Haverford, despite not having a football team, was the much more athletic of the two. It's baseball team is actually really good, and a lot of the guys go around with their flannel shirts on over graphic t-shirts and their baseball hats on backward (big joke about it at Bryn Mawr). And yes, the good ol' Blue Bus runs between the two colleges until very late into the night – many a night there were groups of us walking home to Bryn Mawr at 1:30 in the morning because we missed the last one.

There's a LOT of camaraderie on the campuses, a lot of traditions, and a lot of inside jokes. Haverford used to be all-guys and Bryn Mawr is still all-women, so there are jokes about the Haverford women disdaining BMC women and vice-versa (true, not-true). While there is definitely brother-sister rapport between the campuses, many folks do end up dating cross-college and have gone on to marry (obviously!).

Cool story.

+1. Nice to hear from somebody in the know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is an eye opening thread for me. I always saw Haverford as but one step away from Williams and Amherst. That may be because I am from PA. Bit are most people placing it below all the other NESCACs also in terms of reputation, prestige?

People on this thread are. I promise that employers and grad schools are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an eye opening thread for me. I always saw Haverford as but one step away from Williams and Amherst. That may be because I am from PA. Bit are most people placing it below all the other NESCACs also in terms of reputation, prestige?

People on this thread are. I promise that employers and grad schools are not.

+1. And the employers and grad schools are the ones that count. There is no way, no how I would entrust the future of my child with overboard, biased opinions. Go to the ones that make the rules.....employers and grad schools.

[Anonymous]

I don't know what people are talking about on this thread! Lots of nonsense!

Haverford is a top SLAC!! It's a very small school on a beautiful campus just outside of Philly. It has a stellar reputation and is very hard to get into, much harder than almost any state school. Haverford, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr have a program where you can take classes on any of the three campuses. It's not a sports school, not particularly quirky, the dorms are fabulous, brand new (at least the ones we saw) and the school is tip-top academically. I don't think I'd go there for engineering. It's a liberal arts school. Very expensive, but they have excellent FA. If you've got the grades and scores and want a small, pretty, intense school outside of a great city, Haverford should be on your list.