<p>Hello,
I was just wondering if anyone had an opinion or a personal experience with the natural sciences department at Sarah Lawrence. On one side, I feel that it is beneficial to have a small faculty to build a strong relationship. However, I am nervous about the limited amount of courses available, and while I understand that they have a reputable pre-med program, I am unsure about their program for students who want to go into research, etc. Thank you.</p>
<p>There are a limited number of courses available in the natural sciences at SLC, such that trying to specialize at in one type of natural science is difficult, but if you’re searching for something more general and varied the program is perfect. </p>
<p>I don’t know much about the mathematics, chemistry, or physics departments, but the biology and biology-esque psychology courses I’ve taken are very oriented towards students who wants to do research. My seminar readings were almost entirely of scientific/peer-reviewed papers (not textbooks), and conference work is very flexible – one of my conference biology papers referenced 45 individual articles (it was kind of a nightmare, actually), and in another class I was expected to perform my own experiment and then report on it (which included studying APA ethics, gathering assistants to perform the experiment, funding the experiment itself, analyzing the results statistically and writing a long paper about it APA format. This was in a psychology course, however, not a natural science one).</p>
<p>Conference work is very much whatever a student wants it to be – some kids in my class made a stale effort writing papers, but others really push themselves to write a paper worthy of a peer-reviewed journal.</p>
<p>Did you have a certain science in mind?</p>
<p>Thank you for your reply! I am leaning towards biology possibly pre-med. However, I am also interested in Environmental Studies (Social Science) and Chemistry. I am familiar with the Conference work and your description of the experimentation work sounds appealing. I guess my main concern is graduate school preparation and if the available courses at SLC will provide me with the opportunity to explore academic interests.</p>
<p>The best option might be to simply contact the professors in both of those fields and ask them if their courses are offered in enough frequency to prepare a given student for graduate school. For something like English or Psychology the answer would be obvious, but I don’t know enough about the Chemistry and E. studies to make a good judgement.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Thank you for all your help, and I will be contacting the professors soon</p>