What are they looking for?

MushaboomBlue
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 23:15:42 +0000

Though I don’t attend the college (i’ll be applying for Fall 2008 admission), from what I’ve learned discussing with students online that ACTUALLY attend SLC, it seems that the major things they tend to focus on their applicants are basically their grades from high school and their ESSAY. They tend to place emphasis on the essay, since at SLC you have to be prepared to do A LOT of writing and papers, since it takes the place of exams and such in most cases.

In terms of how the college works, I’m still trying to understand that myself. I plan on hopefully visiting this Fall to get a better understanding. Using the seminar-conference system:

Seminar: majority of the courses limit the class size to 15 students (smaller classes, highly interacted classes). You take 3 courses per semester.

Conference: Each student is assigned a “Don”, or faculty adviser, in which you meet privately, semi-weekly. The “don” helps to discuss and plan the student’s own program of study. Basically, you develop individual projects, relating to the course, but is in YOUR own interests. So, you take a class in philosophy, and you decide to do a conference paper on, maybe, an analysis on the Socratic Method and its significance on the beliefs of those living in the modern day world…or something like that.

Anyway, I hope that somewhat clears it up. You don’t have to declare a major right away. You take the courses you want to focus on while exploring other interest. On the SLC website, there was one girl who intended to focus on acting, but then became interested in economics…by the 2nd year she ditch economics for spanish and biology…final year she incorperates both spanish and biology by preparing for medical school in a spanish-speaking country. You might find 2 things that you are interested in which could be merged into one area of interest.