Lafayette College - Academics

Academics

Lafayette's student body consists of 2,382 undergraduate students hailing from 37 U.S. States and 57 countries. For the class of 2012, the acceptance rate was 42%, with 59% of those accepted ranking in the top 10% of their high school classes. The middle 50% of accepted students have SAT scores ranging from 570 - 670 Critical Reading and 600 - 710 Math, and ACT scores ranging from 26–30. The college has 199 full-time faculty members, giving it an 11:1 student to faculty ratio. This ratio will decrease to 9:1 after the hiring of 35 new faculty members as part of the College's Strategic Planning Initiative.

Lafayette students have been honored in recent years with national and international scholarships, including the most Goldwater Scholarships obtained by a liberal arts college over the past six years. For the class of 2012, Lafayette gave financial aid to 66% of the students, with the average package amounting to $26,850 for all students. The college also offers a merit-based academic scholarship – the Marquis Scholarship, which provides $20,000 per year. Lafayette's endowment is more than $580 million, with total assets amounting to more than $1 billion.

In its 2012 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked Lafayette 40th out of all liberal arts colleges in the nation,. In Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, a study of the best valued schools ranked Lafayette 14th among liberal arts colleges. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has ranked Lafayette as fifth among the nation’s 50 leading liberal arts colleges and universities in the percentage of full-time African American faculty members, and twelfth for first year black enrollment.

The College offers 45 different Majors across four academic divisions: natural sciences, humanities, engineering, and social sciences. Most departments offer minors, and twelve interdisciplinary minors are also available. A.B. requirements allow students to double major or create a coordinate major in two departments. Students declare their major during the second semester of their sophomore year.

The Policy Studies program, established in 2006, is an interdisciplinary major that allows students to better understand the design, management, and evaluation of policies and institutions. The Policy Studies Program sponsors student events such as the Election Night Broadcast, where students reported the events of the 2006 mid-term election to the College, and also brings guest speakers to campus. Also new to the College is a Chinese language program which will offer classes on Chinese language and culture. Lafayette's Strategic Planning Initiative is also considering the possibility of introducing additional non-European language programs over time, including Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.