<p>Ok, now I’m about to decide to apply ED to BMC to improve my chance. What I’ve read about BM casts it in a quite positive light. I know that the academic is gruesomely intense, and I don’t mind it, because I love learning. What troubles me is the intellectual atmosphere at BM. I’m not really into girlish talk (you know, boys, romance, dating,etc.) and was wondering if philosophical discussions are common here. I don’t like being branded nerdy, but, I’m here to learn, right?</p>
<p>Are there lectures on Sunday? Any intellectually stimulating event? Guest speakers? And how’s the library?</p>
Good! With no guys around, you wouldn’t be able to find much boy talk even if you went looking for it. There’s a bit more relationship drama in the lesbian & queer circles if you choose to hang out in that crowd.</p>
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No lectures or guest speakers on weekends. But how about some intellectually stimulating homework? Working ahead will leave you more time to go to talks during the week!</p>
<p>If you don’t mind, I will answer the other questions from your email here for the benefit of other students who are reading this forum.</p>
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The college is happy to give us academic credit for independent study projects, but students have to take the initiative to set them up. If there’s something in particular you would like to do or study, you can approach a faculty member with overlapping interests and work out a plan of study. </p>
<p>I myself had four summers of funded research:</p>
<ul>
<li>After my freshman year, I got funded through the Bryn Mawr summer science program to work with a professor on campus.</li>
<li>After my sophomore year, I participated in an NSF-funded research program at Cornell.</li>
<li>After my junior year, I got funding from a college-administered HHMI grant to work with a research group at Penn.</li>
<li>After my senior year, a professor at Bryn Mawr paid me from his ONR research grant. </li>
</ul>
<p>The National Science Foundation (NSF), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) are some of the big national agencies funding research in the sciences. I am not sure how many external funding sources are available to students in the social sciences or humanities. The college tries to give each interested student funding for at least one summer internship or research project, on or off campus. Bryn Mawr’s internal funding generally pays $3,600 for 10 weeks of work; room and board is not included. External grants (at least in the sciences) usually have higher stipends and often pay for some combination of room, board and transportation as well. </p>
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In the last few years, winter break housing was $100 for 4 weeks. Everybody who chose to stay moved to Merion while the other dorms closed down completely. The dining halls are closed during winter break, so you have to feed yourself. There’s no financial aid but you can get a job on campus for some extra spending money. The libraries, the on-campus pre-school, the cafe in the campus center, the gym and some campus offices are open and appreciate help from winter break residents while their regular student staff is home over break.</p>
<p>All offices except for Public Safety are closed during the christmas holidays. But much of the campus (including the gym and the libraries) reopens for the second half of winter break.</p>
<p>My daughter at BMC loves the fact that you can go to a party at Bryn Mawr and get into a discussion about the juicy tidbits of this week’s Gossip Girl, and right across the room is a conversation about what Plato thought about the concept of “the good,” while in the other corner the physics students are discussing whether light sabers could ever work in real life … no one bats an eye at any of the above conversations… she enjoys that atmosphere immensely.</p>