By Charlie Eisenhood
One of the enduring mysteries of NYU, along with how President John Sexton survives while drinking 20 cups of coffee per day, is the Liberal Studies Program. LSP is NYU’s two year associate’s degree program that offers admission to selected students from the applicant pools of other NYU schools, and guarantees a transfer into those schools if the students meet certain requirements and a minimum GPA threshold.
Because LSP has no specific admissions criteria, students have questioned for years why they are routed into the program. Many accuse of it being a money-making tool or a way to keep CAS’ admissions rate low. Others think it is just a school for less intelligent students who really want to come to NYU.
Many of these preconceptions, though rooted in historical truths, are plainly false today. But they endure largely because the program remains somewhat of an oddity. Its two year length, the inability of students to apply directly (for now), and the fact that it’s not its own school at NYU make it feel tacked on to the rest of the University. And, yet, it is the second largest piece (~1100 students) of each year’s freshman class, behind only CAS (~1500). So what exactly is it?
First, some basics. At its core, LSP offers the benefits of a liberal arts college — small classes (none is larger than 25), professors who emphasize teaching rather than research, a focus on the Great Books — within NYU, a major research institution. The professors aren’t tenured; instead, they are contracted as “Master Teachers” by the University. That means the LSP professors aren’t teaching your CAS classes. They focus on getting to know the students in LSP.
Of course, none of that is much of a mystery. The real questions surround why students are chosen for the program and how the program fits in to the rest of NYU.
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Considering how confused everyone is about LSP, it might come as a surprise that it was once even more cryptic. Until recent years, the program had no website. Its directors were told it couldn’t have one, because then students might know it existed.
“The idea was [to] keep the program hidden until you spring it on students at the last minute,” said Fred Schwarzbach, the Dean of LSP, now in his seventh year at NYU after a 12-year stint as the Chair of the English department at Kent State University. He explained how much the program has changed since it began in 1971 as the General Studies Program (GSP).
“Back in the early 1970s, NYU was not at all selective in undergraduate admissions,” he said. “It was then mostly a commuter school… As NYU students in general were much better prepared for college…, the students that were being considered for what was then GSP were better and better students. So, long before I got here, the ‘second chance’ nature of the program had fallen away.”
Schwarzbach has overseen many changes as well. The name switched to LSP two years ago as a start towards ending the program’s stigma. It has a website now. Four years ago, the program moved from the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS) into the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS), which also houses CAS.
Yet the basic structure of the program hasn’t changed much — it still admits students who applied to other schools and doesn’t tell them why they weren’t chosen for their original selection. About 85 percent of LSP students originally applied to CAS; the remainder are pulled mostly from the Gallatin and Tisch pools. Stern famously doesn’t offer a transfer from LSP.
The lack of information about the decision-making process often frustrates students. “My LSP peers and I are very confused as to why were placed in LSP with no particular reasons for admissions. You can’t find it online, you can’t find it anywhere… Because there’s no obvious reason that they would think you’re better off in LSP than the school you chose, it implies that we can’t make decisions for ourselves and we are less intelligent than those who could,” said Molly Busk, an LSP freshman who applied to CAS.
Of course, all university admissions are somewhat vague and based on a wide swath of different criteria. But there are some particular traits that can lead someone to be placed in LSP. “It may mean, for example, there’s a disparity between their GPA and their standardized test scores, in either direction,” said Schwarzbach. “You could be really good at everything except X. And we think X is not that important, we’ll take a chance on you, we think you’ll succeed at NYU.”
He gave a few examples of potential LSP picks — a student from a rural area with top grades and SAT scores but no AP classes because her high school didn’t offer them or a brilliant 2400 SAT scorer that couldn’t focus in class and got lower grades. I have a friend who was outstanding by any measure in high school but graduated two years early and was sent to LSP. It seems the University really tries to select students who could benefit from the smaller classes and more hands-on teaching.
That makes for a surprising contrast between the complaints about the vague nature of the admissions process and the satisfaction with the program itself. Schwarzbach said that students’ questions about why they are in the program “go away very quickly. And they go away because the experience students have while they’re in the program is so good.”
Busk, who voiced her objections to the opaqueness of the selection process at a recent Sexton town hall (and said he “spoke like a politician”), really enjoys her classes. “Knowing my roommate’s in CAS, I wouldn’t choose to be in CAS,” she said. “I would pick LSP.”
Although the large majority of students that NYU Local contacted liked the program, some were not impressed. “My experience overall was fairly negative,” said Alena Chinault, a Junior in CAS who spent her first three semesters in LSP. “I felt like I wasn’t learning anything for the first year of school… And my professors after the program are so exceedingly better than the professors I had in the program.”
Even students who really enjoy their classes express reservations about being assigned to LSP without an explanation. When asked why she was upset she was in LSP if she preferred it to CAS, Busk said, “I didn’t choose it. I just happen to like it more. I think the choice is more important.”
Chinault added, “You’re put in this program that makes you feel like you did something wrong.”
NYU seems to have recognized the irritation. The University announced last semester that it would begin to offer direct admission to LSP beginning in 2012, though they will still continue to divert applications from CAS and other schools.
The move might help to shield against the “choice” critique; Schwarzbach acknowledged that they made the decision partly “because we’re discovering that there are students we select for the program that maybe aren’t a perfect match.” But how many students will actually decide to apply directly? Busk put it bluntly: “I think if I just saw LSP posted online, I wouldn’t be attracted to a two year associate’s degree program followed by a bachelor’s… Something about that still feels like you have to get into your college.”
Meg Dukes, an LSP freshman, said, despite “really loving” the program, she probably wouldn’t have applied directly either. She added, “If the connotation around LSP were different, I might have.”
If students don’t apply directly, the program won’t really change. Applicants will still be selected from other pools, “matched” with the program, and forced to take it or leave it. There won’t be a choice. No matter what happens, there will really only be an opt-in, not an opt-out.
A Washington Square News editorial suggested that the LSP direct admissions could poach students from other NYU schools looking for an “easy ticket” into NYU. I’m more inclined to think that, because of the stereotypes about the school, people will be reluctant to apply at all. However, Dukes said that she did see some students at NYU information sessions asking if LSP offered direct application.
Schwarzbach is quite persuasive about why the stereotypes are wrong. “I feel that our approach is really vindicated because our students, by all of the available measures, succeed at least as well, and in many cases better, than students who are admitted directly to the other schools,” he said. Indeed, LSP students are close to the NYU average on graduation rates, retention rates, and graduate school placement.
Despite that, and the fact that most LSP students are highly qualified and still have to beat out thousands of applicants to get into NYU, the stigma of it being the “stupid” school persists, even within the program. “I’ve heard some kids say that they’re stupid because they’re in LSP. And actually be like, ‘I have stupid classmates,’” said Busk. “The fact that NYU has allowed that type of thought to occur in these students is really terrible.”
In the hyper-competitive world of college admissions, a lot of weight is placed on metrics like GPA, test scores, and the number of APs you take. It’s fair to say that most LSP students aren’t quite up to CAS standards on at least one of those metrics — that’s the idea behind the program. That leads to an academic social strata that is, frankly, unfair. Admissions choices can be arbitrary and measuring intelligence through your ability to get As in high school is shaky at best.
Chinault put it well: “There were people in my LSP classes who were very smart and who had no idea why they were in the program. There are also a lot of people in my CAS classes who are very smart. There are also people who aren’t very smart. Really, there’s not a very clear line between who goes into CAS and who goes into LSP.”
To squash another misconception, since the program moved into FAS from SCPS, financial aid is now on par with the other undergraduate schools. Schwarzbach said the move caused a “hugely dramatic change in financial aid packaging,” jumping about 50 percent within two years. When I asked him how he would have responded in the SCPS-era when asked about the perception that LSP is a cash cow, he said, “4 years ago I would have been turning bright red figuring out how to answer your question.”
He did acknowledge that the program made money, but added, “Almost every undergraduate program at the university…generates more revenue than direct expenditure.”
One critique that does carry weight is that having LSP inflates NYU’s admissions statistics. In the University’s Admitted Student Profile, which includes median SAT scores, class rank, and average grades, LSP students’ stats are left out, because “[the program has] more flexible admission standards.” That’s a slippery way out that makes the aggregate stats very misleading, considering that LSP is nearly a quarter of each year’s freshman class.
But perhaps even more damning is the terrible job the University has done to clear up many of the myths about LSP. Schwarzbach punted at first, saying, “NYU is so big, and so complicated, that it takes a long time to get the word out,” but later acknowledged, “It’s been frustrating. It’s admissions, really, that has [the] responsibility [to market LSP].”
It seems that the sense that NYU should spring the program on students at the last minute has persisted quite a bit, despite some attempts to change that (i.e. name change, direct admissions). Many students still google the program when they receive their “acceptance” letter, wondering what it is they’ve been accepted to.
Many have suggested that LSP just be eliminated at this point and the students rolled into the other schools. Schwarzbach, slightly flustered by the suggestion, made it clear why that won’t happen.
“The good thing and the bad thing about NYU is that it’s a tuition-driven university,” he said. “So everything you want to do has to pay for itself, in some sense.” If you’re wondering why LSP is still around after 40 years, despite sweeping growth and a huge rise in quality at the University, there’s your answer.
Photos by Amalyah Oren.
