Lehigh or Cal Poly

College Search & Lists
1

Hi I am senior Girl in high school choosing between Cal Poly and Lehigh for Political Science. I am from California so I would pay instate tuition at CP.
Pros of Lehigh: the smaller size, attentive professors, small classes, accesibility of internship and academic extracurricular opportunities for students especially in Poli Sci, school spirit, beautiful campus.
Cons: The weather lol, far from home, considerably more expensive

Pros of CP: Close to home, amazing weather, PRICE
Cons: Big classes, not into campus architecture, fewer internship oppportunities through school, harder to transfer majors.

Any insight into the culture at either of the schools would be appreciated, as would specific insight about either of their Political Science programs. I am also of mixed race (half asian) so any information about the minority experience at these schools.

2

You have a good handle on the pros and cons of each school. It’s tough for any school to beat the in-state cost for Cal Poly, so you will have to decide if Lehigh is worth the extra expense. Some other considerations:

As a college town, San Luis Obispo is livelier and more attractive than South Bethlehem. The catch is that SLO is all you get; it’s a long way to any major city. Lehigh is within bus distance of Philadelphia and NYC. If you wanted to catch an exhibition at the Met, for example, you could leave South Bethlehem on a Saturday morning, be at the Met in three hours by bus/subway, spend the day in Manhattan, and get back in the evening. Not saying that Lehigh students go to the City every weekend, but they do sometimes.

Neither of these schools is noted for high minority enrollment. However, the campus minority communities will be numerically much larger at Cal Poly, simply because Cal Poly is a much larger school overall (~20,000 undergrads vs. ~5,000 undergrads). One exception is that Lehigh has more international students (8% at Lehigh, only 1% at Cal Poly, according to College Navigator).

Cal Poly’s enrollment will consist overwhelmingly (83%) of other Californians. Lehigh has a broader reputation, and their students are more likely to come from around the country or internationally, although the largest concentration (about 60%) are from PA, NJ, or NY.

Cal Poly is a “polytechnic” school that emphasizes “practical” fields like engineering, agriculture, and business. PoliSci is in the College of Liberal Arts, which is only about 15% of the total enrollment; this could make you feel like an “academic minority”. Lehigh is evenly balanced between the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Business, and Engineering, with a lot of interdisciplinary study between the colleges. Many A&S students get a second qualification (double-major or minor) from the business school.

Cal Poly has strong job placement in California, including both the Bay Area and Greater LA. Lehigh has strong job placement into the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC urban metropolis. So one could be better than the other, if you had a geographic preference for life after graduation.

3

Cal Poly seems like the “safe” choice here. It’s low cost, it’s close to home, and you can expect comfortable and familiar California culture and weather.

Lehigh is clearly riskier. It would be a bigger investment, much farther from home. You would have to make significant adjustments to different weather and different culture – Lehigh is working to recruit more Californians, but they currently only represent ~5% of the enrollment, so you would be a “geographic minority”. However, greater risk may be associated with a greater potential payoff here. Realistically, you could have a better academic experience at Lehigh, especially in a liberal arts discipline like PoliSci. And if you can successfully adapt to the East Coast, you could become “bicoastal”, which would give you a degree of career flexibility that students who stick close to home often lack.

So there’s not just the extra cost. You also have to weigh your tolerance for risk and challenge.

4

You may be aware of the latest controversy at CPSLO that may or may not help you form an opinion of the college?
.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/education/article209157144.html

5

My son attends Cal Poly for engineering from out of state, but Lehigh was a school we all liked when we visited. I think @Corbett summarized things pretty well. There are two things I’d add.

Cal Poly is not very diverse. There are historical reasons for this, that are hard for a CA public to overcome. Mainly, SLO county is very white and back in the day when minorities started attending colleges in larger numbers, they did what most everyone did. They went to the school closest to home. It became a self perpetuating problem, that can’t be countered like a private can. It is illegal to consider race in admissions at CA publics. The other thing is that they don’t have much merit money. Students from families in need that are strong enough to get into Poly can often get a significant amount of money at well endowed private institutions.

The other thing is that classes are not large at Cal Poly. They are known for small classes, all taught by instructors with terminal degrees, even labs and discussions. The largest lecture hall on campus, The Silo in the B School, holds just about 200. Engineering classes, at least the intro ones, would have actually been bigger at Lehigh.

Good luck and congrats on two great options.

6

Both schools are having issues with their Greek systems, so this may not be grounds for favoring one or the other. At Lehigh, the primary concern is alcohol abuse; four frats and sororities have been dissolved for this over the past year.

http://thebrownandwhite.com/2018/04/18/lehigh-pike-loses-recognition/

7

Let’s face it, the United States is having a problem. :-S

8

Not by California standards, with 56% being from the largest race/ethnicity and only 19% of students with Pell grants (and 47% getting no FA grants or scholarships at all, though CPSLO’s in-state list price is not that high):

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=all&id=110422

However, Lehigh is even less diverse on both counts, with 65% being from the largest race/ethnicity and only 14% of students with Pell grants (and 50% getting no FA grants or scholarships at all, with a much higher list price than CPSLO):

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=all&id=213543

9

We just got back from visiting the Open House last weekend. Definitely some big racial problems there. The numbers are pretty staggering: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/education/article209195019.html

Yes, the whole country is having an issue…some are handling it better than others. Troubling responses from administration and from students/families to the fraternity suspension. (Honestly the kids are handling better than the parents). My son hasn’t decided on a school yet. We’re down to the wire, and Cal Poly was the #1 choice until last weekend, we’re giving a hard look at his other options now. Decision day in less than 2 weeks!

10

Not necessarily; it depends on your frame of reference. If the frame of reference is just Cal Poly and Lehigh – and that is, in fact, the comparison specified by the OP – then Cal Poly’s numbers actually look pretty good. As noted in Post #7 above, Cal Poly has more ethnic and economic diversity than Lehigh (although Lehigh has more geographic diversity).

And this shouldn’t come as a surprise. You would ordinarily expect a public university in California to have more ethnic and economic diversity than a private university in the Northeast. It’s true that the wealthiest Northeastern privates, like (say) Princeton or Amherst, can leverage their large financial resources to attract a relatively diverse enrollment. But most Northeastern privates don’t have the same level of institutional wealth, and can’t afford to do this to the same extent. In this case, there is nothing particularly unusual about Lehigh’s numbers; they are about what you might expect compared to peers like (say) Lafayette, Bucknell, Colgate, or Villanova.

Granted, Cal Poly’s numbers do look unusual compared to in-state public university peers like (say) UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly Pomona, or Fresno State. But that’s not the frame of reference that the OP asked about.

11

The other thing is, Lehigh has a reputation for high fraternity and sorority participation, so if fraternity antics at CPSLO bother you, check whether Lehigh may have similar or greater levels of such annoyances.

12

Greek life does not actually bother me, in fact I am considering rushing, especially at CPSLO as it is a larger school and I would want to be able to connect with a smaller group

13

When I visited Lehigh all the minorty students I spoke to said that they had never experienced racial prejudice on campus, however I have heard that the same is not true for Cal Poly. To me the culture of the school matters more than the actual statistics.

14

You cannot assume that what you’ve heard regarding either school represents the whole truth of either institution. I guarantee that if you spoke to every minority student at every school in the nation, you’ll find some who have experienced prejudice at the school, in the community, or both.

I’ll summon @NLinsanity, a recent CP grad who is Asian. He regularly opines about his experience.

As for CP being less diverse than other CA publics, SLO county is far less diverse than the communities mentioned above. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but when your hands are tied by state legislation from offering advantage based on race, it is a hard problem to overcome. It does not though guarantee racism. Both Seattle and Portland are very white and neither is known as a racist hotbed.

15

@eyemgh Obviously any individual viewpoints are not the whole truth - but how do you suggest OP find out the answer to her question? Agreed that relying on stats is not the whole truth either - just because there are few doesn’t mean it’s a racist environment. And assuming that there will be individual pockets of racist behavior at any institution, how to discern whether it is widespread? I’m asking for us as well - we are still trying to figure this out. We talked to about 10 students, including some other grads from my son’s high school who are now second and third years, one of whom is a minority. Plus the students in his dept at the dept welcome bunch - several were minorities. All of them said they loved their school, but it definitely had a racial problem that hadn’t been well addressed by the administration, and that racist behaviors were exhibited by many students. (They all said it was better in some schools, like Engineering, but worse in others - won’t name names). But still they saw it a lot on campus. Most were hopeful that the recent event would finally effect some change. So we can’t talk to every single student on campus, but like OP, we are making a choice between Cal Poly and another school. Besides anecdotal evidence (yours included) and documented events like the blackface incidents, how do you suggest we assess the culture of the school for minorities? Honest question. We loved everything about Cal Poly…until this.

16

There was this recently: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/05/horrific_scene_unfolds_on_max.html

However, the small number of minorities may mean that they are not seen as a “threat” by many of those who may be prone to white nationalist leanings, unlike in other areas where minorities are a larger or more visible presence, leading to white nationalist sentiment being “activated” by the perceived “threat”.

17

@NWhummingbird, I can only go by my son’s experience and feedback. His perception has been that it’s a pretty tranquil place. His girlfriend is a minority student. The last incident was the infamous Bros and Nava Hos party 4 years ago. That’s not to say that no individual has been harassed in the meantime. I’m sure they have. He is deeply embarrassed for his institution, but doesn’t feel like that represents the everyday feel of the school.

When people talk about CPs “racial problem” it’s unclear if they are referring to event mentioned above 4 years ago and the current fraternity problem and aftermath, CP’s “whiteness” or lack of diversity. It definitely lacks diversity, but the school is trying to remedy that while still remaining within the constraints of California law. I do believe though it will be an uphill battle for the reasons I outlined in #4.

@ucbalumnus, I wouldn’t generalize on that incident. It may have been religiously motivated as one woman was wearing a hijab, and there’s still a question as to the defendant’s sanity. He hasn’t gone to trial yet.

18

Thanks for your input @eyemgh. Glad to hear he’s had a good experience. Looks like all we have to go on is anecdotal…I doubt racism is felt daily by many non-minority students. Classes and schoolwork and all - but that’s the issue isn’t it? Some don’t see it at all. We’re looking at the aftermath of the incident, not the incident itself. One racist fool isn’t the campus. But definitely disturbing to hear about the graffiti and other racist scrawlings that have happened in response to the greek life suspension. The “racial problem” isn’t the incident itself - it’s a system of implicit bias that makes things hard for minorities - and the nonminorities are unaware. Seems that most of campus is much more upset about the suspension than the original incident. It bothers me that they think a suspension of parties is equivalent to the discrimination and oppression the minorities have faced. I’ve seem some pretty awful things on the parents’ Facebook page, from parents who say their minority students regularly have slurs written on their wipeboards to parents posting pictures of monkeys to represent the minority students. I’m trying to keep an open mind (I don’t post there), and really hoping their students are better than their parents. I would suggest to OP she find a few more students to talk to - anecdotal evidence from current minority students is really all we have to make a judgment.

19

@NWhummingbird, This “it’s a system of implicit bias that makes things hard for minorities” is a real thing all across the United States. It is not confined to Cal Poly. It will, I guarantee, be real for any minority, at any school, but the very most liberal private institutions composed only of students from liberal Democrat families (the demographic I happily count myself in), sometime during their time their, unless they completely sequester themselves. It’s one of the unfortunate things of our American experience.

We have a President who criticized “both sides” in Charlottesville, when one of those sides was neo-nazi, white supremacists and the other was there protesting them. He has almost 90% approval among Republicans. Students at colleges come from those families. The country is broken right now. Neither side even believes in the same truths. Do you think this will be different at Davis with it’s very large Ag school (yes it’s OK to say it), or any other school for that matter? We shouldn’t let the engineers off the hook either. The engineering fraternity at Syracuse was just suspended for a grossly racist video that makes the Lambda Chi stunt seem tame.

My point is, Cal Poly is the current phenom because some idiot painted his face black. Google ANY school and the word racism, any town and the word racism, any state and the word racism, and a fairly recent story will pop up. It is who we are. It will be an issue everywhere.

That is in NO way justifying or minimizing this. It’s simply to say, it is hard, if not impossible to avoid.

20

The other issue is that, at many (not all) colleges that have them, sororities and fraternities tend to self segregate by race / ethnicity. Someone interested in joining one may want to investigate whether that is true at the colleges under consideration, and whether that is true for few or most chapters at those colleges. (Chapter photo albums can be a crude way of checking.)