In dire need of help... Middlebury or Bryn Mawr???

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hello everyone, </p>

<p>I would like to introduce myself a bit. I am an international applicant from China, whose family is relatively not wealthy, that is to say, if i go to a college without FA, the quality of life of my parents would be affected...
Thus, as a child who wish to shoulder some responsibility of the family and not to incur too much financial stress, I applied to a plethora of colleges and universities, most of which were with FA request.
Unfortunately, I was rejected by half of them, waitlisted by many, and now, only two admissions to choose from, and this proved to be extremely thorny...</p>

<p>CHOICE I, Middlebury College, without a single cent
CHOICE II,Bryn Mawr College, with 35000+ grant and over 10000 loan per year ...</p>

<p>Really tough...
yes, personally i love middlebury more, but it is really hard for me to give up approximately 40k FA a year. What should i do?</p>

<p>Perhaps in China, everyone asked with this question would suggest me going to Midd, cuz, money, after all, can be re-earned... but my four years of college life cannot replay. "Middlebury ranks No.5 this year and is indeed a great college... and Bryn Mawr? I don't know, but i've never heard of it..."</p>

<p>Such is the status quo.
It might be true that we Chinese people, tens of thousands of miles away, lacking proper means to get to know further about colleges, focus too much on rankings, so that a No.5 college is definitely better than the one out of 20. And money is nothing compared to the entire life of the single child of the family, even though it means the selling of house and the decrease in the quality of everyday life...</p>

<p>I genuinely appreciate your time in reading my post, and any of your comments or suggestions are welcome. </p>

<p>I am eager to hear what you think about the differences between those colleges; whether money costs so much as to abandon a great, beloved college; and, if you were i, which one would you choose and why.</p>

<p>Thank you again in advance!!!</p>

2

<p>I’m confused–did you submit the same FA app to all schools? Not sure how Bryn Mawr would offer you $45K/year and Midd wouldn’t offer a dime. Something doesn’t sound right…</p>

3

<p>Bryn Mawr offers merit aid. Middlebury may offer only fin aid. Hence the difference in offers.</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr is a women’s college, so it will have a very different feel from a co-ed school. It is, however, close to a major city (Philadelphia) and has reciprocity agreements with Haverford, Swarthmore, and Penn, so you can take classes not just at Bryn Mawr but elsewhere. It is an excellent college and its graduates have no problem getting accepted to graduate schools.</p>

<p>Middlebury is more highly ranked. It is in a more rural, isolated location.</p>

<p>Most people in the US have not particularly heard of either one, as they are both liberal arts colleges and not Harvard/Yale/Princeton, nor are they huge sports powerhouses whose names appear on television. I wouldn’t make your decision based on generic name recognition because neither one has it.</p>

<p>Both schools are excellent. I do not think that choosing Middlebury is going to make a huge difference in terms of job options, graduate school acceptances, etc. over Bryn Mawr. A lot will depend on what you study, rather than where you go.</p>

4

<p>Update: upon rereading your post, I see that your parents would have to sell their house for you attend Middlebury. These decisions are always very subjective, but if your parents decide to take this step, it shouldn’t be because they think you will be getting life-changing opportunities at Middlebury that you wouldn’t be getting if you went to Bryn Mawr.</p>

5

<p>Congratulations on your acceptances to these outstanding colleges.</p>

<p>The difference between #5 and #25 in the US News rankings is not as significant as you might think. Remember, there are over 3000 colleges and universities in the USA. A different ranking (Washington Monthly) places Bryn Mawr #3 and Middlebury #20 among liberal arts colleges. The result depends on what criteria you use and how you weigh them. ([Liberal</a> Arts College Rankings 2011 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/liberal_arts_rank.php]Liberal”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/liberal_arts_rank.php)). </p>

<p>Really, Bryn Mawr offers several big advantages. First, you can take classes at nearby Haverford, another excellent LAC. With a little more effort you can also take classes at Swarthmore and UPenn. The consortium greatly increases the number of classes available to you. Second, Bryn Mawr is is just a short train ride away from downtown Philadelphia. Middlebury is in a very small rural town in the middle of nowhere, so when you get homesick and want to go eat some good Chinese dumplings, good luck finding them there. Third, the Philadephia winters are much milder than Vermont winters (which are long, gloomy, and very cold). The fourth advantage may be the biggest one for you: the cost! $40K per year is a BIG difference, considering these are two similar, high-quality schools.</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr is one of the historic “Seven Sister” schools (<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(colleges[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(colleges)&lt;/a&gt;). These colleges have educated generations of influential women including Hilary Clinton. The actress Kathryn Hepburn went to Bryn Mawr (maybe after you go there you can beat her record for 4 “best actress” Oscars). According to Princeton Review, Bryn Mawr is #1 for “dorms like palaces” and #4 for “best campus food”. So you should be very comfortable there. Bryn Mawr also is one of the top 10 schools for per capita PhD production ([COLLEGE</a> PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]COLLEGE”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College))</p>

<p>I think this is a “no brainer” for you. The clearly better choice is Bryn Mawr.</p>

6

<p>Go to Bryn Mawr. You shouldn’t even be considering Middlebury in a situation like this, and I say this as a person who applied ED to Midd. I love Middlebury, but it’s not worth that much. Bryn Mawr is still an excellent school, far above the kind of schools 90% of Americans attend.</p>

7

<p>@arcadia, #2 to answer your question… well… i didn’t have Midd’s FA because i didn’t apply to it… if you ask why… i’d say that it’s too complicated for me to elaborate here and now…><</p>

8

<p>@ NJSue #3 & #4 Thank you very muck Sue ~!!! your advice is indeed really helpful!! originally Midd definitely outweighed BMC, but now i’ve changed my mind… thank you again~!!!^_^~</p>

9

<p>Thank you very much ~!!! Really got a lot from your reply~! Now i think Bryn Mawr would be a better choice~</p>

10

<p>Bryn Mawr is lovely, congratulations! It is a very well-respected school in a great location. And they’re giving you money!</p>

11

<p>Ungelivable - your post is a perfect illustration of why the USNews rankings are a poor indicator of anything other than a generalized proxy for the schools that spend the most per student from year to year: if a particular school doesn’t or can’t or won’t spend money on the one expenditure that’s most significant to you (e.g., financial aid) then, it doesn’t really mean very much. No American would risk their retirement nest egg or home for the sake of a USNews rank.</p>

12

<p>You said it’s too complicated to go into here, but I want to reiterate that Midd likely would have offered you a similar package to Bryn Mawr if you had applied for FA. Of course that may have affected your admissions decision, but if you couldn’t attend Midd without aid in the first place, you should have just applied with a FA request and seen what happened. </p>

<p>Of course Midd won’t offer you aid if you didn’t apply for it! Perhaps if you contact the admissions office and explain your situation, they might be able to work something out. Otherwise, Bryn Mawr is a fine school. Very different from Middlebury, but an excellent women’s college.</p>

13

<p>As things stand, Bryn Mawr is much cheaper for our friend ungelivable. It may in fact be a better choice for her even if costs were the same. That’s hard to say without knowing more about what she wants in a school, such as her intended major. However, BMC has several objective advantages that are not overridden by a magazine ranking spread. There’s the Philadelphia-area location, which is not only a livelier immediate setting, but also puts her in closer proximity to New York and DC. This is a big advantage for a foreign student. </p>

<p>Then there’s the consortium advantage. BMC has several departments that seem to be among the best at any LAC (including anthropology, classics, and urban studies). Along with those, you get what Haverford has to offer. It also strikes me that Bryn Mawr may have a stronger intellectual atmosphere, if its PhD production rates and research spending are any indication. BMC spends about 50% more per year on research than Middlebury does, even though Bryn Mawr is a much smaller college. BMC is the 4th ranking LAC for PhD production per capita; Midd ranks 37th (per Washington Monthly).</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr has a bigger endowment per capita (more money to spend on its students) than Middlebury does. Moreover, BMC and Haverford operate almost as one college, with collectively more endowment money than Midd for about the same number of students (and all the other resources of 2 schools, not one).</p>

<p>Oh, and by the way, Betty Draper went to Bryn Mawr :)<br>
(Not that we love Betty, but surely she’d have picked a classy college.)</p>

14

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<p>And that’s what is so aggravating about this forum. “I’ve never heard of it” doesn’t equal “therefore it can’t be any good.” Bryn Mawr is an excellent school, and its excellence is not diminished by the fact that someone in China hasn’t heard of it. With all due respect, your countrymen simply aren’t the best judges of American universities; they overvalue places they are aware of, including the Ivy League and several schools on the West Coast, and they devalue places that they simply haven’t heard of. They don’t know any better. Which is fine; I don’t know anything about Chinese universities either.</p>