Motto | Wisdom with understanding |
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Type | Private liberal arts college |
Established | 1926 |
Endowment | $90.0 million (2016) |
President | Cristle Collins Judd |
Undergraduates | 1,437 |
Location | Yonkers, New York, U.S. |
Campus | Suburban, 41 acres |
Address | 1 Mead Way Bronxville/Yonkers, New York 10708 |
Colors | Green and White |
Athletics |
NCAA Division III Skyline Conference |
Affiliations |
Annapolis Group Oberlin Group |
Mascot | Gryphons |
Website | sarahlawrence.edu |
University rankings | |
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National | |
Forbes | 110 |
Liberal arts colleges | |
U.S. News & World Report | 59 |
Washington Monthly | 173 |
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States. It is located in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, 15 miles (24 km) north of Manhattan.
The college is known for low student-to-faculty ratio, and highly individualized course of study. The school models its approach to education after the Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials, which are a key component in all areas of study. Sarah Lawrence emphasizes scholarship, particularly in the humanities, performing arts, and writing, and places high value on independent study. Sarah Lawrence College is ranked 59th in the National Liberal Arts Colleges category in 2017 by U.S. News & World Report. Sarah Lawrence was also named the higher education institution with the "best classroom experience" in all of America by Princeton Review in 2016.
Sarah Lawrence College was established by real-estate mogul William Van Duzer Lawrence (1842-1927) on the grounds of his estate in Westchester County and was named in honor of his wife, Sarah Bates Lawrence (1846-1926). The College was originally intended to provide instruction in the arts and humanities for women. A major component of the College's early curriculum was "productive leisure," wherein students were required to work for eight hours weekly in such fields as modeling, shorthand, typewriting, applying makeup, and gardening. Its pedagogy, modeled on the tutorial system of Oxford University, combined independent research projects, individually supervised by the teaching faculty, and seminars with low student-to-faculty ratio—a pattern it retains to the present, despite its cost. Sarah Lawrence was the first liberal arts college in the United States to incorporate a rigorous approach to the arts with the principles of progressive education, focusing on the primacy of teaching and the concentration of curricular efforts on individual needs.