Bryn Mawr College

Use Summer Courses to Fulfill Requirements

Major requirements: If you wish to use your summer course to fulfill a major requirement, you should consult with your major adviser or the chair of your department before enrolling in the course. In these cases, it is recommended that you obtain your adviser's signature on a transfer credit approval form, which you can pick up in the Registrar's office. It is highly unlikely that a summer course taken at another institution will be accepted as fulfilling a requirement for a 300-level course.

 

Divisional and quantitative requirements: Students are often attracted to the idea of taking a summer course to fulfill a division requirement. In particular, many students think that it will be easier to take a lab course or a quantitative course when they will not have three other courses competing for their time and attention. For many students, this plan works well. For some students, however, the intense amount of class time per week and the quick pace demanded by a shortened semester makes a summer course more difficult than a course taken during the regular fall and spring terms. Before enrolling in a summer course, students should consider their own learning styles and their history with similar material in the past. If a student will also be working during the summer, it may not be a wise idea for her to take a summer course. If you are unsure about whether a summer course is a good plan for you, consult your dean.

 

Once you have decided to take a summer course to fulfill a divisional requirement, please consult with your dean and the registrar. You may need to show the course description to a Bryn Mawr professor in order to determine if the summer course is comparable to a similar course offered at Bryn Mawr. In this case, you should have the professor sign a transfer credit approval form, which you may get from the registrar.

 

Foreign Language Requirement: If you are studying a language taught at Bryn Mawr or at Haverford, the foreign language requirement will not be fulfilled simply by taking intermediate-level courses at another institution. If you do take such courses, you will ordinarily need to take a Bryn Mawr exam to demonstrate your proficiency in the language. If you are studying a language not taught at Bryn Mawr or Haverford, you will need to take a proficiency exam through the Penn Language Center , or through arrangement with some other university. If you have questions, consult your dean.