I recently visited both Beloit and Lawrence and liked both very much. Both have smart and interesting students, serious academics, and nice campuses. Both also have terrific student/faculty ratios and records of outstanding graduate school placement.
Here are some quick reactions.
Student Bodies:
Both colleges have diverse student bodies that defy easy categorization. Each has a healthy mix of serious scholars whose eyes seemed glued to their books, athletes wearing team jackets, musicians, artists, activists, conventional-looking people, people with hair colors that cannot be found in nature, etc. Both colleges clearly attract people of varied ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. Before I visited the campuses, I half expected Beloit to be populated by hippies, hipsters and Dungeons & Dragons players and Lawrence to be populated by neurotic violinists, pre-professionals and hockey players. In fact, both campuses had plenty of all types (except Beloit has no hockey team). I would acknowledge, though, that Lawrence may have a slightly higher percentage of unremarkable looking Midwesterners, while Beloit may have a slightly higher percentage of people who look like characters on the Bing Bang Theory.
The Beloit students seemed slightly more prone to walk in groups of two or more and say “hello” to one another (and to me). Lots of Beloiters seemed eager to chat. Lawrence also was plenty friendly, but it seemed to have a higher percentage of students walking alone and studying alone. I wasn’t at either campus for very long, so I could be wrong about this.
Campuses:
Both campuses are pretty and compact. Beloit’s is more of an eclectic mix of brick and stone buildings and is on a quadrangle with broad vistas. Lawrence’s campus buildings are primarily made of light stone and the campus is divided by College Avenue, which is a fairly busy street that separates the main campus from the conservatory. Beloit’s campus has a gently rolling feel to it, while Lawrence’s is flat in the main areas. I slightly preferred Beloit’s campus to Lawrence’s, but both were very nice. Beloit’s just felt a little warmer and open to me.
Both campuses feature attractive old buildings. One of the nicest old buildings at Beloit, made of dark stone, serves as a student center. Other old buildings are home to various humanities departments, museums, etc. Beloit also has a spectacular new science center that serves the science, math and social science departments. It offers good places to sit and study plus terrific views of the neighboring river and campus buildings. Beloit is also building a new student recreation center (converting an old power plant) but that won’t be finished for a couple of years at least.
Lawrence has a spectacular new student center. Everyone on campus seems to go there several times a day to eat. The space is modern yet warm, and offered good places to sit and study as well as views of the neighboring river. Like Beloit, Lawrence has some old buildings that are primarily used for humanities departments and a newer building used for science departments. The science building is attractive but not breathtaking like Beloit’s. The older academic buildings at Lawrence may be slightly spiffier (better maintained) than the older academic buildings at Beloit.
Dorms:
Beloit’s dorms seemed very nice and clean. Most or all are clustered on the same part of campus. Lawrence’s dorms are more scattered. From what I could see, Beloit’s dorms were nicer looking, better maintained, had nicer communal rooms and had more spacious rooms. But Lawrence’s dorms seemed fine.
Beloit also offers some interesting options in neighborhood houses. Several houses have themes, such as “music house,” etc. I think Lawrence has some of these, too.
Both colleges have some fraternities. From the outside, the Greek houses on both campuses seemed pretty tame compared to fraternities at state universities. I didn’t go in any of them. Beloit’s fraternities are on a short “fraternity row.” One Beloit fraternity had a sign in the window that said “Black Lives Matter.” Lawrence’s fraternities are in the middle of campus, share design elements with the rest of campus, and look like small dorms.
Art and Music Scenes:
Both campuses seemed very strong in the arts, but Lawrence, with its conservatory, was incredibly vibrant in terms of music offerings. I sensed that there were more student productions at Lawrence than at Beloit, but both had plenty of student productions and nice facilities. Lawrence’s chapel is also stunning. (Beloit’s is smaller but nice, too.) I also really liked the visual arts building at Lawrence, which is modern, multi-colored and very different from the rest of the Lawrence campus.
Surrounding Cities:
Appleton seemed much more interesting than Beloit as a city. Downtown Beloit has a few nice coffee shops, a steakhouse, a sports bar, a bookstore (the college’s bookstore), and miscellaneous other stores, bars and restaurants, but it did not seem to have any Asian restaurants or any theatres of clubs with live music. (Maybe I missed them.) Appleton had several Asian restaurants and generally felt like a real destination where people would go even if they did not live in the immediate vicinity. College Avenue is very walkable and has a wide range of restaurant, bars, etc. Both cities felt reasonably safe and both had plenty of people in them who clearly were not affiliated with the colleges.
While Beloit is less interesting than Appleton, Beloit is an hour from Madison, an hour from Milwaukee, and less than two hours from Chicago. Double those numbers for Appleton.
Bottom line:
Both seem like terrific colleges.