Hi, all. Any suggestions that meet most (or all, if I’m really lucky) the following criteria?
*Beautiful campus - historic, medieval/Gothic architecture preferred
*Conservative-friendly / welcoming to all political viewpoints and somewhat balanced (as much as a college campus can be)
*Preferably no more than 1.5 hours from a major city
For reference, one college I’m highly considering is Sewanee. Just wondering what other colleges out there are similar.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Fordham?
Not all Gothic and depends on what you think of as a major city, but all pretty!
W&L
Furman
Wake Forest
U of Richmond
Trinity (TX)
SMU
Lehigh
Here is a website that I like to look at:
The web site calls out schools that have Free Speech problems. It also has survey data on the number of liberals vs the number of conservatives, among other things.
Most schools are pretty liberal. Smith College, for example, has 55 self-identified liberals for every 1 self-identified conservative. You might avoid.
If a school has 3 or 4 liberals for every 1 conservative…you are probably doing pretty well.
Izzy has a decent list above. I would add Baylor, Notre Dame and maybe Bucknell to it. Also, state flagships in red states.
How about Berry College near Rome GA?
Rhodes College in Memphis?
I think this is most colleges - friendly, not necessarily leaning.
Sounds to me like you want a Hillsdale, which is a “classical” campus.
Honestly, I think most students are not political (they go to class, to parties, etc.) but you’ll find kids of various viewpoints at different campuses.
Most are respectful - obviously in this past year, we’ve seen some students get - carried away - would be an understatement. And I can appreciate anyone wanting to avoid those - and not sure if they’re coming back in the Fall or not.
But the first school I thought of was Hillsdale. There will be others like it.
You might also check Southern wealthy schools - SMU types.
Good luck.
The websites Niche and Unigo have reviews about the political climate on various schools. The Princeton Review also annually publishes lists of various things that might be helpful in narrowing down the vibe.
It was mentioned above, but Notre Dame might be appealing to you. Boston College, as well.
ND maybe. BC? It was the epicenter of the anti-war movement in the 1960’s and early 1970’s which involved students, faculty, and administrators (including nuns and priests). That activist strain has weakened for sure in favor of a more pre-professional vibe, but the Catholic commitment to social justice is still there. If by “conservative” the OP means a large student body which aligns with anti-immigrant, anti-poverty legislation, BC may not be the right place.
I would think the Catholic, Jesuit - would be more open given their missions.
But I have no doubt that most schools are conservative friendly.
It’d help to know what type of school, size, level academically etc. OP is interested in
Dartmouth. (I don’t know how I would classify the architecture, though.)
Pepperdine?
Statements like this are why so many people feel unwelcome on CC. There’s an underlying insinuation here that many conservatives would disagree with and that really belongs on the political forum. OP has asked for help and I think we can stick to their request without comments like this.
It depends on what kind of “conservative” political views are of interest. “Culture war” issues about race, ethnicity, immigration, LGBTQ, abortion, etc. tend to be much more inflammatory hot buttons than general economic policies, for example.
I think the OP was pretty clear.
Pepperdine. Wake Forest. Hillsdale more explicitly conservative.
As others are saying, I think colleges which are welcoming to a wide variety of political viewpoints and have a strong norm of civil debate are fairly common. Secular (or all but secular) colleges which actually have anything close to the same sort of proportions as the general US public are extremely uncommon. The basic issue is kinda obvious–that age/education combination just skews way less conservative than the general public, so you’d really have to make a special effort in admissions not to end up that way.
As an alternative, I might suggest looking for colleges which fit the welcoming/civil requirement, and then are big enough that even a somewhat small fraction of conservative students still ends up as a decent-sized community.
Like, I think colleges like Chicago or WUSTL immediately stand out as colleges where there is fantastic Gothic architecture, great proximity to a major city, the norms of civil discourse are relatively strong, and there are enough students overall that there is going to be a decent-sized community of conservative students.
Someone else mentioned BC, and while I agree it is really not much different from its secular peers in terms of student mix, I think it would also fit into this general category. Similarly, someone else mentioned Fordham, and same deal I would think (the Rose Hill campus is really nice). Sticking on the Jesuit theme, Loyola Maryland has a pretty nice campus, just outside Baltimore.
A little less right in big cities, Indiana has a great campus, and Indianapolis is only about 1 hour away. Someone else mentioned Lehigh, which has a really cool campus, about 1.5 hours from Philly without bad traffic, actually not much longer to NYC (same qualification).
Finally, I would note Richmond is not necessarily a huge city, but it is decent-sized and a state capital, and under 2 hours from DC (absent traffic). Someone else mentioned the University of Richmond, and while it is smaller, it has a very nice Gothic campus, and is more businessy/pre-professional than most LACs. So I think if Sewanee might work for you, Richmond could too. Also mentioned was Rhodes (Memphis), and I agree that might work as well.
The other issue is that colleges often end up pro-DEI by default (even if they do not explicitly say that) as a result of their efforts to market themselves to as demographically wide as possible range of potential students. Even local or regional colleges often end up being more diverse than most high schools or neighborhoods, simply because of their larger catchment areas, so their efforts to entice all demographics present in their catchment areas can lead to a pro-DEI tilt. To the extent that opposition to DEI is now seen as a “conservative” political value, that is another way that colleges can be seen as anti-“conservative”.
Please keep focused on the OP’s question, not going off on tangents or politics.
Thank you.