Bryn Mawr College
- Academics

Busy but Amazing

The Bryn Mawr workload is pretty heavy. However, the professors are generally really sweet and willing to work with you, the classes are interesting and I really feel like I'm being taught by the best. So basically it's worth the occasional late night. We also have self scheduled final exams which are amazing! The campus is gorgeous so you can always find a great place to study. Also since we have the tri-college consortium with Haverford and Swat we get more options for classes. And if you still can't find the class you want, you can cross register at UPenn, and they have any class you could ever want to take. Seriously, their course guide is like War and Peace.

Linguistics and Languages Major

The gist of the major is an intense education in Linguistics applied through proficiency in at least two foreign languages. There is an honors major as well, which I might opt into, involving linguists who are native speakers of the languages coming and orally questioning your thesis. The linguistics department is going through an overhaul. Right now the entire department is at Swarthmore, which means a lot of traveling but it isn't too bad -- but they're expanding it to be a Tri-Co (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore) department to take away some of the bureaucracy. The department is great otherwise. I love all the professors I've had so far. They are truly experts at what they do, having made wonderful discoveries and accomplishments in the field. They are quite well connected and have been published in the biggest Linguistics journals, but have been extremely amiable and approachable. I have found the workload quite rigorous but manageable. Of course I'm partial to the subject matter, but it really is applicable to almost anything else one might want to major in, making a double major or minor a real possibility. My only complaint has to do with the job market; clearly, linguistics doesn't guarantee as much security as STEM, business or econ, but that's more an issue of personal choice and preference than one involving the school's standards.

Very Hard, but Supportive

The academics here are very rigorous and it's easy to fall behind, but your professors always know your name and will reach out to you if you're struggling. Some professors are really strict though.

Registration is easy, but do it fast or you might not get the classes you want.

The 360 and Praxis programs are really great, but very in-depth and take a lot of work. This school is not for slackers!