My son is a student and the Dean of students apologized at orientation saying it was a new system. My sense is it will be better next year. My son had no complications in getting the room but it is a triple.
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The school gave freshman in triples $600 (per semester) on their Skidcard, and also give the parents $400 per semester rebate (if they’re still in the triples).
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My freshman got the $600 on his Skidcard, but we didn’t hear anything about the $400 power semester. Is that supposed to just show up on the bill?
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They credit the tuition $400 sometime in October if all the roommates are still in a triple. I think they figure some people will move around and it could be different by then. However if it’s different, the student still gets to keep the $600 on the Skidcard. Likewise for spring, the $600 is at the beginning of the semester, and the $400 credit would be about 6 weeks in.
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This is exactly how it worked for us last year. While no one wants a triple, it was a nice benefit! My daughter still has some money left over from this on her Skid card for this year.
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Thanks. She is settling in. Things aren’t any better, but also not any worse. Hoping things will improve eventually.
My daughter is a freshman. Let me start out by saying that she LOVES it at Skidmore - she applied ED1 (and she wasn’t entirely certain that it was a good fit) but is entirely happy. That being said, there are things that were surprising to me, even if I’d already heard about them. Here they are:
• The dorms are not remotely nice. (Maybe the ones with new vinyl flooring are better.) They don’t have the clean and cheerful vibe that the pictures on the webpage show. The descriptions on the webpage are not up to date - they mention lounges on each floor of Jonsson Tower that have long ago been made into dorm rooms. The washing machines - if they work at all - are moldy. The dryers often take multiple cycles to dry. And all of this is at $2 a pop.
• While we’re on dorms, let me mention that there is a lot of weed on campus. A LOT. My kid says (who isn’t weed-averse) says that she walks through a small cloud of it every time she enters her dorm. Many of the kids who requested substance-free housing didn’t get it because there wasn’t enough interest. There are parents who simply say “they have to enforce the rules!” but there is absolutely no chance that will happen. There are many kids on campus who happily don’t partake, but it is everywhere. As an aside - my kid saw one of her professors walking his dog and smoking a joint her first week of school. She loved it.
• Classes! This was the thing that made me lose my mind over the summer - and not all of it is specific to Skidmore. Look at the big list of classes that the college supposedly offers but then compare it to what they actually offer semester to semester. One department of interest to my kid listed seventeen classes but only really offers four of them. Next - classes are often very hard to get into as a freshman and sophomore, and this isn’t just the classes that are highly in demand. It’s a huge problem, and our tour guide flat-out lied about it when we did a campus visit. You can see the actual listings for Skidmore and watch how a class fills up during registration. (And know that if you’re looking at the numbers now and it shows an available seat in something that looks in demand that it probably means someone dropped out late.) They do two days of registration for each grade, working their way down to freshmen and the pickings are slim, particularly going into day 2. If your kid is interested in one of the majors with lots of required classes (maybe fourteen) and can’t get into the first level as a freshman (this happens!) the answer is summer school. There are parents who report that their kid didn’t get into a single class that they wanted. (And while we’re at it - Skidmore requires an upper level math class. And if your kid got below a 650 on the math SAT they will take a placement test. If they don’t do well on it, they may end up taking two or even three math classes to meet the math requirement.)
• Last thing - Skidmore is sometimes laughably bad at communication, and meeting dates, and changing things, as the OP pointed out. They say they will announce something on a certain date that they change over and over again. Sometimes without letting professors know.
At the end of the day, though, the kids are great. Most of the teachers that my kid has encountered are great. She and I are both happy with her being there - but I wish I’d known more about how things actually were before she applied. (And sorry this is SO LONG!!!)
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That was very helpful. I have been wondering about small LACs that list so many classes in a department. They have very few professors, so how does that work? I was thinking that they hire adjuncts, but maybe the truth is that they don’t offer all those choices every semester.
Also helpful was the heads up about math. It would be a shame for a humanities major to waste three classes on something they will won’t enjoy and won’t use.
I am glad your D is happy! I think Skidmore is beautiful and I like Saratoga Springs.
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Iff there wasn’t enough interest, then shouldn’t none of the kids got it? It kind of sounds like too much interest if they turned some kids away but not others.
I’m surprised there wasn’t enough interest. My two older kids both went to LAC’s where they devoted entire floors or wings to substance free housing and in one case an entire building used by sophomores and some juniors.
Thank you for all of this info. My D plans to apply ED1 this Nov but now I’m concerned.
I’d assume the OP meant that there wasn’t enough interest to designate an entire dorm to substance-free.
My son is a freshman, and fwiw, he got all 4 of his first choice classes, but I do think he was in the first half of the alphabet. (They skip it for 2nd semester). He does like his classes.
While the housing isnt ideal (although does get much better after freshman year, my daughter has a single this year in the same outdated dorms) and there are issues just like at any school, my daughter has loved Skidmore and wouldn’t change her choice at all! Perhaps I’m feeling more charitable as we just got back visiting from the family weekend – the more I see my Soph daughter on the campus the more I realize what a great education she is getting, there are opportunities galore, and she is learning, growing and maturing.
If you have any Skidmore questions please feel free to PM, I’d be happy to share our experience. Good luck to your daughter!
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My daughter is a Biology major and art minor. From what I see in the Bio dept is that they do offer the required 100 level Bio classes and labs every semester for freshman. There are enough seats for all (although the lab times get a little tricky with scheduling). The 200 and 300 level classes they rotate around. So not all are offered every semester. But then again there’s only something like 50 Bio majors so from what I see so far it works out. The profs all seem very seasoned. For art, there’s more classes and sections offered but also more demand. As a freshman it’s not easy to get art classes, especially if you are registering last, but my daughter was able to squeak into one last year and is taking 2 this semester. Her issue is more that it’s hard to take both art and a science class b/c the art classes are longer classes and the labs take up time so the scheduling of both is challenging.
As for math, my D’s SAT scores were high enough to place out of the math requirement.
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Thank you for your honesty about the Skidmore challenges as we were thinking about adding it to our list. For a smaller size school, you would hope that there wouldn’t be that much difficulty getting classes (especially for those required in your major) so between that and not much diverse offerings of classes and the freshman housing issue, it doesn’t quite sound too good at the moment…especially in our situation, we would be across the country from our student so traveling and access to the school isn’t easy.
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