<p>Great news! I am sure you will have a wonderful, exciting, and challenging time. I would recommend to be open-minded about your college experience and be willing to explore even if you ultimately pursue your goal to become a lawyer working for the U.N. Part of the fun and advantage of attending a top LAC is that you can learn to stretch yourself intellectually, socially, and personally in many different ways. If you want to get in touch with my daughter, please PM me. She’ll be visiting Singapore in December so perhaps you can plan a mini-reunion of alums and students.</p>
<p>Hi yxyxyx,
Just curious how all is going your first semester. I hope you are enjoying all aspects of life at Smith and the magnificent NE fall foliage. If you do not want to post, please feel free to PM me. Best wishes.</p>
<p>I’m curious as well seeing as I’m interested in Smith. Especially interested in hearing a freshman’s pov. I’m in a similar, though less intense, situation as you once were (: My mom is biased against LAC’s believing they are almost hippie-esque, roll your own degree, have no job upon graduation. She also thinks they are unaffordable for us lay-people and schools such as Smith are reserved for “those with money”. Just adds a whole other dimension in the difficulty with getting into college…</p>
<p>
Each of those five premises is very incorrect.</p>
<p>Cwhaticando, you should cull through past forum threads as there are lots of references to how successful Smithies are after graduation; show them to your mom. I know of a Smithie who just graduated in May; a government major, she landed a very, very hot-ticket job in Washington, working with a team to research and propose government efficiencies; she just loves the job.</p>
<p>You are going to need to make a case for LACs if that is where you want to go. There’s lots of info out there–go for it!</p>
<p>Cwhaticando, do you have any ideas of potential majors? Maybe that should also be part of the conversation.</p>
<p>Cwhat as far as affordability, my daughter comes from what you would call “middle-to-upper middle class” circumstances. She received financial aid from Smith which made it more affordable than our flagship state university. </p>
<p>LAC’s provide a great grounding in fields as diverse as medicine, engineering, psychology, linguistics, law, politics and economics. I could spend hours giving you the bio’s of graduates of Smith, MHC, Wellesley as well as coed schools such as Amherst, Trinity and Wesleyan who are successfully pursuing careers in these fields.</p>
<p>The kids who study at LAC’s may appear to be “hippies” of a sort(this comes from the authentic article, circa 1970) but at the same time they are dead serious about their studies as well as their futures.</p>
<p>Good luck and press on!</p>
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</p>
<p>This was our experience as well… </p>
<p>This is the Wikipedia listing of Smith alum:
[Smith</a> College - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Smith College - Wikipedia”>Smith College - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>If anything our experience is the opposite - our daughter had a strong idea of what she wants to do and has concentrated heavily in that area while we encourage her to try a few new things while she has the chance 
She aslo has friends who have recently graduated with jobs in biomed and one who is becoming a physician assistant. I would also say her friends come from a vary wide range of economic backgrounds.</p>
<p>TheDad: tell me about it. </p>
<p>To everyone else: I recently had a “discussion” with my parents about undergraduate and the fact is if I don’t get heaps of financial aid (I am the only child attending college my parents make 140k+ combined, they’re married, just for some quick facts) then I can’t go to any schools that cost more than around 25k including room and board. I am hopeful that fin aid at these schools will be generous, but, it’s just hopefulness. I’ll surely update if I DO get good fin aid… and then I’ll brag so everyone knows fin aid is accessible (:</p>
<p>Actually, I used those “Net Price” calculators on collegeboard.com I did one for Amherst (supposedly like Smith in fin aid) and one for Mt Holyoke. Amherst gave me an est of ~25,000 while MHC gave me 3,000. So I don’t know how this will end up working out.</p>
<p>I will apply though, especially since it’s free online. Nothing to lose.</p>