Conservative liberal arts colleges [want "strong academics and not religious"]

Your son may benefit from considering colleges with an available major in public policy, which relies on the fields of political science, economics and philosophy for its foundation.

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The additional info is helpful. I initially suggested W&L, and still think it is a good fit, but they effectively don’t accept transfer students—only 11 last year out of 246 applicants.

Hillsdale is not my cup of tea, but if it matches your son’s interests, why steer him away from it? It’s a direct pipeline to all kinds of conservative think tanks, lobbyists, and politicians. They don’t publish a CDS so I can’t look up transfer info, but I have a feeling a student who left Dartmouth and is looking for a more conservative school would be welcomed with open arms.

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Yeah, honestly, if Dartmouth felt too liberal, I am not sure most of the highly-ranked LACs we are mentioning are really going to feel much better. Hillsdale, on the other hand, is actually mostly conservatives of some sorts.

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Claremont McKenna would be a good fit

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The smaller colleges are not easy for transfers, though—CMC isn’t as bad as W&L, but it was 388 applicants for 24 spots.

What about Patrick Henry? Or Hope College? They are religious (but so is Hillsdale, so if you’re willing to consider one…). They are also very conservative. I think most conservative colleges tend to be religious, with exceptions already listed by other posters above.

If Dartmouth was too liberal for your son, I’m not sure which LAC would feel right. Most LACs that don’t actively embrace a liberal identity are likely to have a spectrum of students more or less like Dartmouth does. So it’s more about finding his people than expecting an ideologically uniform student population.

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Is his concern more about his peers or his professors or the administration? What specifically was missing or made him uncomfortable at Dartmouth? This might help with recommendations.

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Excellent question.

Dartmouth has always had the reputation of being the most ā€œconservativeā€ of the Ivy’s which of course is neither here nor there if a kid is unhappy being there.

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If the student is open to larger schools, I’d assume any of the big southern schools would lean conservative or be more apolitical. Or how about Sewanee in TN - I’d assume a more conservative bent.

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I was thinking Wake Forest would be a good fit for the south. Midwest may not be a bad idea either.

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Not to oversimplify, but I think the sorts of conservatives at Dartmouth and similar LACs are in fact mostly just libertarianish, or fiscally conservative, or country club conservative, or whatever you want to call such people. And my experience with conservative kids like that is they typically don’t have much problem being around a lot of socially liberal kids, even if they quietly disagree with some of that. Because basically they are just planning to have some fun, get a good degree, and then go make a lot of money. And then vote for lower taxes, but without needing to make a lot of fuss about it during college.

But because they don’t necessarily feel the need to be very vocal about any of this in a college setting, that is sort of leaving most of the more visible activism to the more left students on campus.

So I get why different sorts of conservative kids can feel more marginalized, even at these sorts of colleges. And again the smaller the college–and Dartmouth is small for a university-based college–the smaller still the conservative community might feel, particularly if you are talking about not those sorts of Dartmouth-style conservatives.

Which leads me to agree with another poster–maybe look at bigger colleges? I get that might be a compromise, but even if the percentages are the same, X% of 30000 people is a lot bigger community of like-minded people than X% of 5000 people, let alone X% of 2000 people.

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Given that the OP’s son is interested in government and public policy, it may not be the students who were too progressive but the faculty.

FIRE’s viewpoint ratio has 4.4:1 liberal to conservative at Dartmouth. That’s probably the closest in the Ivy League, but still a decidedly liberal student body.

Agree that larger schools might be better, and among smaller schools, Hillsdale, W&L, Furman, Hope, Wofford, all seem like good options.

I don’t disagree with your analysis.

And agree with the posters who have suggested large Southern schools as possibly being a sweet spot.

You beat me to it.

FIRE may not be the perfect way to identify the few LACs in the US that lean conservative, but their ratings will help you avoid schools where zealous ā€œactivistsā€ (usually leftist), silence and attack people who espouse unacceptable (usually conservative) viewpoints, often with the complicity of administrations that agree with them or lack the moral courage to protect free speech.

He left Dartmouth for other reasons and is now re-evaluating where he wants to be. Smaller and conservative is what he’s gravitating towards. Thanks for the additional recommendations. Will definitely research. He will also want/need a school with high academic standards and student body as we would not enjoy being somewhere where the teaching caliber isn’t high and student body similarly motivated. I know it’s a lot and potentially very small list. Agree with the comment that good LACs in the south would probably be inherently more conservative. Thanks again for the suggestions!

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Sounds like Wake Forest could be a really good fit.

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When looking at ā€œChristianā€ schools applicants must draw a distinction between schools where religion is emphasized on campus and is an integral part of the curriculum or culture (Liberty and Boston College, for example) and schools that were founded by a given religious order, but no longer emphasize religion (Harvard, Yale, Weslyan, Kenyon, and many others). Many colleges in the US were founded by religious orders, but no longer emphasize religion on campus (those Jesuits and Methodists were busy back in the day).

Based on my readings about Hillsdale, it falls in the latter category with the administration’s focus on being free of government interference and teaching a curriculum with a conservative slant, rather than supporting a religion.

Hampden Sydney, Centre, Sweet Briar, Davidson, Grinnell, basically any LAC in the South or Midwest.

Hillsdale’s stance has changed though, in that they’re more explicit about Christian beliefs in relation to the US, its government, etc. They used to be a-religious rather than non religious, with a majority evangelical Christian but not exclusively so.
Peer schools would have been Wheaton IL, Calvin, Hope, Messiah -and Hillsdale would have been/would be less religious than that.

About ^: Definitely not Grinnell.

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Grinnell is one of the most progressive schools in the country. And Sweet Briar is a women’s college.

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