Lehigh or lafayette?

LC82
Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:00:20 +0000

Lafayette has been offering engineering since 1866, but has hardly left their liberal arts identity, offering 47 areas of study across four academic divisions, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. However, their identity is one of the few LACs with a strong engineering program. Approximately 25% of the students major in one of the four ABET-accredited programs (chemical, civil, electrical & computer, or mechanical). [Division of Engineering: Engineering Majors](http://engineering.lafayette.edu/majors/) I also would not characterize Lafayette’s admission standards as demonstrably different than that for Lehigh (i.e. the stats for accepted students are comparable).

Lafayette is about 2400 undergrads (no graduate students). Lehigh is larger at about 4780 undergrads and 2270 graduate students. Since Lafayette is more focused on the liberal arts than Lehigh, the M/F ratio is more even at 53%/47% vs. 59%/41% at Lehigh. I believe that greek life is more prevalent at Lehigh with 21 fraternities and 9 sororities, vs. 5 fraternities and 6 sororities at Lafayette.

I am a practicing civil engineer and found my undergraduate education at Lafayette to be first rate. I agree that if you are not sure what you want, apply to both and visit. Their campuses are only 20 minutes apart.

Oh yeah, Lafayette’s golf team won the Patriot League title last year and competed in the NCAA East Regional.