Hi, curious about Sweetbriar. Daughter has PGA of 3.5, SAT 1300 & good extracurriculars. I know she’ll get in. That’s not my worry.
I’ve read about their prior issues but have been looking…seems like they’re getting some good reviews & ratings. Acceptance rate is…easy but other than being wary of that, if I didn’t know the previous trouble, it seems sold. But…still nervous although she likes the feel of the school. We’ve looked at smith, sarah Lawrence, mount Holyoke. Interested in Salem & Agnes Scott as well.
Opinions?!? Is there a reason NOT to consider it?
I personally love the school. While I’m sure that it has a long road ahead of it to fully overcome the financial missteps in its recent past, the school has so much to offer.
- Nurtured learning;
- Beautiful campus
- Feisty and loyal alumni network
- ABET-accredited engineering
- Generally it’s in better hands from a management perspective;
- and on and on and on.
If your child loves this school then to my mind it’s a hidden jewel. I say go for it.
I also like Agnes Scott. Very nice school. You have great taste IMHO
I would not risk my child attending a college that will likely close. She will forever have this college on her Resume - and if they close, it looks like it was a weak school. There are other safeties should could be looking at, no?
We recently visited Sweet Briar and I have some thoughts. Sweet Briar used to be a women’s college for elite families to which they’d send their daughters as sort of a “finishing” school. Their daughters could do the equestrian program, get an education, then marry well. Some women had connections from their prominent families so they did go on to have high-powered careers in politics and industry. Fast forward to recent years and Sweet Briar lost appeal because of its very rural location and lack of things to do. The average GPA and test scores for the class of 2022 are shockingly low, certainly not what you’d see from elite students and that’s the problem. The alumni women who started the fundraising campaign to “Save Sweet Briar” worked to save a school that exists only in their memories. Top students do not go to Sweet Briar anymore and it’s obvious simply by walking around and observing. I would not choose that school as I do not see how it can make a true turnaround. Many buildings are very old and the cost of maintaining the facilities has to be financially crushing especially when they don’t even have 400 students. While the idea of Sweet Briar is rather sweet and nostalgic, I would never risk sending my child there.
Recent statement from SBC President
In one week, the Class of 2018 will be graduating. First-year students at the time of the closure announcement, they returned the following fall, undeterred, so that they can call Sweet Briar, as they soon will, their alma mater. These are obstinate women; and they kept their promise – as we have, ours.
Thanks in no small measure to the joint effort of our admissions counselors and the alumnae who have fanned out to hundreds of college fairs and high schools, this year’s enrollment deposit is 40 percent higher than it was last year at this time. This is most remarkable, given that many liberal arts colleges are struggling with declining enrollment and unfavorable demographic trends. To all of you who spent countless hours proselytizing about Sweet Briar to high school students, we are all indebted.
This entering class – Class of 2022 – will be the first beneficiary of a particularly distinctive liberal arts education now associated with Sweet Briar. Jettisoning the general education program that has become a grab bag of disconnected courses, the faculty has created an “integrated core,” tightly designed to foster the behavior and habits of the mind often associated with collegial leadership: open, inquiring, collaborative, and above all, ethical.
This integrated core on leadership consists of ten courses – all required and not elected. The courses will be taught by the finest professors we have, who will light the fire under our students; the kind of promethean fire that will burn brilliantly all four of their college years and beyond.
The students will experience the Sweet Briar core, first as a three-week workshop. The workshop, taught by a quartet of psychologist, composer, philosopher and an engineer, will focus on “design thinking.” The students, working as teams, will take an experimental approach to problem solving and innovation, sharing processes, encouraging collective ownership of ideas, and learning from each other. It will also be conducive to creating a sense of cohorts among our first years.
Other courses will include the science of decision-making, sorting through data in search of useful information and evidence. The students will also learn to think in terms of probabilities and risks, and weighing costs and benefits as they must.
They will also acquire vocabularies as citizen scientists and leaders, to understand enormous issues that pose challenge to humanity: climate change, energy and the environment, cybersecurity, water resources, etc. Another course will focus on sustainability and stewardship of the land – especially our breathtaking campus at Sweet Briar which will be used as a massive and complex laboratory for understanding and promoting sustainability.
The course on “mindful writing” will be taught by a team of award winning writers, led by John Gregory and Carrie Brown; another course, on understanding and appreciating art, will be offered by our faculty as well as visitors, we hope, from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, across Highway 29. Then there is a course designed by a philosopher on accountability and moral reasoning – arguably the greatest challenge we face in the leadership in our nation and beyond.
Finally, there is an insistence in this core requirement that every 18-year year-old woman must have “financial literacy” – the basic understanding of accounting, marketing and analysis, and of running organizations, no matter how small. The need for such a course resonates with the alumnae that I have spoken with over the past year.
I am enormously proud of our faculty at Sweet Briar for overhauling our curriculum, creating the integrated core, and also revising and tightening the entire academic offerings in what ended up being a 430-page opus, passed unanimously over the last several months. Such a comprehensive overhaul is unprecedented in the history of Sweet Briar – and perhaps in the nation, as well.
I am looking very much forward to the graduation – and then reunion. I am told that we are expecting five hundred alumnae: it will be a grand occasion.
Sincerely,
Meredith Woo
President
While it looks very rural SBC is just 15 minutes from the revitalized city of Lynchburg. Just need a car or a fast horse.
http://www.downtownlynchburg.com/
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@barrons Thank you for posting this statement.
I have been watching Sweetbriar as a possible school for D22. I hope they are successful in their mission - it will be interesting to watch over the next several years.
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Another beautiful former women’s college in the same general area (but in a great small city/town of Lynchburg) is Randolph College (formerly Randolph-Macon Women’s College). They have an “A” financial rating these days. Lots of personal attention for each student (under 800 students). If you are considering Sweet Briar you should also give Randolph a look. (Disclaimer: my sister is a French prof there–loves it.)
Francoise or the other one? We live about a mile west of RC and it is all that. But even they had a $$$ crisis and had to sell some valuable artworks to right the ship. Just a struggle for small LACs these days unless they are Top 20 level. As a now local I pull for all the local colleges to succeed. They are a big part of this community.
My sister is “the other one.” (U Penn PhD, full professor). Luckily their finances are strong again, but always looking to strengthen enrollment, like the other small schools. I am on their Facebook group feed and am so impressed with the opportunities they offer their students. Great faculty, of course! And Lynchburg seems to be thriving. Downtown revitalization is going gangbusters. Love that place!
@barrons Thanks for posting- Sweet Briar is on our D21 watch list as well. She’s grown up skiing and boarding at Wintergreen and we pass the school along the way. She surprised us with saying she wouldn’t mind going to a women’s college, so this was the first college to go on her list.