Do students find Lafayette College a hard school
Academically in terms of rigor and workload, general education requirements for non stem students?
My D graduated from Laf a few years ago and had a fantastic experience in every respect. She was a STEM major but took many humanities classes (and minored in a humanities subject). My impression was that Laf found that perfect balance where she felt challenged and excited academically but had time for ECs, a social life, research with profs. etc. I think the four 4 credit classes per semester model used at Laf (rather than taking five 3 credit classes at some colleges) eases some pressure as there is less to juggle. D seemed to work hard and utilize her time well – she didn’t complain about the grading (and graduated with honors) so it was probably fair.
General ed requirements seemed to have good bit of flexibility (I imagine you can check the online course catalog for the current requirements). A couple of the classes she took to fufill the general ed requirements turned out to be required for either grad school or for her professional license so she was grateful to have taken them as an undergrad.
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According to Niche surveys, 56% of Lafayette students said that “the workload was easy to manage.”
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Since you are not getting many responses, I will toss in that although I have no direct experience myself, Lafayette is a fairly well-known LAC in my circles. I would say its reputation is unsurprisingly very consistent with what happy1 wrote. It is generally considered an academically serious college with good departments, but not as intense as, say, a Chicago or Swarthmore. The kids looking at Lafayette therefore tend to be very good students but also very involved in other things, and the expectation is that will continue in college.
Again happy1 covered all this in more detail, so this is really just my way of suggesting that sort of well-balanced experience at Lafayette is the norm and not at all exceptional.
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