Lafayette College Admission
Lafayette College Undergraduate Program
Lafayette College Application

The Facts

Lafayette College is a moderately sized liberal arts and sciences college located in the small town of Easton, Pennsylvania, and is home to over 2,200 undergraduate students. The school is perhaps best known for offering students a top notch education in beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities due to a large endowment. The college’s best program by far is engineering, and the school uniquely integrates this more scientific discipline with the liberal arts. The school is actually divided up into several smaller programs including natural sciences, humanities, engineering, and social sciences. Lafayette offers its students more than 45 majors in a wide variety of academic and preprofessional areas; some of the most popular majors include engineering, economics, government and law, English, and psychology.

Admission to Lafayette College is actually quite competitive, particularly for a school of such diminutive stature. Last year, over 6,000 students applied for admission to the school, and approximately 2,100 of those students were accepted; of those, about 600 matriculated. The admitted students had an average combined SAT score ranging from 1180 to 1360, and an average comprehensive ACT score ranging from 25 to 30. Additionally, over 90% of those admitted were ranked in the top 25% of their high school graduating class with an average high school GPA of about 3.96.

Lafayette College has a wonderfully low student to faculty ratio of 11:1, and professors generally do everything possible to be fully accessible to their students. It is rare to find a class with more than twenty students, and most of the classes are held in lab or discussion form with plenty of hands-on experience. Many students end up working in close conjunction with professors on various research projects, and stay in contact with their teachers long after graduation.

The Social Scene

The town of Easton, Pennsylvania is quite small, and doesn’t really offer students much in the way of entertainment or excitement. The town is small and industrial, and hasn’t even begun to embrace its status as a bona fide college town. Most of the action can be found on campus, and Lafayette definitely has a reputation for being somewhat of a party school. The college has several national fraternities and sororities that constantly throw some pretty rowdy parties that are extremely popular with students. Drinking is a very popular social activity, and weekends are usually filled with endless keg parties and heavy binge drinking.

The school also boasts a great student center that is (usually) alcohol free, and has a sports bar with pool and darts. There is also a student activities board that often brings great guest speakers, comedians, and bands to campus. In past years, the campus has hosted Dave Matthews, and Bela Fleck.

The dating scene is what you make of it; while it isn’t incredibly diverse, the people are friendly, and usually remarkably attractive, if they aren’t sloppy drunks, that is...

What’s Good

“The campus is great and the layout makes it really easy to get from class to class, which is a plus for confused freshmen.”

“The engineering program is incredible, and the professors are some of the top minds in the field.”

“The small campus lets us all bond and feel very familial, which is nice if you live far away from home.”

What’s Bad

“There is nothing to do in the town, and after a while, the frat parties just aren’t enough anymore.”

“The atmosphere can get really competitive, and people tend to forget that they aren’t fighting for a job...yet.”

“The core curriculum is way too cumbersome...it takes forever to actually get to classes that pertain to your major.”

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