Lewis & Clark College | Student Reviews | Best College

Student Profile

Hannah

Class: Freshman
Major:
Gender: F

High School: South High School
Transfer Student: N

Big Picture

The campus is really beautiful, but isolated. Freshman can't have cars on campus, so one must take the bus everywhere. This is easy in theory, but it was way more time consuming and exhausting in practice. And I felt like there wasn't much to do on campus. I took a lot of walks around the campus and no one was hanging out in the fall, I guess because of the weather. Lewis & Clark is very small. I didn't like the size as much as I thought I would. And the student body was not as diverse as I imagined. They have a lot of foreign exchange students but it seemed like they mostly kept to themselves. When I started telling people I was going to LC, everyone was very impressed. Apparently, it has become very prestigious over the past couple of years. Someone even referred to it as second tier ivy league. I spent a lot of time walking around the South part of campus where the chapel is. It is practically abandoned because the one classes taken over there are education degree classes. It was very nice. There is no town connected to LC. Don't be fooled. The Fred Meyer's area is not that accessible, nor is it any fun. The administration is awful for the most part. I realized pretty earlier on in the second semester that I really didn't want to continue at LC. So, I went to the registrar's office to ask about how to take a leave of absence, and they treated me really badly. They told me that I was lucky to be going to their fine institution and that if I was unhappy then that was my own fault for not studying at coffee shops downtown, or not wanting to pay $45 buck to take a snow boarding class so I could break my neck on mount hood. They told me to join clubs or do community service, but I just didn't see anything worth while. So I left. Now it's June 13, 2008, and the school just accepted my withdrawal. I've been trying to withdraw since January. I've been e-mail everyone I could think of that could help me complete the withdrawal and one would respond. It was such a nightmare. Then I got an email that said I had re-registered for classes for the fall. I wrote back to the person who had sent the email explaining all the trouble I had been having, and they finally accepted with my withdrawal. It has been really frustrating dealing with the Administration. I guess everyone has school pride but everyone laughs about how the football team hasn't won in decades. There are a lot of unusual things about LC. It's a really strange place. In some ways, it's a good thing and in other ways, this place is just weird. I'll always remember going ESCAPE which is a gay all ages club my friends and I went to once early in the semester. It was the only club we could get into in Portland, but I had a lot of fun. Also we took a road trip to the beach with my roommate's aunt. The coast is beautiful. A lot of students complain about THE BON, which is the dining hall. It is gourmet cooking about sometimes, it's really bad food. But I got used to the bon. At least you have options in there. I think most people just resent that everyone must have a meal plan with the bon for the first two years.

Academic Life

Professors do know the name of some of the students. Mostly the student that talked a lot in their classes. Sometimes when I would go to a professor's office hours, I felt like they didn't want students to come around, like it was a big bother to them. At the beginning of the semester, my least favorite class was E&D which is basically a freshman composition class. I didn't enjoy the reading and I didn't understand what the teacher wanted from us. But as the semester went on, I really enjoyed some of the readings and enjoyed the in class discussions. I also really like philosophy 101. It was a good class. Students don't seem to study too often. I met a lot of student who crammed the night before the final exam. It's kind of hard not to. Class participation is common in some classes. I had a lot more lecture classes though, but it was okay to ask questions. I didn't hear a lot of intellectual conversations going on outside of classes. I had no problem with the academic requirements at LC. They are pretty standard. Although, I think there are probably fewer options of what you can take at LC because of how small it is. So one should take that into consideration when deciding on schools. You might have more options at a bigger school. The LC education is geared toward learning for its own sake which I liked, but apparently LC has a really low percent of students who get jobs in their field after graduation. So maybe that isn't such a good thing. I've heard horror stories about people who are five years out of LC and still don't have work.

Student Body

LC is majority white and christian. And everyone is also pretty much middle-upper class. They do have a couple of foreign exchange students on campus, but they live in a separate dorm and don't really interact a lot with the other students. A few students wear pajamas to class. Mostly people wear whatever to class. All students interact in class. Not so much outside of class. A lot of the students at LC are from California and other parts of the west. But there are some people from a little further away than that. Students are politically aware but not very active. They are predominantly left I think. No one talks about how much they'll earn one day. I think they are trying to live more in the present and get the college experience.