It’s LAC, not SLAC

College Confidential Community
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I still like it for “selective”.
Go team S

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So I just did a quick google dive into uses of SLAC to refer to liberal arts colleges before 1/1/2020. It looks like “small” was the dominant usage, but “selective” was a minority usage.

Here, for example, are two Inside Higher Ed articles from 2014 and 2015 respectively, one for each usage:

While I am sure some will argue this shows the term shouldn’t be used, I would continue to suggest in these and other contexts the utility is obvious, and what we should do is promote better understanding of the term, including that like many terms it can have alternative definitions.

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43

Of course, then how does one define selective.

Truth is, all these schools are independent and different…and even the term LAC, for many, is too stifling.

But whatever works for each person, I’m all for…

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44

So I would suggest those terms for medium-sized and large-sized LACs respectively, and as noted before something like Penn’s CAS would be an example of an MLAC, and something like Michigan’s LSA would be an example of an LLAC.

This would naturally take some getting used to for people new to the terms, but I personally see the enormous potential if such a classification system actually took off.

For example, in my experience, some kids have a strong preference for just one of the SLAC, MLAC, and LLAC formats (could be any of them). Other kids cross-shop just SLACs and MLACs, or alternatively just MLACs and LLACs. And some cross-shop all three.

It was very easy to state that observation with this nomenclature available. Conveying the same content with only the existing nomenclature to work with would have taken a lot more words, and still might have been less clear.

45

I originally thought it meant small and thought it was redundant, but it never really bothered me.

Then I switched and thought it meant selective, which made more sense to me than small.

I have no idea now.

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46

I doubt there will ever be consistent usage on these terms. Best thing we can do is ask posters…are you looking for small, selective or both.

47

Our heads are exploding together :laughing: :exploding_head:

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48

Sorry, I meant it as a joke - Medium Liberal Arts College and Large Liberal Arts College. I guess there are some larger schools that might fall into the LAC category, like Tufts, but for the most part they are all pretty small, so I agree with you that just “LAC” is sufficiently clear. In any event, I never imagined the S might stand for “selective.” That would open up a whole other can of worms, as who knows what “selective” means.

49

When I see SLAC I simply ignore the S

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50

I knew S was for small. I just thought they were looking for very small schools with enrollment in the hundreds rather than thousands.

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51

But confusingly in addition to all these meanings from Wikipedia

SLAC most often refers to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, at Stanford University.

SLAC may also refer to:

There’s also this

Which are Bard, Bryn Mawr , Colorado College, Grinnell, Haverford, St Olaf, and Vassar

First I’ve ever heard of that.

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52

Of course most of the US population probably thinks LAC refers to the Los Angeles Clippers.

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53

For the sake of debate (which I know is not allowed on CC, so feel free to flag my post), would anyone say “I’m applying to the LLAC at Indiana”? They might say “I’m applying to Kelley at Indiana…I’m applying to CAS at Indiana.” People generally know of colleges within universities by their common name. So creating yet more acronyms, when there are already so many, might lead to more confusion.

I prefer the less is more approach.

@Sweetgum , the list of colleges with students in the mere hundreds is pretty short I believe. Typically, even the use of SLAC generally refers to a college with somewhere in the region of 1000-5000 students. But as we have seen, what I thought was typical clearly isn’t!
Edit: I vote for Sri Lankan Armoured Corps!

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54

We get it…some folks on this thread think the term LAC is better than SLAC. And some don’t care.

So…why are we continuing this?

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55

Because it’s entertaining?

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56

There are quite a few colleges with enrollment in the hundreds. My daughter and I looked at several.

57

My colleagues at work have kids applying to/attending a variety of LACs, but they do not use the term LAC. They just name the schools.

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58

Salt Lake City?

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59

Not YET because to my knowledge we just invented the term (with that meaning) this morning.

Well, right, people refer to Williams by name too, when referring to Williams specifically.

The terms SLAC, MLAC, and LLAC would make sense when referring to groups of multiple similar schools.

So, it is CAS at Indiana, LSA at Michigan, L&S at Wisconsin, and so on.

Accordingly, someone could say something like, “I am looking at Big Ten LLACs,” which would then encompass all these subdivisions that go by different specific names.

But they wouldn’t do that yet, because we just invented the term (as far as I know).

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Oops! Edited.