<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I need help regarding making the final decision abt college. I hope you'll be generous in your advising. I got in to all 4 places. I want to pursue economics or mathematics as major. Which should i go for? I am in a big fix.</p>
<p>Don’t go to Bryn Mawr. I visited the place - beautiful campus but the girls there are just sooooo freaky. and creepy. Also it’s a single-sex school =.=</p>
<p>I am looking for an excellent education in my intended major(s) and a comprehensive experience (rather than a lop-sided one).</p>
<p>@penguin92:Thanks for your input.</p>
<p>McGill is totally awesome. I got friends there who are really enjoying their college experience. Not sure about the other three, however.</p>
<p>I would love to go to McGill, seems like a great school in a great area with world class academics and international prestige =]</p>
<p>There are all great schools but also very different. You should look at the ECs, the research opportunities, stuff like the size of the schools, whether you’d like to be meet LOOOTS of pple, or you prefer a small school with more personal attention, ect…
Don’t freak out too much about Bryn Mawr because with the Bi-Co and the Tri-Co you can sleep in co-ed dorms, take classes at Harverford (even some classes at UPenn) and a lots of clubs are for Bryn Mawr and Harverford sudents.</p>
<p>I am a math major at Bryn Mawr. If you have any questions about the college or the department, feel free to ask!</p>
<p>As the others have pointed out, the atmosphere at a big research university is very different from the atmosphere at a small liberal arts college. Bryn Mawr was the perfect middle ground for me: I am getting a lot of personal attention as well as access to the resources of a big research university! </p>
<p>What does personal attention mean anyway? For me it means that my academic success is a personal concern for my professors. They catch me in the hallway to share some new opportunity with me. They have helped me find off-campus summer positions. They have invited me over to their apartment to discuss math over pizza. The entire math department knows me by name, even professors who I have never taken a class with!</p>
<p>I have also really enjoyed the classes I have taken at Penn. It is exciting to learn new material from one of the leading researchers in the field! I am treated just like a regular student at Penn: I get to attend their seminars, borrow books from their library, use their academic support system, have key card access to their residential facilities to meet with friends, etc. I am very grateful that I have access to the academic resources at Penn, but I am glad that I am not a full-time student there. Everything is so… impersonal. Students at Penn crowd around the professor after class to get 30 seconds of face-to-face time. I imagine that the atmosphere at other big research universities must be similar. Professors at Bryn Mawr, on the other hand, tend to have an open door policy: they are happy to talk to students whenever they are in their office.</p>
<p>I would also like to mention that Bryn Mawr’s math department has an amazing track record getting students into graduate school! One of our math majors last year won the Churchill fellowship and is now studying math at Cambridge, and another student won a competitive NSF fellowship to study statistics at John Hopkins. That is pretty incredible considering the size of the college and our relative (non-)selectivity, compared to colleges like Haverford or Swarthmore (whose students fare worse in graduate school admissions!). Bryn Mawr has one of the highest percentages of students going on to earn PhDs, even beating Harvard and MIT!</p>
<p>On other other hand, due to its size Bryn Mawr does not have much of an international reputation. If you want to get a job in your home country straight out of college, you are better off with one of the bigger-name universities on your list.</p>
<p>Thanks all.
@b@r!um: what has kept me hooked to bryn mawr is the tri-co and esp the advanced classes at Penn. the year abroad options are also very interesting. I don’t really have particular preferences abt atmosphere or school environment. But contact b/w teachers n student really matters. i am waiting for other decisions. so far m only in BM (as far as US is concerned).</p>
<p>The Tri-Co and Penn have been important aspects of my life at Bryn Mawr. For example, this upcoming summer I will be doing research with one of my professors at Penn, living with a friend at Haverford and getting paid by a grant from Bryn Mawr :)</p>
<p>The Tri-Co has been a great experience academically. For example, for each core class I had to take for my major, there has been at least one <em>amazing</em> professor teaching it at one of the three colleges. We don’t have any outright bad professors, but some are naturally more engaging than others. At most other colleges, students are stuck taking their classes with whoever happens to teach them that year, regardless of how much they like or dislike that professor’s particular teaching style.</p>
<p>Penn is great because they offer upper-level and graduate-level classes that we do not have at Bryn Mawr. Officially we are not allowed to take graduate classes there, but there are ways to get around the official limitations…</p>
<p>Don’t freak out too much about Bryn Mawr because with the Bi-Co and the Tri-Co you can sleep in co-ed dorms, take classes at Harverford (even some classes at UPenn) and a lots of clubs are for Bryn Mawr and Harverford sudents. </p>
<p>==> actually there hasn’t been any Bryn Mawr girls in Haverford dorms for years - the relationship between Bryn Mawrtyrs and Haverford students are very intense.</p>
<p>Currently there are 8 students participating in the housing exchange. The “problem” is that Haverford has so many housing options (co-ed and single sex, dorms and apartments, etc) that few Haverford students want to live at Bryn Mawr, which also means that few Bryn Mawr students get to live at Haverford. The housing exchange works on a one-by-one basis so that no college needs to house additional students. Mixed groups of Bryn Mawr and Haverford friends who really want to live together typically rent an apartment or a house in walking distance of one of the two colleges.</p>
<p>The housing situation is really not a big deal. Most students actually enjoy the quiet single-sex dorms at Bryn Mawr. We can party at Haverford and then return to Bryn Mawr and SLEEP in a quiet dorm without puke in the bathroom. That’s quite ideal if you ask me!</p>
<p>I am not quite sure where the stereotype comes from that Bryn Mawr and Haverford girls don’t get along. I have never felt discriminated against at Haverford, and I do not make a distinction between Bryn Mawr and Haverford girls either. I could imagine that some Havergirls might be frustrated if an entire bus load of unknown Bryn Mawr girls shows up to their party unexpectedly and skews the gender ratio; but you can certainly socialize with your group of friends at Haverford the same way you would socialize with a group of friends at Bryn Mawr.</p>
<p>McGill wins this one by a long shot, in every conceivable area. This is a no-brainer.</p>
<p>Regarding the UK, Warwick >> Manchester (for economics)</p>