Very true and spot on post, @prezbucky. Many students find themselves on the other campus a good chunk of the time including majoring on the campus in which they are not officially enrolled. Clubs, parties, etc., too.
On the endowment issue, what matters a lot to us is financial aid. According to the NPC’s on the respective school website, Haverford would cost us around $6,000 less per year than Bryn Mawr.
The one thing I noticed in visiting these colleges is that its more girl dominated, given that Haverford is more than half girls and BMC is all girls. Also, the Honor code thing seems much more strict and “well developed” at Haverford, compared to BMC, almost to the point of a Kangaroo court, but it might have been our very athletic tour guide who was very into Quaker rules and regs.
Also the atmosphere at Haverford feels faintly “atheistic” although not as much so as Swarthmore College did to us.
It seemed “uncool” to believe in anything, besides the Quaker ethical rules and turning in your friends to the student run Kangaroo Court for potentially cheating.
Also it seemed to be a badge of honor to take a test in your dorm and make a huge deal about how ethical everyone is at Haverford surrounding cheating. I wonder how Brazilian students would feel at Haverford, as in Brazil, cheating is considered a way to help others and not a negative in that culture! . It seems like a strange Quaker bubble, for cheating ethics only and not the rest of Quaker values?
Lastly BMC offers a PhD program in mathematics. Its cool! Its co ed. I know a man who did his PhD at BMC.
The swimming pool is at BMC for what that is worth. I remember thinking my son would need to walk a long way to go swimming, as he got admitted to Haverford. The whole environment was totally wrong for our son, he did not enroll, but I remember feeling really uncomfortable with the over focus on trust and ethics to be part of Haverford, and the number of girls there, basically 3/4 girls if we think of Haverford/BMC as one big place. I remember asking if Bryn Mawr girls had to follow all the Haverford Quaker ethics rules only on Haverford’s campus, and getting a very confusing answer about that! Its too bad that BMC is not half boys to keep it in balance, but i am sure there would be a huge resistance, but socially it would be better to gender balance both schools.
Its a kind of constrained but intellectual environment I would say, either Haverford or BMC, and you gotta really want to be in a very small social circle to attend these small colleges.
Certainly teaching will be excellent at either college.
^^ And it’s not like Haverford, with all its emphasis on their Honor Code, hasn’t had its own share of cheating scandals and shameful behavior in recent years.
Both these stories are from 2014:
No school is perfect, and Haverford is a wonderful little LAC, but I do think sometimes colleges that heavily tout their honor codes are just kidding themselves about human nature.
I’m surprised that people actually think that no one will cheat at Haverford because they have an honor code. People are still people after all. But yes, it’s frowned upon, as it should be, and Haverford students are generally interested in being ethical people, whether or not they believe in religion.
The honor code at Haverford is very unique, and it’s really the core of who they are. They never proclaim that cheating and other negative behaviors don’t occur, but they have created an environment that condones being honest and ethical and supportive of fellow students. Why would you criticize them for that?
As for not embracing other Quaker values - actually they do. Acceptance of everyone, having your own space for contemplation, focusing on equality, living as a tight close-knit community - these are all Quaker values, and they are all part of the Haverford experience, even though the college is no longer a Quaker school.
@megan12 As a Bi-Co community member from way back, I think you have done a good job articulating the role of the Honor Code at Haverford, though I think Haverford does still consider itself a Quaker school, it is just not only for practicing Quakers.
It is not that students don’t ever do these things, it is that the Honor Code shapes the culture – both academic and social – so that students are accountable to each other. It is not an administration/top-down procedure for discipline, but rather, organic to the community. And that is what makes it different from other schools which have an Honor Code, particularly schools like Washington & Lee, where it is much more about discipline. At Haverford, the Honor Code shapes shared expectations, and that either resonates with prospective students or not. I understand that Grinnell, with its structure of self-gov, shapes its culture in similar ways.
This thread is not too old I think to refresh a little. We looked at BMC and not Haverford and noticed 1) no “edgy” women (my DD is “edgy” according to the descriptions in this thread in that she has actually dyed her hair a non-natural color . . . . . ) We saw only women with natural-colored hair. Somehow that didn’t turn my DD off. Many women looked International, which we liked. 2) As to how BMC students combine with Haverford’s honor code, BMC also has an honor code, which was an attraction to my DD. The students leave their stuff open in the halls of the dorms, their tests are left for pick up in the hall, and there’s an understanding that usually no one cheats on these things. We found it not stultifying, compared with others on this thread. Far from it. In fact it felt freeing to think that there were ethics attempted.
I have a close family member who graduated from BMC last May. She does not qualify as “edgy” per the descriptions given here. She loved her time there and all the way through, said she could not imagine having gone to a better place (at least for her). Her advisor was phenomenolly supportive and helpful. She took a couple classes at Swat and at Penn, and almost half of her classes at Haverford. At least 1/3 of the closest friends she made during her college years were Haverford students and 1/2 of her extracurricular clubs were based at Haverford; she found the relationship between Haverford and BMC extremely fluid, close, and comfortable. She also took lots of advantage of internship and leisure opportunities in Philadelphia throughout her 4 years, and upon graduating, has been abroad on a paid fellowship for this year, which she was chosen for in competition with other applicants from other colleges, including several from ivies that she beat out by being one of the few chosen for the fellowship…although she was “only” a “B-average” student at BMC. Insofar as academic rigor, at least for her courses (she was a social sciences major), she found the (social sciences and humanities courses) rigor indistinguishable between Bryn Mawr and Haverford and Swat, and counterintuitively for the (social sciences and foreign language) courses she took at Penn she found Penn less rigorous than Bryn Mawr and Haverford. (She avoided math and lab science courses, so cannot comment on how they compare at the different colleges.) Insofar as differences between Haverford and BMC, though, she did report a somewhat different “vibe” on the two different campuses…but for her, was very happy and glad that BMC was her “home base” rather than Haverford, because the “vibe” fit her better at BMC as her home base…even though she was physically on the Haverford campus (and even lived at Haverford in the Haverford apartments one semester, after coming back from a semester abroad) approximately half of the time.
@dustyfeathers - I swear those edgy girls with the dyed hair are there! LOL! They must have been hiding the day you were there. 
My son dated one for a short time, and I’m pretty sure some of her friends had dyed hair as well. She and her friends were also bisexual or asexual, and they were not the only ones. I’m sure your daughter would find her place there, just like girls who are a little more conservative.