Bryn Mawr is a study in contradictions. Its a college with 500 graduate students in programs such as Social Work and French. It’s an all-women institution but incredibly diverse with 40% minority and international students. It is also a woman’s college who historically has partnered with an all male college Haverford that is now itself co-ed.
Like it’s brother school, Bryn Mawr has a strong honor code constructed and enforced by the students and refined every year through a plenary meeting. Also like Haverford, the strengths of Bryn Mawr compliment the strengths of Haverford and allow students to not only take classes at both institutions but major and live at either institution. In fact, the two schools have a combined course catalog and bus facilitating the integrated nature of the two schools. Bryn Mawr students can also take classes at Swarthmore and UPenn. The most popular majors a re Biology, English and Foreign Languages (12 languages). 1/4 of the students at Bryn Mawr major in math or science. That is three times the national average. THe strongest programs at Bryn Mawr are Archeology, Growth and Structure of Cities, Physics, Math, Art History, Classics and Foreign Languages.
Because of the small size of the school, Bryn Mawr is able to offer small classes. Like all schools, the largest classes tend to be the intro classes students take freshman year but in this case the largest class maxes out at 50. Regular class size is 10 - 19 with a student faculty ratio of 8:1. Classes are not lecture based but rather focus on discussion. As a result, strong mentor relationships flourish. The school requires two classes in each of the three divisions (social science, natural science and humanities) as well as one semester of quantitative work, intermediate level competency in a foreign language and physical education. During their freshman year students are required to take the Emily Basch seminar. Its comprised of 14 students and focuses on critical thinking, research and writing. Different seminars focus on different topics.
Life at Bryn Mawr is steeped in tradition with May Day festivities, Lantern Night, Parade Night Hell Week and Step Signs. Bryn Mawr students are not worried about what others think. Instead they are independent minded, very respectful of one another, inquisitive, interested in others, and collaborative. The social life at Bryn Mawr is relatively low key with student theater, cappella concerts, movies, speakers... It’s more of a “friends over to your room” kind of place. For the more traditional party scene Bryn Mawr students head over to Haverford, Villanova and Swarthmore.
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