Sarah Lawrence College (SLC)

Sarah Lawrence College is a community of intellectual and creative risk takers who place equal value on curiosity and collaboration, and on thinking and doing. With the guidance of dedicated faculty members, students forge their own pathways through an open curriculum, blending and weaving more than 50 academic subject areas across the arts and sciences into an undergraduate education as distinctive as their personal and professional goals.

Our students share an enthusiasm for intellectual rigor, academic curiosity, creativity, and interdisciplinary work. Sarah Lawrence is home to a welcoming and inclusive community that celebrates diversity, and the College's 1,500 undergraduate students come from nearly every state and more than 50 countries. 85 percent of students live on campus.

Life at Sarah Lawrence is tight—knit and familiar, but also full and dynamic — something is always taking place on or near campus. Applaud your friends at an open mic night or cheer them on at a basketball game. Head to an independent film after your latest club meeting. Compete as a member of an athletic team that feels like a family. Run for a seat on the Student Senate. Take in — or present! — a lecture, a concert, or a theatre production. There are no limits to your involvement in this vibrant, multidimensional community.

Sarah Lawrence students are "intellectual, ever-curious, open-minded, and autodidactic," says one third-year student, "My peers don't require handholding. They know what they want to study and how they want to study it." The school's independent student body reflects its self-directed academics: "Everyone cares about something: their music, their art, their friends, their academics, social and political causes and would defend it with their life." One student brags, "A friend of mine can wax poetically on quarks and leptons as much as she can deconstruct Fellini's oeuvre. A uniting factor of the campus is that none of us are looking for a traditional undergraduate academic experience. Above all we value choice." As for diversity on campus, students point to THRIVE, a mentorship program for students of color, which one sophomore notes "made a huge difference in my social life on campus and I am thankful for the connections it allowed me to make." There's also a "historically" huge LGBTQIA+ scene-"as a queer person myself, I have never felt this comfortable anywhere else."

Just a 40-minute train ride from Manhattan, Sarah Lawrence students can enjoy their intimate, liberal arts college setting as well as the thrills of the big city. It's an "intellectual's school," without a huge party scene, but "there is usually plenty to do if you keep your finger on the pulse." This seems especially true for creative students, as the "literary journals are fabulous" and events like The Poetry Festival and Free-Write Fridays offer a chance to exercise one's creativity. On the theatrical side, groups like The Burlesque T roupe, HalfNaked Shakespeare, Melancholy Players, and the annual Rocky Horror Picture Shadow Showcase keep audiences entertained. Many work by day, converse during lunch and then go off "working on your film or choreography piece or manuscript with your friends." Sometimes, it's fun to just "go into New York City to have fun, see shows, and shop."

Students at Sarah Lawrence College suggest that the school’s individualized, major-free structure is a boon that allows students to explore their options and “grow into their interests more naturally, because they get to decide which classes to take based on what seems fun and helpful.” It also offers EmbeddEd courses that “aim to support students’ transition from campus to life after graduation by providing academic credits for the internships, volunteer work, and jobs they take on. Of course, all this freedom and flexibility is scaffolded by Career Services, which offers everything from internship listings and alumni networking (the latter of which is currently being overhauled to be even more helpful) and accessible one-on-one advising that covers timely topics like personal branding. Services extend to recent graduates, and one student explains that professors can also be highly supportive, “My professors...have sat down with me and discussed how [my] goals might be achieved, provided ideas for programs I should apply to, suggested administrators whom I should contact for more information, and even offered their assistance....” According to graduate reports via Payscale, students don't typically pursue STEM fields from SLC; however, this doesn't negatively impact their median starting salary, which stands at around $67,300.