Schreyers vs Pitt HC vs Bryn Mawr

College Search & Selection
1

Hey guys,
This is my first time posting so forgive me if is anything I overlooked. So anyways I’m in a little bit of a dilemma here. I’ve been accepted into Schreyers with 4.5k scholarship, UPitt’s HC with 10k, and Bryn Mawr with 25k. May 1st is approaching fast but I still can’t decide which one would be the best. I want to go into pre-med and I’ve heard that all of the schools are pretty decent for pre-med. I’ve been brainstorming about some pros/cons of each and feel free to offer any perspectives that you guys might have because I am utterly conflicted.

Schreyers: I liked how Schreyers felt like a small college but had the resources of large universities. I also like how there is a set requirements for honors credits and how there is separate staff and facilities set aside for these kids. The class sizes are also capped at 24 kids. I’ve heard/seen that Schreyers is considerably better than Pitt’s HC. I did a little bit of research and while doing so, I came across a statistic on some forums (not once, but twice) that said that 100% of pre-med students from Schreyers get into. Now I’m reluctant to accept this statistic because I know some schools tend to inflate their percentages by aggressively weeding out pre-med kids and I’m wondering if this is the case for Schreyers. Another thing I was wondering was how pre-med kids did volunteering. I know that Penn state is affiliated with Hershey Medical Center but thats quite some distance from Penn state itself so what do they do?

Pitt: I had high hopes for Pitt’s HC but after attending the Honor’s Day at Pitt the other day, I realized that (please correct me if Im wrong) Pitt’s HC is pointless aside from priority housing. Pitt’s HC does offer opportunities, but I think the kids themselves have to really work for them and get them themselves. I talked to a couple of Honors kids there and some of them said that they havent even taken honors classes yet despite being in the HC, leading me to believe that the classes are either uninteresting or destroy your GPA. Now I know that this is all dependent on personal taste and kids usually do better if they like the subject but I am under the impression that these classes are insanely hard. As for Pitt itself, I like the location a little more than Penn state, but not enough for it to be a deal breaker. I’ve also heard that Pitt is better than Penn state for pre med but I’m wondering if Pitt is better than Schreyers. Also Marketplace food there was kinda gross.

Bryn Mawr: Out of all of the colleges, Bryn Mawr would be the cheapest because I would be commuting from home. The campus itself is gorgeous and picturesque and the girls seem to be very hardworking. I like the small class sizes (around 10-15 kids) which I think would provide more professor-student attention. The only thing I’m worried about is that it’s such a small college and has endowment about 375 times less than Pitt and Penn State’s (which each have endowments of about 3 billion but spread among different campuses). Granted, Bryn Mawr is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller but I’m worried that this small college won’t be able to provide adequate pre-med volunteering/research opportunities, but I know that it’s also affiliated with Bryn Mawr hospital.

As for “fitting in”, I can picture myself at any one of these locations. I just wish one would be a clear winner because everything just seems so conflicting. I’m just looking for different perspectives at this point so any input/experiences you guys offer would be greatly appreciated!

2

I was a student at Bryn Mawr last year and have since transferred to a public university (Temple) similar to Penn State and Pitt. I wasn’t studying pre-med. I was a political science student while I was there, so I can’t comment on the programming, but I will comment on campus environment. I do know that you jut have to apply to stuff and you’ll get all the funding and research opportunities you want. You really just have to ask for it and talk to the right people, and you’ll get it.

Bryn Mawr is a hugely residential campus and almost all undergrads live on campus. As you probably know, traditions are a huge deal there. You would really miss out on a lot if you choose to commute because a lot of people make their first friends in their customs groups which are made of their dorm floor. A lot of the traditions also take place in the night, and you would have to abstain from all the day drinking if you’re planning on driving home. The only people I know that lived off campus were those that lived on campus for their first two years, then they got fed up with the college, moved into Philadelphia, and just took all their classes at Penn and Haverford in order to avoid the Mawr. If you do go to Bryn Mawr, I really don’t suggest commuting because it makes things very difficult.

Bryn Mawr’s small student body gets annoying really quickly. The small school makes gossip more fun, but if certain friend groups annoy you, it’s impossible to avoid them. Bryn Mawr also has an extremely liberal environment, which seems nice at first, but the lack of political and opinion diversity really interferes with the quality of education. Last year, a girl was bullied off campus for openly voting for Trump. Students were so vicious towards her. Everyone really is extreme as possible when it comes to liberalism and privilege.

Here are some pros of Bryn Mawr because I don’t just want to dish on it: Instagram worthy campus, really good dining hall food, tons of funding available, very caring faculty, and very passionate students that are very cool and awesome if you agree with them, high paying on campus jobs

I was deciding between Pitt and Bryn Mawr too when making my college decision. I picked Bryn Mawr, and it ended up being an awful mistake. Follow your heart though!

3

@NotSteveBuscemi , I’m interested in more details of your experience, given my daughter is considering BMC. In particular, some of the things I hear about BMC somewhat paint it as a place for “radical left-wing revolutionary engages, with little tolerance for anything else.” How true or false would you say that picture is?

The last election may have been a test too hard for teenagers to handle - heck, few adults were able to -, but how about, for example, free philosophical discussions on the morality of abortion? I don’t see how these types of topics can be seriously discussed without great tolerance or even sympathy for more conservative points of view. And, in turn, I don’t see how a strong philosophy program can be had without it either.

Any feedback is appreciated!

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@MrKamaji I would definitely say the impression you have of Bryn Mawr is true. Commenting on the tolerance of even slightly conservative points of views and the philosophy: I took a philosophy class in spring 2016 titled Global Ethics. It explored different cultures’ views on things such as genital mutilation, abortion, immigration, refugees etc, as well s explain different types of moral judgement.

This class was entirely composed of biologically female students with the exception of one Haverford guy who was an economics major. While discussing some essays by Garret Hardin on immigration and refugee acceptance in the modern welfare state, he gave a comment supporting some points made in the essay and substantiated them with basic economic theory. As soon as it was clear that he was in favor of limiting immigration to protect a nation’s resources, the entire class turned around and looked at him, and a few girls in front of me huffed and said stuff under their breath. One girl dismissed his academically based comment all together because he was a white guy. As soon as he spoke, ten hands probably went up just to tell him why he was wrong. I agreed with him, being more conservative myself, but I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my thoughts in that environment. And of course anything in support of genital mutilation or abortion, even taking religion and culture in account, was immediately dismissed as being anti-woman.

I also had an introductory American politics class when the presidential campaigns were their most intense. I walked away from that class upset and dissatisfied so many times because somehow conversation always got derailed from constitutional analysis and history to most of the room bashing Trump or the other candidates at the time.

I’m currently at a community college as I transition from Bryn Mawr to my next college, and in my oral presentation class a guy gave a persuasive presentation on being against abortion based on his Catholic faith and medical facts. This was my first month there, and I was so shocked that he was willing to say something like that in public. Small moments like that in my classes have made me realize just how stifling and restricting Bryn Mawr’s extremist liberal environment is.

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I chose Schreyer over Pitt honors, partially because it felt more selective and partially because I liked the campus better. If you have any non-premed (I’m engineering, so am familiar with math, science, research, honors credits, thesis, housing, class selection topics, etc) questions about it let me know!

6

@kaachi Have you checked to confirm that Bryn Mawr will allow you to commute ? At most LACs, there is an expectation that students (especially freshmen) will Iive in college housing. It’s typically considered part of the LAC experience.

Your numbers are way, way off. Bryn Mawr is a much wealthier school than either Pitt or Penn State, on an endowment per student basis:

BMC: endowment 0.797 billion$, 1,800 students, endowment per student $443,000
Penn State: endowment 3.6 billion$ systemwide, 99,100 students systemwide, endowment per student $36,000
Pitt: endowment: 3.5 billion$ systemwide, 35,000 students systemwide, endowment per student $100,000

2016 endowment values here:
http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/EndowmentFiles/2016-Endowment-Market-Values.pdf

So yes, BMC has a lower endowment than the other two schools, but only by a factor of about 4.5 (about $3.5 billion vs. about $0.8 billion). Not 375. And given BMC’s much smaller enrollment, the endowment per student number works out strongly in BMC’s favor.

Endowment-per-student isn’t the whole story. For example, Penn and Pitt also get financial support from the State of Pennsylvania, and BMC doesn’t. On the other hand, Penn and Pitt have some huge expenses that BMC doesn’t have, like Division I athletic programs, engineering programs, and medical schools. Overall, it’s safe to assume that Bryn Mawr has more money to spend on each individual arts & sciences undergraduates than Pitt or Penn State do.

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@NotSteveBuscemi thanks, and ouch! Part of me really wants this not to be true, since the academic credentials of BMC are so strong, but it is getting hard to ignore the signals coming from everywhere. We’ll be there on the 24th, and I’ll keep my eyes very open. A few questions, if you wouldn’t mind:

  • Are professors ok with that sort of "non-dialog" too? What is their answer to situations like the one you described?
  • One option if one wanted to stay there under this environment would be to isolate oneself, and just worry about academics and getting the most out of the professors. In other words, grind through four years and move on to a good PhD program. Do you know anybody who was doing (or trying to do) that there?
8

After visiting Bryn Mawr, I’ve decided that it is not the place for me for several reasons including those mentioned by @NotSteveBuscemi and the fact that they place a heavy cap on the amount of AP’s transferred. It seems like a great place if you want to live in a serene quiet environment where everyone keeps to themselves all the time. So my dilemma has been narrowed to the classic rivalry: Pitt vs. Penn State

@corbett Point taken. I definitely neglected this from that perspective.

@bodangles haha I’m back to this thread now. Anyways, how difficult is it to maintain a strong GPA at Schreyer’s? I know at Pitt some/most honors classes are ridiculously hard which is why students opt to take normal classes and only take a few honors classes. Schreyers does have a minimum number of honors credits needed per semester but how difficult is it to maintain a strong GPA while fulfilling this requirement? Also, are the opportunities offered as a member of Schreyer’s in terms of research and internships geared more towards the engineering and business majors or is the frequency of opportunities relatively the same for all majors? I am under the impression from reading several threads that the opportunities offered at Schreyer’s for academics are really only beneficial primarily for those in business and engineering.

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I’ve taken three honors math classes (calc 1, calc 2, differential equations), the two required honors English classes, research, and a variety of others (criminology, geography, etc.). The humanities honors classes were not any harder than a normal class for me and I got fairly easy A’s in all of them. The math classes were hit or miss depending on the amount of theory they involved.

I have only been scared of dipping below 3.4 once, and that was because of a non-honors engineering class. In the end I got a B and was fine. 3.96 overall after five semesters. The average GPA for graduating seniors last year was 3.83 (https://www.shc.psu.edu/about/annual-report/). I’d imagine some people drop out of honors for GPA reasons, but 400-500 people every year stick around to be seniors, and clearly they knock it out of the park – not like the average is 3.405, or something. So only you know your capability, but most people do fine.

Since you’re required to do a thesis to graduate with honors, everyone does research, whether humanities or STEM. The prof I work with prefers Schreyer students. No idea about internships because I just went the normal career center route for applying.

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@MrKamaji In the philosophy class I described, the professor just moderated the class. She didnt make any comments about the non-dialogue, but after calling on one or two people, she did give the economics haverbro a chance to respond and defend his points. It was definitely a student driven discussion.

I had an American politics class at Haverford where the professor got annoyed by all the liberal one-sidedness in the classroom and how it was hindering discussion. He said he wished Haverford had more conservatives and then assigned half of the class to be conservatives and threatened docking participation points if students didnt completely argue for assigned positions.

I was only there for my freshman year, and I was isolating myself by the second semester. This quickly lead to my worst depressive episode ever, and despite putting all my energy into my studies, my grades still declined without feeling connected to the community or the will to even try to be a part of it.

I actually know a lot of people who end up hating Bryn Mawr by the end of their second year or have very severe mental illnesses because of the college’s environment. An unusually high amount of students end up taking medical leaves of absence for mental health reasons, which is something I wish I knew before attending the college because it’s something that is just so grossly normalized there. It’s almost assumed that you’re going to take time off for mental health before getting a 4 year degree, and the deans encourage you to step away from the college if you’re even slightly struggling with mental health (no coping skills on this campus!).

I know multiple people who move off campus or do the tri-co dorm exchange program to live on another campus as soon as they can because they want to get away from BMC. I am friends with someone who lived in Philadelphia for her junior and senior years and took most of her classes at Penn and Haverford. She didn’t step foot on Bryn Mawr’s campus after completing her required courses until it was time to collect her degree. It’s way more common than it should be.

You either love or hate Bryn Mawr. There is no middle ground for students.

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To those still on the fence: My daughter graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2013. She majored in psychology and did not have the experience that @NotSteveBuscemi is describing. I’m not denying it, I’m simply offering that there is an alternative existence. For my daughter, the relationships she developed with professors were fantastic. She got to know them personally and they served as mentors to her, both academic and personal. She’s not politically involved and she did not find that there was an insistence on one right way of thinking. On the other hand, she complained about the workload at times, especially during her senior year when she was writing her thesis, and about friend or housing drama. She liked the food then started to tire of it. She loved the traditions, from Lantern Night to May Day. There are highs and lows and there were plenty of people who found that middle ground.

My youngest daughter is at Harvard. Some of the same accusations leveled at BMC above are also leveled at Harvard. The schools are quite different but the issues that surround this generation are found everywhere. Mental health is a critical problem everywhere. Different people have different experiences and it seems to me that all schools are grappling with it. I am not faulting Harvard-they are certainly trying!- but if I had to say which one is doing a better job, I’d say Bryn Mawr is ahead of the curve.

Go and see for yourself what you think. People who leave a school have had bad experiences and sometimes feel a need to convince everyone else that their experience is the only possible valid one. I am not at all attempting to invalidate someone’s experience nor am I trying to say that this is the one and only right school for everyone. It was a great school for one daughter and it’s worth a look with an open mind.

12

Thanks @NotSteveBuscemi and @3girls3cats for the feedback. We’re going to visit Bryn Mawr tomorrow, as part of the “Bryn Mawr in Focus” event for admitted students. It may be that we are making too much of this, but it is an important decision. A few points:

We were at Reed two weeks ago. One of the things the president said, without being prompted, is that he wished there were “more conservative students around,” and he chalks the progressive bias largely to self-selection: progressives are more likely to apply for liberal arts colleges. I thought that at least the college acknowledged the bias, which was nice.

We visited the Bryn Mawr campus today, on our own. I always look for fliers, and things like that, to gauge the mood. All I saw were “anti-Trump film screening” and invited speakers for “choice issues.” Dorm rooms had the expected “not my president” signs and others. That would be all ok if I could find anything whatsoever from another point of view, but I haven’t. I’ll keep my eyes and ears opened tomorrow, but so far BMC looks like the most extreme of all the colleges we visited. The campus, of course, is gorgeous, and I definitely can’t afford a house in the neighborhood.

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I’m a current student at Bryn Mawr and can say that the endowment is a huuuuuge plus. I also have a few friends who live off campus and are still heavily involved socially at the college. If its cheap and you think you can handle the abundance of blue hair, BMC is an academically superior program and an opportunity worth considering!

@MrKamaji I also happen to be a libertarian poli sci major, maybe I can ease some concerns

14

Thanks @laxgal39. In the end, my daughter chose Bryn Mawr. The classics department (apparent) big superiority over all the others was very hard to ignore. I think she would have done well in any of the colleges, and I left the decision entirely to her. I have to say she was not super comfortable with the all-girls thing (she has been in all-girls schools for the last seven years), with the “too perfect” campus, and many other things. But then again, no college was perfect, and she chose academics over anything else. Here’s hoping that it works out!