Beloit College vs. Lawrence University

<p>Hello, I am an international student who got into both Beloit and Lawrence.
I am very interested in the field of social science.
Especially, Political science is going to be my major in college.</p>

<p>Beloit suggested me $14000 for scholarship and Lawrence suggested me $18000 for scholarship and $3000 for work study.
However, I will need more than that for keeping my study in US as my parents are planning to move out of city and begin farming in a few years.</p>

<p>So my questions are:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Which school has stronger social science departments (Politics, Economics, Sociology, Philosophy, History, etc)?</p></li>
<li><p>Which school has more generous FA to internationals?</p></li>
<li><p>Which school has more flexible curriculum (Actually I looked up online and thought that both school are very flexible in its curriculum)?</p></li>
<li><p>How many classes are maximum numbers that a student can take per semester in Beloit? Can I take 6 courses in one semester?</p></li>
<li><p>How many classes are maximum numbers that a student can take per term in Lawrence? Can I take 5 courses in one term?</p></li>
<li><p>How long a student work per day in Lawrence for work study?</p></li>
<li><p>Even though Lawrence University offers me better FA and utilizes trimester system that I like, I will like to go Beloit if they offer me little more FA than what they suggested. Do you think there is any way that I can get more scholarship from Beloit?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thank you very much~~</p>

<p>If you’ve already been admitted you should contact each school and ask questions 4, 5, and 6.</p>

<p>If I were you, I would contact the financial aid office at Beloit. Tell them that you would like to attend Beloit, but that you cannot justify attending at the current aid level because, at this point, it is less expensive for you to attend Lawrence (given their aid package). See if they will find you additional funds. If they sweeten your aid package, great. If they don’t, then happily travel up to Appleton.</p>

<p>Reputation in the social sciences – Frankly, the schools are comparable in their reputation. Both put a fair number of students into graduate and professional schools. </p>

<p>I think that a practical way to look at academic flexibility is to look at the number of students who pursue double majors. That will give you an insight as to how much flexibility is built into the academic requirements.</p>

<p>Don’t know much about Lawrence, but I can tell you that six classes a semester isn’t going to happen in your first year at Beloit. You need permission (which isn’t hard to get) just to take five classes in your first semester. You could take six classes later, I guess, but I don’t think it’s very common. Doesn’t seem very practical if you’re also working.</p>

<p>Thank you icemaker and cristiline
Your knowledge is such a wonderful help.
Do any know about reputation of Lawrence in social science field?
It is so hard to find info about social science programs in Lawrence.</p>

<p>I hope this “Beloit v Lawrence” thread gets lively in the next few months, since I imagine there are lots of cross-admits. Any students or parents of students who can share why they chose one over the other? We visited both in the summer, but of course there weren’t many students around. Hopefully S2 will be able to go to the admitted students days. We didn’t really get to see much of downtown Beloit, although there seems to be a nice park close to the river. Are there any little shops and places to eat close to campus that attract Beloit students?</p>

<p>I have visited both Lawrence University and Beloit College (my D decided against applying to either of them). Both campuses are impressive, with Beloit feeling a bit more cosy. If location is a consideration, Appleton (home of Lawrence) has a decided edge over Beloit. College Avenue in Lawrence has a charming array of shops, restaurants and the like. The area surrounding Beloit College is much less vibrant. For some people, this could be a reason to prefer one school over the other (in cases where the schools are more or less well matched academically). I’d be curious to hear what people who know more about Beloit might say about the location. I found it rather drab. Again, the campus itself is beautiful.</p>

<p>Beloit student here. Yeah, I have to say the area isn’t great. There’s enough, I guess, if you want to get a bite to eat or order delivery. If you have a car, there’s access to more mainstream places (fast food, Applebee’s, etc.). Not a lot in walking distance for entertainment, but there are things to do on campus, a bus on Fridays to see movies. There’s a farmers market</p>

<p>Farmers market in the fall too. Sorry, typing on iPhone and posted early.</p>

Does anyone have anything to add here? I imagine many people apply to both and that many students at one have friends at the other.

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.

@AmazingBlue, you’ve done an analysis that, for us, sums up exactly what we were thinking when we compared the two after our visits. My D has chosen Beloit partly because of the friendliness of everyone she met there. We’ve found, at least for my D, that campus visits were so important because, on paper, two colleges can seem interchangeable when they really aren’t.

After I wrote my post two days ago, someone commented privately that, on average, Lawrence students seemed a little more serious about their studies than Beloit students, and that the Lawrence classes seemed a little more intense. By contrast, this person thought that Beloit students might be somewhat more passionate about extracurricular activities. To be clear, these are my rough paraphrases of someone else’s observations. I can’t offer an opinion on the rigor of classes because I don’t have enough information. But it is true that I probably saw more people quietly doing homework at Lawrence than at Beloit. It is also true that I saw many people quietly doing homework at both. I also met people at both who seemed extremely engaged in extracurricular activities, ranging from athletic teams to arts.

I think AmazingBlue did a well…amazing job describing the two schools. I am am in agreement with almost every observation. All that being said, I decided to choose Lawrence.

The people I met at both schools were smart, caring folks. It just seemed to me that Lawrence was more challenging academically. That is not a shot at Beloit. Grad school numbers are about the same for both schools and both are excellent. There is, however, a difference in curriculum and I happen to prefer the one at Lawrence. It should also be noted that Lawrence has minors available in two subjects I am interested in. Beloit does not.

One of my early sticking points was the trimester system, particularly in regard to summer employment. The Lawrence students I spoke with said it was actually a plus. They said that employers actually liked it because they got to keep you for another month after everyone else had gone back to school.

It was a hard decision between Lawrence and Beloit. I really don’t think I could have gone wrong with either one. Willamette, Puget Sound, and Allegheny are all great schools as well. In the end, you just have to pick the one that feels right for you. Easier said than done, but in the end that is actually what happened to me.

One observation I made about Beloit in an earlier post is now apparently out of date. I said I observed no Asian restaurants in Beloit. But a couple of new restaurants have opened in downtown Beloit, including a sushi restaurant that (according to its online menu) offers everything from traditional sushi to monkey brain, plus a few Korean dishes. So Beloiters no longer have to drive 15 miles to Janesville to get sushi.

Has anybody tried the new sushi place? Has anybody tried the monkey brain? How does it compare to Appleton monkey brain?

Thank you very much to all on this thread - we are from East Coast and won’t be able to visit before applying! This is enough detail to convince me first that both are great schools, but second, that my gut feeling that Beloit is a better fit is probably right.