Hi, I’ve spent a long time viewing these forums, but this is my first time asking a question. I was wondering if anyone could give me information on the colleges below. I’m thinking about majoring in Economics, but that could change. I’m an introvert and a conservative. I don’t need a conservative college(I know there aren’t many), but I don’t want a really liberal one. I’m also looking at the social scene at these colleges as well. I visited many of these, but any additional info would be great. Thanks in advance!
Fordham
Lehigh
Lafayette
Bucknell
Gettysburg
Muhlenberg
Georgetown
TCNJ
Franklin and Marshall
Stevens- is there a point in applying here if I don’t want to be an engineer?
Georgetown University will be the toughest to get into at about 17% admit rate. May be a good choice if you are Catholic.
Lehigh and Lafayette, and Bucknell have similar admit rates and are all in the Patriot League and in PA, and have beautiful campuses. Lafayette and Bucknell are LACs. Lafayette has 2,500 student, Bucknell is a bit larger at about 3,500 students. Lehigh is more small to mid-sized University with 5,000 undergrads and about 2,000 grads. All three are similar quality overall and offer Econ.
The benefits of the somewhat larger University setting at Lehigh are more flexibility to change to related business majors, such as Finance, and also provides access to more research opportunities and graduate programs. You will also find more Club opportunities because of the larger student body. Basically Lehigh has many LAC like features, but just enough scale and graduate opportunities to incorporate some of the benefits of a University. You have to decide whether those would be a benefit to you. All three schools have good placement, but Lehigh’s is really exceptional. I don’t see any of them as being unusually liberal for colleges.
You can visit all three on one trip. They are not very far apart. Lehigh and Lafayette are very close. There really is no substitute for visiting and getting a feel for where you think you fit in.
Where have you visited and why did/didn’t you like it? They all except maybe Georgetown are a pretty east drive from NJ
Lafayette would offer a comparatively strong economics department:
https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html
As would Georgetown:
I visited lehigh, lafayette, muhlenberg, and TCNJ. I have taken virtual tours of the rest and planning to visit them when I get a chance. The one thing I didn’t like about Lehigh is how big it was. Many of the things were spaced out. Muhlenberg was very compacted but it was nice. The lafayette campus was nice but I didn’t like what it looked like when you left the campus.
Gettysburg is much like Muhlenberg in terms of size and academics. Gettysburg is more conservative and has a much larger Greek life then Muhlenberg. Gettysburg has a larger preppy population as well. Muhlenberg has a larger theater department but both schools have active theater departments. Gettysburg lies between the battlefields and the town of Gettysburg. Muhlenberg is in the west end of Allentown. Muhlenberg is an hour from Philadelphia and 1 1/2 to NYC. Gettysburg is 45 minutes to Harrisburg and two hours to Philadelphia. Both have good academics and do a good job of networking their students. Best of luck to you!