Willing to answer any and all questions about Lehigh. Although it has only been about a month, I can probably answer most prospective students’ questions 
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Anyone is free to ask or answer questions in this thread. It is NOT the place, however, for “chance me” posts.
Parent here. How pervasive is Greek life? Are there still sufficient opportunities to socialize if you are not a member of a frat or sorority?
And thank you for offering info like this.
Greek life is pretty big here – about 40% of campus is involved; however, that means 60% are not. The school tries to provide alternatives to partying via a program that holds alcohol free events every Friday. Additionally, the rec center has extended hours on the weekends if your child is into that. I can’t speak for the opportunities to socialize as an upperclassman, but as a freshman, you are welcome to most Greek parties as they’re trying to recruit. It doesn’t feel like there is a big divide between Greek and non Greek yet, but many upperclassmen generally hang out with their Greek brothers and sisters, although all have non Greek friends as well. Greek life has been on a hiatus since the beggining of the year, as a member of Lafayette - a nearby rival university - died in an acohol tragedy. The police have been cracking down on frat parties. 4 Greek organizations were suspended for harboring underage drinking, and on one night about a week ago, 60 freshman alone were cited for alcohol. I don’t drink and have found that there’s not too much to do during the weekends. I’m in choice housing (substance free living), so I hwvcan lots of friends in my hall with whom I can chill and have fun without alcohol. People here are saying Greek life is under attack, so if that’s a big factor in your child’s decision, I would keep that in mind. If you have any other questions feel free to ask away! @Dancingmom518
Lots of parties here, but they’ve been cracking down and citing the people hosting them to deter people from hosting. Lots of arrests and citations lately, although please be careful in trying to catogorize 6000 students into one bucket - the stereotype is true, but not everyone fits the stereotype @Muad_dib
Lots of parties here, but they’ve been cracking down and citing the people hosting them to deter people from hosting. Lots of arrests and citations lately, although please be careful in trying to catogorize 6000 students into one bucket - the stereotype is true, but not everyone fits the stereotype @Muad_dib
@Dancingmom518
There is a lot of Greek life. I think I read about 40% of students, but I’m not sure whether that is right. Keep in mind that it is a very broad category, and there is a wide range of personalities reflected in the various houses. Also for freshmen, none of them are in Greek Life first semester. Lehigh has a spring rush.
The best way to meet people is to get involved through clubs and activities. There are a lot of them. For most freshmen at any school, it takes some time to settle in and find your peeps, but they do.
@Muad_dib Lehigh has a diverse and inclusive student body. I think that Christians are probably the largest religious group on campus. There are also Christian clubs/groups and churches nearby where you can worship and find like minded people. Also, people of all beliefs are very accepting of one another at Lehigh. Our student has good friends with a wide range of religious beliefs. That is part of the learning experience of college. We all learn that we are much more alike than we are different.
Like most schools in the US, there are a lot of parties, but there are also many students do not get involved in parties. Lehigh has a long history as a work hard, play hard environment. However, following a number of student deaths from drinking at other colleges (thankfully not Lehigh), the Lehigh President, the administration, and law enforcement have been making student safety a priority, aggressively tamping down the more hard core partying, and encouraging potential students who are think they want to come to Lehigh for the partying to consider going to college elsewhere. I think there will always be Greek life at Lehigh, but hopefully in its image will evolve to emphasize the positive aspects of it: develop leaders, graduating at higher rates, supporting philanthropy and working to make the entire community a better place for everyone. Some people say that Lehigh has parties raging from Wednesday through Saturday, but I can tell you that last Thursday night I was I there visiting and it was dead quiet all around campus.
Also keep in mind that Lehigh has serious academics and unusually high percentage of students who have chosen challenging majors like premed, hard sciences, engineering, math and computer science, and IBE, to name a few. That means that many students don’t have time to be out partying a lot. They have very rigorous schedules.
In my opinion, if your student is the kid who has been drinking, and smoking pot since middle school, I would not send them to Lehigh, because they will always be able to find those things if they are looking for them. However, for more responsible students, who can balance a rigorous course load with social activity, clubs and other opportunities, it is an excellent place to go to school.
jmho
Thank you @Nerd234 and @Much2learn. Do you have any knowledge of the study abroad programs?
@dancingmom518 I don’t know a lot about it, except that many students do it, our student is considering it for next summer and says that her friends who did it had a great experience.
Here is the link: http://global.lehigh.edu/studyabroad
Thank you! @Much2learn
@nerds234 "Lots of parties here, but they’ve been cracking down and citing the people hosting them to deter people from hosting. Lots of arrests and citations lately, although please be careful in trying to catogorize 6000 students into one bucket - the stereotype is true, but not everyone fits the stereotype @@Muad_dib ’
To add a little to nerds234’s comment, while this may be concerning to may potential Lehigh applicants and parents, in my experience, parties with alcohol are happening at all schools, so they should be more concerned about the colleges where no one is being cited at these parties. At Lehigh, the administration and law enforcement are focused on keeping students safe.
Also, I believe it has been misreported in the paper that students are being arrested, but I am not aware of any arrests. Many students who are caught drinking under age have been cited, but I haven’t heard of any actual arrests.
Thank you @Much2learn and @Nerd234 for your responses.
There is currently a lot of concern in Pennsylvania about college drinking, especially by underage kids. This follows the deaths earlier this year of Tim Piazza at Penn State and McCrae Williams at Lafayette. Both were 19. Lehigh reportedly had near-deaths last year; at one point, a hospital apparently called school administrators to get contact info for a student’s next of kin.
No administrator, at any school, wants to deal with this kind of issue. If their options are: (a) clamping down on excessive drinking, or (b) calling parents in the middle of the night to tell them that their kid is dead or dying, then you should not be surprised if they go with option (a).
The drinking issue is complicated at Lehigh by the housing situation. Smaller Patriot League schools like Bucknell or Colgate have similar reputations for drinking and partying, but the administration has more control, because virtually all of the students live in college housing – there’s little to no off-campus housing in small towns like Lewisburg or Hamilton. So college security can monitor and break up parties if they are deemed to be out of hand. What happens at college, stays at college.
Lehigh is larger than Bucknell and Colgate put together, and there are blocks and blocks of inexpensive row houses just off-campus. So Lehigh does not have the capacity to house all of its students; most of the upperclassmen move off-campus. If students throw parties off-campus, the school has no oversight, Bethlehem PD gets involved instead, and there will be local news coverage. In other words, the problems aren’t necessarily worse at Lehigh, but they are definitely more visible.
How demanding are the courses? DD is planning to major in Business.
My son is a freshman in the IBE program. So far he’s loving Lehigh, academically and socially. The transition has been smooth and made good friends with roommate and hallmates (boys and girls). Several of them are in IBE as well. He’s taking 17 credits but feels his schedule is very manageable, more so than high school schedule. He said studying and doing homework on a regular and consistent basis is his advise. He likes the class size for the most part; the largest classes have 40 students in Calc 2 and Econ 2. Midterms are this week, but he feels comfortable going into them. Some students are overly stressed about it, but mine told me over the weekend that he feels prepared. He was like this in HS too though. He doesn’t strive for perfection and feels a 93 vs 100 is not important because both scores will be an A.
Socially, there are lots of parties, but there are lots of parties at other schools too (big and small). Mine feels taking things in moderate is good and feels like Lehigh admin is trying to work with the student best they can. At this time, he does not think he’ll rush in the spring. Lehigh’s greek rush is the 2nd semester; I personally like that because it allows students to get settled and meet people outside of the pressure of rushing. He said there is always something to do and he’s rarely in his room. There are kids who party every day, there are kids who don’t at all, and there are many who fall in between… College experience and choices are what students make of it.
Some of the classes in my experience have been bigger. Econ002 is not a class here, so I’m not sure what the above poster is talking about. My Econ1 class has probably about 250 kids in the lecture and 20 in recitation, physics has about the same, computer science has 50 and math 205 (Linear Algebra) has about 40. Classes are big until junior year usually, but if you sit in the front they don’t feel too large.
@annamom I’m taking two business classes - Econ 001 and Bus001, both of which have minimal homework, but you’re expected to keep up with the textbook readings. It’s on you to do that. Bus001 the second half of the semester you’re given a company and you research their marketing strategy, look over their accounting and supply chain management strategy, and try to find ways to improve. It sounds like it will be really cool!
@Nerd234 thank you. The classes seem interesting.
@Nerd234 My son is in Econ 29.
I am a freshman currently and most of my classes have been pretty small but I guess it depends on if you take a lot of the big intro courses. My English class has 16 people and my only class with more than 30 people is calc 2.