<p>Hi, I am a prospective engineering/CS student researching many of my options for next year. My question is how good is the research opportunities and how soon is it possible to get involved in them? Do people normally get internships after Freshmen year? How is the diversity at this college. I am an Asian student and would really feel awkward floating around a homogeneous soup.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Research opportunities: It depends. It’s up to you for the most part. You need to go talk to professors and ask them if you can work with them. I worked with a prof my freshmen year summer, and I’ve been working with another prof since my sophomore spring - semester and summer. The prof I work with has a few students working with him on different projects and two of them are freshmen who wanted to do more than just take classes.</p></li>
<li><p>This too depends upon you for the most part. You need to be active. However, companies generally prefer rising seniors or rising juniors in engineering AFAIK just because they’ve had more core classes unlike freshmen who just have intro classes like physics, chem, calcs, etc. if you can show that you have the skills required, you should have a better shot.</p></li>
<li><p>I’d say it’s not too bad for what Lafayette is. You wouldn’t feel awkward that’s for sure. Numbers wise, there are 5-6% international students, 5-6% african american students, and I’m not sure about the asian/latino/etc population. I’ve definitely seen much more asian students in the past year than when I came in as a freshman (I’m a junior atm). I’m asian too (south asian, not east/southeast asian) and I haven’t really felt awkward. People don’t care much how you are, or what your racial background is. You work together, you take classes together. What matters is what kind of person you are. I’d say, visit the campus and see for yourself. It does look less diverse but when you work in a close group as you do in engineering/CS, none of it matters.</p></li>
</ol>