The last visit! Makes me sort of sad to think we have to go back home tomorrow…but, might as well enjoy today! I’ve always been fascinated by life in New York (I can blame Gossip Girl for that) and now, I might actually have the chance to if I go to Sarah Lawrence.
1. Location - 30 minutes outside of Manhattan/Grand Central Station with either a free school shuttle or the subway. With the city being so close, SLC offers so many resources and internships to its students that it’s almost unbelievable.
2. Size - Definitely a small liberal arts school with only 1,200 undergrads. The student-to-faculty ration is 9:1 with an average class size of 12 students. Though there are large seminars which are around 60 students, those are the intro classes and usually filter out as a student advances up.
3. Curriculum - Incredibly open curriculum. SLC splits up their classes differently though - Instead of the regular 6 classes one would take, SLC kids take only 3 but each class has an additional seminar class. In that class, they work one-on-one with a faculty member to create a paper/project/etc. that is relevant to the class but also interesting to the student. With this in mind, SLC kids do NOT take finals because their seminar essay IS their final. That part I liked! There is a minimum requirement though which I wasn’t too fond of.
4. Student Life - SLC is very much not a sports campus and that is perfect for me actually. They have student-run art galleries, coffee shops and tea houses, study spaces, etc. There are also fun film festivals, concerts, performances and students are allowed to suggest things and more often than not, the school agrees and pays for it.
5. Accommodations - This is the part I wasn’t too thrilled with. Walking into a typical dorm, it was run-down. Granted, it was the end of the year, but it was dirty, walls were cracked, the bathroom looked rusty/moldy, furniture was chipped/broken, etc. Now I know that no school will ever live up to my standards of cleanliness but I have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise, the dorms were larger than I expected them to be.
6. Writing Program - This is what might put SLC up top and outweigh all the negative things about the campus. This was the only school that we visited and that I have been able to find that offers a specified and intensive writing program, major-wise. Not only do they require ALL their students to excel in writing, but they urge us to use that writing in all disciplines, even in say science and math.
SLC is a very writing-heavy campus and I think that that will be perfect for me.
7. Finances - This is the tricky part. Although SLC does give out financial aid, it is not huge amounts while the tuition is a whopping $62,000 (rounded up) If finance is an issue and there is no scholarship, I’m afraid that SLC will not be an option.
In perfect seriousness, although I couldn’t necessarily picture myself in a dorm at SLC (at least the one we saw) I could see myself going to the school and being that close to the city, in that environment. Sarah Lawrence felt like an old village while we were walking through and it was beaiutiful. Plus, we found Hagrid’s hut! Plus, with graduates like Barbara Walters, Vera Wang, and J.J. Abrams, I would be crazy not to apply!
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