My daughter applied to several LC’s and received Living Arts. She’s trying to decide if it’s worth it - she’s worried it will be too much for her, along with her classes, and will just add more stress. But I think it would be a good way to meet people. Does anyone have any experience with this particular LC? Or with any of them? Thank you!
I’m not in living arts, and I’m an incoming freshman, but I’ve heard really great things about the program, and it seems that many people who have been in it really enjoyed it! 
@saxlady My daughter’s doing it! I’m guessing she may have a conflict with a mandatory meeting once in awhile, but I’m sure she can be excused if it’s something important. Her main reason for applying was so that she’d have a built-in “community” in the dorm right away, and that may help her with the transition since she is out of state.
The Living Arts course requirement will fulfill the English writing requirement for SMTD, so that’s not a burden. I know of one person doing an engineering/music dual degree who decided to forego Living Arts because he didn’t have time in his schedule for that extra course. Hope it works out for your daughter!
From my understanding, Living Arts is one of the more laid back MLCs, in the sense that if you compare LA to other MLCs on campus, the requirements are light. Any MLC will help students meet each other just in the nature of the idea of a learning community, I’ve made quite a few friends in my MLC, but most of my friends are in the orgs that I’m involved in. I’m in the RC, the two (RC & LA) are loosely similar in the fact that they both have some focus on art/creativity, but the RC has more requirements and structure.
WISE also has very little obligation.
Most of the LCs don’t really add that much stress to your schedule as a freshman. I spent my freshman year in WISE, and I had friends in HSSP and a couple of other communities as well. I can’t say for LA, but for WISE and HSSP, all we had to do was take a bi-weekly 1 1/2 hour class, and your grades were based on participation in class discussions more than anything else. We all had our fair share of assignments (usually a 1-2 page paper with enough of a prompt that you could write it in 30 minutes) but there was always adequate time to complete them, and in WISE, the director and GSI were really flexible (i.e, if you have a ton of mid-terms in one week and a paper due for another class, they’re more than happy to extend a date for your assignment because they understand that those grades are far more important). I’m not staying in the MLC for my sophomore year because being a returning student is a much larger commitment and I wanted to live off-campus, but it was a great place to be as a freshman who didn’t know a whole lot about where she was. Everyone was really friendly and I definitely got the vibe that people WANTED me to succeed in my field. Hopefully your daughter will too! It’s a great experience and I’d definitely recommend it.
Based on my experiences and the experiences of my friends and word of mouth - LLCs ranked in terms of commitment
- RC
Huge Gap
- MRC
Big Gap
- WISE/HSSP/Living Arts/LHSP
Medium Gap
- MCSP
It might be unfair to rank MRC as #2, since most of the commitments are UROP-associated, so being in MRC adds very little commitment if one was already interested in doing UROP, which makes it arguably the best deal for those kind of students (not to mention MRC students seem to do significantly better with actual placements in research projects compared to non-MRC UROP).
So, I just discovered that my daughter never completed her contract for Living Arts!! I didn’t realize there was a separate contract for the LLC - on her housing contract, it listed LA, so I just assumed that if we completed her housing contract, then she was automatically in LA. Ugh. Apparently it was due ages ago.
And @choirsandstages, I don’t know if you know this, but my oldest daughter is a VP major at UM. She is a junior/senior (she took a semester off, so she’ll be a 2nd semester junior this fall). She LOVES her studio professor!
Um…what contract for Living Arts?!? Where do I find this, @saxlady ?
Edited to add: Ok I found what you’re talking about and she did do that. I remember it being a bit annoying because it had more questions that weren’t just short answers. I felt like - she’s already accepted, why add more hurdles? Anyway, whew. Did your daughter get it straightened out?
@choirsandstages Yes and no…she received several emails from Living Arts, asking if she was still going to do it, and so she emailed them back and told them that no, she had changed her mind and wouldn’t be doing it. So now she’ll get a new housing assignment at this late date! I’m really unhappy about her decision, but I felt it was hers to make. 