<p>Do the girls from neighboring Bryn Mawr College, have a certain reputation?</p>
<p>A reputation for working very hard. If you look at Princeton Review's site, Bryn Mawr is in the top-10 for 'their students never stop studying'.</p>
<p>Make that top 20, but that still says things are pretty intense there.</p>
<p>Interesting...thanks!!!</p>
<p>Anything else?</p>
<p>this is a horrible rumor that I don't even support a smidge, but I've heard it from a couple of people now: some people think that BMC girls aren't very good-looking, as shallow as that is. But I've also always known Bryn Mawr to produce some of the most intellectual and successful individuals in the area. Take reputations for what they're worth...</p>
<p>:-) Remember the Bryn Mawr bus joke from the panel of Swatties? :-)</p>
<p>what was it?</p>
<p>My daughter is going to Bryn Mawr in Fall 2005
and should be spending some time @ Swarthmore.
Going to be a linguistic major. She is extremely
intelligent, a hard worker, athlectic, has a great
sense of humor and is very pretty.</p>
<p>What BMC girl reputation were you inquiring about?</p>
<p>I have a (very attractive) niece who graduated from Bryn Mawr last year (major in French). She got a great education there. Her own comment was about the boys at neighboring Haverford: short.</p>
<p>I think all of these stereotypes are to be taken with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>Yes evvy, to whatever "certain" reputation might you be referring?</p>
<p>Mackinaw...Haverford guys come in sizes. Yes, there are the short ones...but our D sent us a photo with a few of her Ford classmates...easily over 6' 2". :)</p>
<p>Archermom, I'm sure they do! It was just her remark, since she's 5 ' 10". She still had a good time. . . . I attended her graduation last year, and was impressed by the BM campus.</p>
<p>Oh, they made fun of the blue bus during a Swat admissions panel? How lovely. (The joke is that people call it the "**** truck" [the obscenity that will probably get censored by the board rhymes with "truck"]).</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr gets a bad rap from a lot of Swatties and even a lot of 'Fords. They tend to say we're either all lesbians, all disgustingly unattractive (because seriously, how could beautiful girls SURVIVE on an all women's campus?!), or "uptight," because all we do is study (that is, unless we take a ride on the "**** truck" and become stereotypical Bryn Mawr whores).</p>
<p>Strangely, the people that hold these assumptions usually know about 1.7 Bryn Mawr students, and there are 1,200 of us, plus the grad school and postbac programs, which are co-ed. Bryn Mawr students are generally bright and love learning, but beyond that, make up a very diverse student body. Hey, some of us even came to Bryn Mawr because we didn't get accepted to the .0007 spots open to us at Swarthmore as white, middle-upper-class females from the mid-Atlantic states interested in majoring in English with good grades and average ECs (that statistic being so small because people like us apply in hordes to Swat). And some of us are pretty happy that we get to take classes there and make friends there, because unlike the Swatties, our dream of studying at that institution didn't exactly come true. And hey, we like Bryn Mawr, too. It's a wonderful, challenging, character-building place where we learn a lot inside and outside of the classroom with a wonderful community of students and professors. We happen to all be women, because Bryn Mawr was started as an academic powerhouse for women in the 1880s and has decided to keep its enrollment single-sex in keeping with and out of respect for that tradition -- so what's the big deal?</p>
<p>C'mon, people, you'd think we'd be above fratty stereotyping -- not one of the tri-co stereotypes is true. Haverford boys aren't all short and hairy, and Swat students aren't all depressed, wrist-cutting slaves of academia that never see the light of day. </p>
<p>People usually get over all this jazz after about one semester at one of these schools, but not always (as evidenced by the aforementioned student panel that was apparently trashing one of its academic peers).</p>
<p>Sheesh, Wondering. Don't jump to conclusions. It was a panel of 8 Swatties answering questions for an auditorium of specs. Do you really think they are going to trash students from neighboring colleges?</p>
<p>Here's the account of the BMC story, posted by one of the kids who attended the panel. It sounds like the Swattie was actually talking highly of Bryn Mawr girls. Certainly doesn't sound like a reason to get your dander up:</p>
<p>
[quote]
On the panel of students who spoke to the "specs," there was a freshman who was small and funny. Anyway, he was talking about getting off campus, and he said, "You can go to Haverford, or Bryn Mawr, to check out the Bryn Mawr girls."</p>
<p>Then the senior male said: "Our girls get a little jealous when they see the Bryn Mawr bus."</p>
<p>One of the girls: "There is nothing wrong with Swarthmore girls."</p>
<p>The senior boy: "Yeah and there is NOTHING wrong with Bryn Mawr girls."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh my. I sincerely apologize. That is actually quite darling of them. </p>
<p>As to the conclusions, I jump to them repeatedly (especially after having finished a horrific series of exams [one very nasty one at Swarthmore, actually] thanks to a killer cocktail of utter fear and pure caffeine), but I have reason besides just the general social chatter -- a couple of the Haverford tour guides repeatedly trashed BMC to the specs this year, which got some people on both campuses very jumpy about the tri-co. And yes, there have been quite a few instances of tri-co peer cruelty (not just toward Bryn Mawr) that are totally against the honor codes.</p>
<p>I think wondering's rant, if you want to call it that, perhaps goes more to evvy's original question which seemed to me to be intentionally and derogotorily (sp?) provocative and suggestive while being cloaked in plausible deniability. At this highly stressful time of year, it is not surprsing that one might be a trifle thin skinned. Time to put away the books wondering and have a wonderful summer!</p>
<p>Wondering:</p>
<p>On a more constructive note. I know it's a very small sampling, but were you able to discern any great differences in your Swarthmore class versus your Bryn Mawr classes?</p>
<p>My hunch is that there is far wider difference in the workload among various courses at the same school than there is between similar courses at two very rigorous colleges. It would be interesting to hear your take after experiencing both.</p>
<p>As to rivalries, I just don't think Bryn Mawr and Haverford on are on Swatties' radar screens to anywhere near the same extent as the Bryn Mawr/Haverford relationship. You guys are right down the street from each other with, I assume, a LOT of cross-registration and social stuff. I get the sense that there is some Bryn Mawr/Swarthmore cross-registration, but that the Haverford/Swarthmore relationship exists mostly as a sports rivalry.</p>
<p>The classes I have taken at Swarthmore were in linguistics and theater. The theater class I found fairly rigorous, especially for an arts class (though it was specially designated as a writing class); the ling classes have been very light. But you're exactly right -- it depends on the department and definitely the professor.</p>
<p>The Bryn Mawr Institutional Research Web Page has a Freshman Survey Posted that gives insite into the views and backgrounds of the 2004 Freshman Class</p>
<p>2004 CIRP Freshman Survey (Class of 2008) <a href="http://www.brynmawr.edu/institutionalresearch/StudentSurveys.htm#links%5B/url%5D">http://www.brynmawr.edu/institutionalresearch/StudentSurveys.htm#links</a></p>
<p>While they have the data collected - access is restricted.
Here's a link to their institutional research page.</p>
[quote]
Please note that all the links listed below are<br>
restricted to members of the Swarthmore community only.<a href="Maybe%20Bryn%20Mawr's%20IT%20people%20should%20talk%20to%20the%20IT%20people%20at%20Swarthmore%20to%20learn%20how%20to%20restrict%20access%20to%20their%20surveys.%20-%20-%20-%20%20Or%20should%20Swarthmore%20be%20less%20restrictive%20in%20permitting%20access%20to%20their%20data??">/quote</a></p>