The closest partnership is with Haverford College, just a little over a mile away. Bryn Mawr and Haverford students take classes and some even major at each other’s campuses. This greatly expands the fields of study available to a student since some programs are available only on one campus (Music and Fine Arts at Haverford, Theater and Dance at Bryn Mawr, for example). But even programs that exist on both campuses may have different emphases or approaches.
Nor is Bi-Co cooperation limited to the academic realm. Many student groups are fully Bi-Co and informal social opportunities abound. All of this is made possible by the Blue Bus, which makes more than 20 runs per day. Whether going to your Japanese drill, a lecture by a distinguished visitor, or a late night rehearsal or party, the Blue Bus will get you there.
The Tri-Co relationship with Swarthmore College also significantly enriches student experience. Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford share an academic calendar and wide cross-registration, so even with the greater distance (30 minutes), many students do take classes at Swarthmore. More and more academic programs are explicitly Tri-Co, including Linguistics, Environmental Studies, and Arabic.
Bryn Mawr also has cooperative relationships with the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League research university 20 minutes by train from campus. During the academic year, students may take up to two undergraduate courses per semester in Penn’s more than 75 liberal arts departments. Students can take courses in fields that are literally A to Z: from Actuarial Math to Zulu. Students also may take up to a total of four courses in Penn’s undergraduate pre-professional programs. Finally, joint degree programs give students the chance to begin working on a graduate degree at Penn (in Education, Engineering, or City and Regional Planning) while earning their undergraduate degree. Penn is easily reached through public transit, and subsidies are available for students taking classes there.