My child recently visited both colleges. Liked Haverford but loved Bryn Mawr. She wants to study biology but is not sure about which area within biology she wants to focus on.
Strong stats (1520 SAT, straight A student in a science magnet). Also loves History and English and is a decent writer. She will go onto graduate school but is not sure whether she will continue studying biology or medicine or something different.
We want her to go to a LAC so she can figure all of this out but want her to go to a LAC with a strong biology program. If she does end up wanting to study medicine or pursuing a Ph.D in the life sciences we want her to easily have that option.
I have a few questions about the biology departments in the two colleges. We were told that Haverford focuses on microbiology and Bryn Mawr focuses on macrobiology. My first question is how difficult is it for a Bryn Mawr student who is interested primarily in microbiology to take and do research at Haverford.
Related question is if she finds the biology subjects and professors at Haverford to be more to her liking is it practical for her to work with them and do research with them. I am sure with the trico it is possible, I am asking whether it is common/practical/likely to happen.
The Haverford biology department website states that 35% of biology graduates end up in medical school and 25% end up pursuing a Ph.D.- very impressive!
I cannot find similar stats for Bryn Mawr. Anyone know how their biology graduates fare? They tout their post bac program but it is unclear whether undergraduates are as successful.
Also wonder whether the presence of graduate students in Bryn Mawr makes it difficult to find professors to work with.
The senior thesis was really emphasized during our Haverford tour but we didn’t hear as much about student research (beyond the opportunity to do so) at Bryn Mawr. I got the impression that the Haverford curriculum was designed to prepare students over time to succeed in their senior thesis.
Thanks for your time.
Students can major and take classes at either campus. Basically, there is open registration between the two schools and no preference in registration given to students of the “home” campus. Perhaps email the administrative assistant at BMC’s Bio dept to ask for more detailed information about cross-registration numbers and whether there might be someone to talk to within the department to understand the research options on the other campus.
It’s common for BMC and HC students to take classes or even major on the other campus. In fact, for some disciplines, cross-registration is required; for example, HC students who want to study or major in geology can only do so at BMC, while BMC students who want to study or major in music can only do so at HC.
No. BMC does have grad students, but most of them are in the Graduate School of Social Work, which is a specialized professional school separate from Arts & Sciences. There are only a handful of grad students in Arts & Sciences, and they are limited to certain departments (particularly archeology, classics, and art history). The BMC biology department is not one of them; it does not have any graduate programs, so grad students in biology should be a non-issue.
BMC does have a one-year pre-medical “post-bac” certificate program; it’s for college graduates who want to apply to medical school, but who did not take a pre-med curriculum as undergraduates. The biology department is presumably involved in the post-bac program, but the post-bac students are there to take classes, not to conduct research.
Since you can take classes or major on either campus, women who are interested in BMC or Haverford commonly apply to both schools. That way, they get two chances of admission and potentially two financial aid offers to compare. Men don’t have that option.
For STEM PhD programs generally, a recent NSF study ranked BMC ranked as the #17 “feeder” nationally (after adjustment for school size). That was slightly behind Haverford at #13, but ahead of schools like Stanford and Yale. See Table 4 here:
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/nsf13323.pdf