Nicole's Guide to Northeastern Liberal Arts Colleges

Sarah Lawrence

Sarah Lawrence is a small liberal arts college located in Bronxville, NY (just outside of Yonkers) (it's not technically in the city, but it's close enough). Notable alumni include Cary Elwes, Louise Gluck, Vera Wang, and my high school boyfriend. Tuition is $45,000 a year. It was $34,000 when I was a college freshman. Sarah Lawrence is too cool to be ranked at the moment, but it used to be ranked 34, just ahead of Bard, which really pissed me off when I was seventeen. Everyone at Sarah Lawrence wears black and looks like they stayed up all night gently sobbing into a worn copy of Le Deuxieme Sexe.

Bard College

After I graduated from high school, I went to Bard College, which is located about forty-five minutes north of Sarah Lawrence, and one behind in the US News rankings, at a middling 35. Bard College is the hipster Palestine. Popular courses of study include performing arts, film, and cocaine. It's a real fucking bargain at $44,000 a year, $33,000 when I was a freshman in 1999. Notable alumns: Steely Dan, one of the Beastie Boys, and Woody Allen's douchebag kid. Bard has an exceptionally low freshman retention rate, at 73%, which is a handy excuse for why I dropped out, twice. Everyone from my freshmen class now lives on the same  rat infested block of Williamsburg. Sigh.

St. Lawrence

St. Lawrence is a small liberal arts college located in Canton, NY. Students at St. Lawrence are mostly the dumber children of upper middle class New Englanders, and tuition clocks in at an astronomical $55,000 a year. It's usually grouped with schools like Colby, Hamilton, and Bowdoin, and is currently at 56 in the US News liberal arts college ranking. Popular majors are pre-med, everything else, beer pong, and watching hockey. It's known for being kind of outdoorsy. Famous alumni include Lorrie Moore, Grace Potter, and ten thousand pro hockey players.

In between dropping out of Bard and starting at St. Lawrence, I had a number of shitty minimum wage jobs that eventually helped me understand that I had been incredibly lucky to have resources and opportunities dropped in my lap at these ridiculous fancy colleges, and I became far less stuck up about things like college rankings--which is why it doesn't bother me when people mix up St. Lawrence and Sarah Lawrence....because their names sound exactly the same, and I'm pretty sure nobody knows the difference, anyway.