<p>My daughter is looking at colleges and is interested in Haverford. She initially said that the smallest school she would consider was 2000 students. Haverford is of course much smaller. But you can take classes at Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore and U Penn as well. So that broadens it a bit for her. From what I can tell, Bryn Mawr is really close and students are on similar schedules, so it's easy to take classes there. I am seeing much less about students going to Swat or UPenn for courses. I think they are farther away so it may be harder to manage. Do any of you have a sense of how much crossover there is between these four schools? Do students take courses elsewhere a lot, and is it hard to get into them if you are a Haverford student (and presumably able to register after the resident students do)? Has the size of Haverford been limiting in terms of courses offered on campus, faculty to work with, etc? Is there much social interaction between the different schools? I read that meal tickets work at either Haverford or Bryn Mawr, which I thought was nice. Not sure if that is true with Swat too. Anyway, any input would be appreciated!</p>
<p>Swat and Penn are primarily used for extracurricular activities such as conferences and guest speakers and social activities but HC students can take classes there as well and, in the case at Penn, if the classes aren’t offered in the Tri-Co. It’s more challenging to set this up due to travel and scheduling issues as you know but is doable and based on the student’s initiative. For example, in the link I attached to the post about CalTech 3/2 engineering, one physics graduate took machine shop at Swat and also engineering at Penn and played varsity lacrosse as well. These are likely classes with labs so it was possible even with this hectic schedule. I saw some figure several years ago that about 50 HC students/ semester will take a class at Swat and Penn (primarily seniors, juniors; and sophomore linguistics majors).</p>