Increasing Resources for Financial Aid and Student Support

President Cassidy seeks to make a Bryn Mawr education and all of the programs the College offers available to talented students of all economic backgrounds. During Defy Expectation, the College’s most recent fundraising campaign, which concluded in May 2021, donors contributed $60 million in new endowed scholarship support and established 100 new endowed scholarship funds.

These gifts and other funds have allowed Bryn Mawr to increase its investment in need-based financial aid over the past several years. In 2022 the College eliminated loans in financial aid packages for families with annual incomes of $60,000 or less and reduced loan expectations substantially for all other students receiving need-based aid to support middle income families. Bryn Mawr also reduced expectations for savings from summer jobs for all students receiving need-based aid and replaced these with additional scholarship aid.

Defy Expectation also raised funding for more than 1,000 summer internships; to support student travel costs for courses that engage in field work around the world; to develop new staffing and programming for first-generation students and those from families of limited income; and to create a Career and Civic Engagement Center to help students explore and succeed in their post-graduation professional pathways.

Looking forward, President Cassidy aspires to more than double the campaign’s scholarship fundraising success and to realize her aspiration to eliminate loans for all students.