If you want to be more than just a number once you get to college, you might
want to check out Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where you won’t
even be reduced to a number when you apply.
Admissions officers at Lewis and Clark understand that
numbers like test scores alone don’t always tell the full story of a student.
Since 1990, Lewis and Clark’s Portfolio Path option has given applicants a
truly personal evaluation. As a supplement to the standard application form,
Portfolio Path applicants create a portfolio consisting of at least four
samples of graded academic work, three academic letters of recommendation, and
one piece of visual or performance art work. And for students applying via the
Portfolio Path, submitting test scores is optional.
Don’t take that to mean that your high school classes and
grades aren’t important—they are. Students at Lewis and Clark benefit from a
rigorous liberal arts education, which means you’ll need to do a lot more than
just memorize facts and take multiple choice tests. Liberal arts colleges like
Lewis and Clark ask students to do lots of reading, writing and discussing. You
can expect to work hard, but you’ll be able to do so without the air of
cutthroat competition.
Homebodies probably shouldn’t settle in here. Lewis and
Clark takes its name in the spirit of the nineteenth century explorers who set
out west to see where the trail ended. Today, that spirit is embodied in a
campus-wide interest in the outside world. All students are required to achieve
competency in a foreign language and international study, and the college’s
most popular major is international affairs. Each year, more than 300 of Lewis
and Clark’s 1700 students take advantage of the 25 study abroad programs,
immersing themselves in the culture and history of countries like Australia,
Kenya, Ecuador, France, Scotland, and India.
Outdoor enthusiasts will find no shortage of off-campus adventures. An
on-campus group called College Outdoors provides Lewis and Clark students with
organized trips and activities including cross-country skiing, backpacking,
whitewater sports, sea kayaking, and hiking. College Outdoors trips go all over
the Pacific Northwest and are open to everyone from experienced adventurers to
first-time explorers.
Lewis and Clark students don’t necessarily have to travel the world or brave
the wild to have fun. Their campus is alive with dances, concerts, speakers and
contests. Sound too good to be true? Click here to be taken to
Lewis and Clark’s website for current students, and then click on “monthly
events calendar” to see what’s happening on campus.
Speaking of the campus, Lewis and Clark is actually a lush
estate complete with gardens and fountains, located on a serene bluff
overlooking a river (we know, it sounds like a realtor wrote this, but we swear
that it’s true. Check out the virtual tour here). And students are just a free
15-minute shuttle away from Portland (one of America’s great college towns)
where they can find art, theater, live music, cheap food, college bars and
access to the outdoors.
It’s a big world out there, and the students at Lewis and
Clark want to learn about it, talk about it, and go see it for themselves. If
you’d like your education to encourage you to think globally, if you want to
surround yourself with students who are as interested in what’s happening
around the globe as they are in what’s happening this Friday night, and if
you’d like to be evaluated on more than just your numbers, start your
exploration of Lewis and Clark College on their website at www.lclark.edu.