<p>This is my first post here, so please bear with me. My daughter is a sophomore in HS, very driven, 4.0 unweighted, takes all honors classes, is a classical pianist and a writer (won't go into the details here, but she does have some awards along these lines). I don't know about test scores yet, because she has just taken the PSAT. Her public high school, though small, is well-respected by admissions committees, so if she continues to do well (and yep, there's plenty of time to screw up!), and has good test scores, I imagine she will be a fairly competitive applicant. </p>
<p>Last summer, she bought one of those college review books (think it was US News) and read it while on vacation, slowly eliminating schools and entire states (Alaska, too cold; Hawaii, people only go for the weather and won't be serious about school --<em>G</em>) as she went. At the end of this little journey, she decided that THE school for her was Sarah Lawrence. I think their do-it-yourself approach to a major and the emphasis on creative writing and literature is what appealed to her. </p>
<p>Her father and I both encouraged her to look at a variety of schools and not to rule anything out until it comes time to apply. He took her to a Stanford alumni function, where she really seemed to enjoy the conversation. This made her think she might like to apply there, so there is hope, but she's a very intense person and she's still convinced that Sarah Lawrence is the place for her.</p>
<p>This isn't my decision, of course--we just write the checks--but if she persists in wanting to go to SL, do I need to be concerned? It doesn't seem to have a very good reputation nationally (and no, we're not snobs). I don't want her to make a mistake like this and find she can't get a job or that people don't take her seriously because she didn't go to a selective school.</p>
<p>I know she has time to branch out, but how do I encourage her to do this? Surely people don't choose a college at 15!</p>
<p>Sarah Lawrence is the polar opposite of what I’d consider to be “selective”. The school doesn’t require any standardized tests and only 74% of their students even submitted their high school GPAs! </p>
<p>If your daughter wants to go to Sarah Lawrence, she’ll probably be in. Sarah Lawrence has built quite a reputation for admitting practically anyone into the college.</p>
<p>I think Sarah Lawrence has an excellent reputation. Honestly, for 99% of all jobs, what matters is what she does with the opportunities she’s given, not where her degree is from. And for the right kid, Sarah Lawrence offers some pretty great opportunities. </p>
<p>My D looked at SL, and decided it wasn’t for her, but I wouldn’t have worried for a minute about her future prospects had she decided that it was. </p>
<p>I think if it were me, I’d just keep it low profile. The last thing you want to do is set up a power struggle between the two of you on her choices. It’s fine if she thinks she’s found her “dream” school at this point. It’s really early in the whole process and I would just about guarantee that going forward she’ll have plenty of chances to rethink this before she needs to decide.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about specific college choices now. </p>
<p>Wait to see what her scores are, visit some colleges, encourage her to keep an open mind.</p>
<p>Kids can get a school into their head at a youngish age and then actually go to the school and be disappointed.</p>
<p>I got a call today from a mom whose son is/was a freshman at MIT this fall. That’s where he wanted to go all during his high school years. However, he just announced that he dropped out and was coming home. I guess the school was a bad fit for him - even tho he had the stats, Val, perfect SAT, etc… (Frankly, I thought he gave up too soon, but he didn’t allow for any outside input by pulling the plug himself. (yikes!)).</p>
<p>So, continue to have her look at other colleges… :)</p>
<p>As long as you can afford to send her wherever she goes, that eliminates that issue! :)</p>
<p>One of my kids has a good friend who went to SLC. She is a stunning young woman who likes to dress to the nines in retro styles. After SL she entered law school where she was dismissed as a ditz by her classmates. She wound up with the highest grades in her 1L class.</p>
<p>Sarah Lawrence attracts quirky, interesting people like this. Although the admit rate is high, I’d attribute much of that to self-selection by kids who don’t need the reassurance of a better-known, more conventional brand. </p>
<p>This is the best small, coed liberal arts college in the NYC metro area. You get the faculty attention of a LAC plus all the internship opportunities the city has to offer in fields as diverse as business, finance, the arts, publishing, social services, and government.</p>
<p>Take her on a visit there (depends how far you live from SL, though). If she’s anything like most people her age in high school she will go through a few other phases of being obsessed with different schools.</p>
<p>She is a stunning young woman who likes to dress to the nines in retro styles. After SL she entered law school where she was dismissed as a ditz by her classmates. She wound up with the highest grades in her 1L class.</p>
<p>Another important little detail you might need to know, Massmomm, is that aside from being known for unconventional admissions policies, Sarah Lawrence is renowned as the second most expensive college in the United States.</p>
<p>Be aware that the college name doesn’t get a student a job; the student gets the job and progresses according to her own skills and abilities. If her college’s name helps her get a foot in the door, it only does so once, when the new grad is 22.</p>
<p>Here are a couple of student comments from an online review site about SLC:</p>
<p>“SLC feels like a much more mature atmosphere than your usual frat/beer pong/football type of school.”</p>
<p>“I love SLC more than anything. Ridiculously expensive? Yes. But it is my ideal school. It has helped me become a person I’m proud to be; it has given me confidence.”</p>
<p>To me, those sound like students who are pretty well-equipped for the job market.</p>
<p>While there is a small grain of truth in that statement, there was more to the story. Michele Tolela Myers tried to have her cake and eat it too! SLC decided not to use the SAT (different from making it optional) but also wanted to maintain an unchanged ranking. The USNews warned SLC that they would (justifiably) penalize the school. Refusing to fill the survey and protesting openly was just more of the same (and after the fact) gamesmanship. </p>
<p>This is a rare event where USNews deserves the credit in dealing correctly with the institutions that are deliberately gaming the system. Bob Morse was correct in placing SLC in a separate category with all other schools that cannot be ranked. Morse could get even more credit by having a zero tolerance policy and place ALL SAT optional schools in the same group than SLC.</p>
<p>SLC is not all that selective and fairly intense. I’m close to a couple of people at SLC and it’s clear to me that the college doesn’t suit most normal kids. It’s extremely and uniformly liberal, and the students are extremely quirky which has some pluses. Due to adverse selection though, they often have decent applicants who have done miserably on their SATs apply to SLC because those applicants would never get into an equivalent college if that college saw their SAT scores. The SAT might be a bad test, but you don’t want to be picking people who’ve done extremely poorly on it and now want to hide their scores.</p>
<p>SLC caps classes at 3/semester under the pretext that their classes are intense (which is true), but this is also to keep classes small. If you have a limited number and size of classrooms the easiest way to fit students in is to cap the number of classes they can take. I don’t know of any recruiters who hire from SLC, but I imagine with their writing focused curriculum, some of the top students must get into good law schools. </p>
<p>Finally SLC is the most expensive private university in the US with some phenomenal marketing, but ultimately it just doesn’t live up to the hype, and it definitely doesn’t come close to justifying the huge price tag. It seems like SLC is just trying to make a lot of money from its students. </p>
<p>Racial diversity is low at SLC which is striking given that it’s in New York city. The college is in a really nice area and the campus is gorgeous and well maintained. It comes across to me as a school for rich, liberal hipsters to complain about the world. On the positive you will be in small classes, and you will be surrounded by some passionate professors and students.</p>
<p>Visit SLC with your daughter. I did, and was very impressed. Would have been very happy if my D had chosen it (except for the $$). Students must take responsibility for their education, and learn to manage an intense workload and diverse projects. It prepares students extremely well, many say their undergraduate courses were more like grad school level. If she likes it, she would get a very good education.</p>
<p>It depends on what field she wants to go into. You make it sound like she wants to be a writer and that’s not a secure job in the least regardless where you graduate from.</p>
<p>It is very important before any decisions are made to visit the school. My daughter pored over the data when she was looking for colleges and came up with her dream school, a very prestigious LAC in MA. She was absolutely in love and then she visited the college… she now attends a very prestigious LAC in CA and was never happier.
In the end what is really important is how you do you feel about the place you will spend the next four years of your life.</p>
<p>Agreed with Artrell. In high school, I read the profiles of colleges in PR and Fiske guidebooks very carefully and decided Brown was the perfect fit. Then I visited after applying ED and was underwhelmed with the school. Some colleges sounded pretty good to me in the guidebook but after visiting, I decided not to apply there at all. The college visit is pretty important and can drastically change your opinion of a school.</p>
<p>A classic line about Sarah Lawrence from an old episode of “The Simpsons” - Bart gets a job hanging menus on doorknobs for a Thai restaurant. The owner explains the business strategy to him: “I get more business. Send daughters to small liberal-arts college. Maybe Sarah Lawrence. Call professors by first name.” Bart ends up throwing the menus in a dumpster. The restaurant owner sees him and wails, “Now restaurant fail. Children go to state college. Serious students powerless against drunken jockocracy. Baseball hats everywhere.”</p>
<p>One really important thing for her is a school that isn’t known for partying. However, in the past few days, I’ve encouraged her to join this site and do the college search quiz, which she has done, so there’s hope she’ll broaden her views.</p>