<p>all schools have lots of liberals
although in many aspects im conservative (much more than liberal)
i will say this</p>
<p>"A young conservative has no heart, and an old liberal has no brain"</p>
<p>Upenn and Georgetown will be the most moderate</p>
<p>I'd be suspicious of any half-way decent school that <em>didn't</em> have protests.</p>
<p>thanks for all the great responses guys. keep em comin. i'm pretty sad that i need to avoid columbia and swarthmore, as those were two of the ones i was most intrigued by.</p>
<p>I don't think you need to avoid Columbia! It would be really sad to rule it out for only that reason. Yes, it is fairly liberal, but so are the vast majority of most colleges.</p>
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i'm pretty sad that i need to avoid columbia and swarthmore
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Please tell us you're joking, that you wouldn't base your decision on anything any of us post here! All seriousness aside, viva is right; most colleges are indeed marked by generosity, bounteousness and openhandedness, are unchecked by a sense of the decorous, the fitting, or the polite, and are not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional or established forms in action, attitude, or opinion.</p>
<p>
[quote]
thanks for all the great responses guys. keep em comin. i'm pretty sad that i need to avoid columbia and swarthmore, as those were two of the ones i was most intrigued by.
[/quote]
You don't need to avoid any of them. I suggested that you might not like the ones I listed. I also said that if there were a few on my list that you were especially interested in, visit them. You can really learn a lot about a school just by walking around the campus and talking to people.</p>
<p>My advice (take it as you will), is to forget whether or not the school is conservative or liberal. Instead, research for each school the prominance of conservative groups on campus (how many there are, what they do as a group, how prominent are they on the campus scene). </p>
<p>I only say this because you'll be hard pressed to find any school where you will walk into your class/dorm and be surrounded by like-minded conservatives. You will, however, find that each school does have some sort of conservative voice. Take Duke for example, in my experience most of the students lean towards the left, but there are many clubs on campus (the Duke Conservative Union, College Republicans, Duke Students for Life, Students for Saving Social Security, etc.) that provide a platform for conservative students to share their political beliefs. Furthermore, most students on campus are apathetic. I wouldn't turn down a school just because it seems like a liberal school. Even if there are liberal protests and whatnot, most of your daily activities/discussions are not going to involve politics (unless you become friends with a bunch of politico freaks, said nicely, as I am one myself). Another reason not to care is because, based on how involved you want to be, it is easier to gain publicity for your conservative events if most of the school is liberal. If everyone agrees with your beliefs, no one is going to care. Having political opinions that cause a stir on campus might make you disliked on campus, but it would certaintly get the word out that conservative students do exist and are not afraid to be known. And who cares if the liberals hate you, you'll have the support of the other conservative students that you seem to be looking for. So depending on how hard you want to work, being on a liberal campus can be a good thing.</p>
<p>Basically what I'm saying is don't judge a school based on how it appears, but look for the organizations inside of the school that will allow you to meet and become involved with other conservatives (even if it doesn't look like it, there are conservative students on every campus, and plenty of them to boot).</p>
<p>What in the world is "very moderate"?? I tell you, this strict liberal/conservative crap is getting out of hand. It's almost as bad as the fabricated 'culture war'.</p>
<p>^^^^^
Good advice there from Wanna. I would also add that at pretty much any school of decent size, you will find like-minded people with whom you connect. While a very liberal LAC would probably not be a good fit for you, I wouldn't avoid applying to a place like Columbia or Penn just b/c the student body in general tends to be liberal. There are people all over the spectrum at most every campus (I would imagine, for example, that Wharton and engineering types at Penn are fairly conservative). Heck, I am pretty much non-political, somewhat libertarian, and I survived four years at Brown! [in fact, I think I was all the better for it, being exposed to different viewpoints, but that's a different subject altogether]</p>
<p>Hampden-Sydney College
Notre Dame
West Point
Annapolis
Davidson
Washington & Lee
Colgate</p>
<p>...almost any engineering-oriented school.... (big exception: CMU)</p>
<p>Notre Dame
Rice
Wake Forest
W&L
Vanderbilt (I think)
BC to some extent, its way more conservative than any other school in Boston</p>
<p>A good deal of this should depend on whether you are a humanities student or a science/engineering student.</p>
<p>After that, one can sort through the schools judiciously. </p>
<p>For instance, Columbia is politically very liberal (not especially generous to visiting conservatives), as is the city that houses it, but from an academic point of view Columbia is quite conservative with a required core (very traditional approach) and a classical style. </p>
<p>Moreover you need to distinguish an unfashionable apathy (Princeton, Penn, WUSL) from a politically conservative disposition. </p>
<p>Brown and Swarthmore are in fact akin to a People's Republic of Brown/Swarthmore but even this should not dissuade a true conservative if all else is equal.</p>
<p>Schools, for instance, like Dartmouth are quite liberal but in possession of a very powerful conservative campus voice in "The Dartmouth Review" keeping it honest and open to the "other" point of view, so to speak.</p>
<p>UChicago is traditionally conservative even if the mass of its students are quite liberal. Even the ever earnest liberal is perhaps hushed by the work load and severity of the campus.</p>
<p>Williams, in all its pastoral splendor is, I believe, apolitical for all intents and purposes. It's opposite being Swarthmore.</p>
<p>But, as many have suggested, I would not allow your politics to drive your decision--there are way to many factors to consider once you take it all in. Who knows, you may even end up being a rare conservative-flower in Swarthmore's fashionably chichi political gardens.</p>
<p>SMU, TCU, Miami of Ohio</p>