Conservative liberal arts colleges [want "strong academics and not religious"]

College Search & Selection
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Looking for recommendations of small (<2,000 students) liberal arts colleges that skew conservative but have strong academics and not religious.

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Washington & Lee comes to mind.

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Claremont McKenna

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Thank you’

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Appreciate it.

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Hendrix College

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University of Richmond.

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New College of Florida

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Gettysburg College

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All-male colleges may be especially conservative. For extant examples, look into Hampden–Sydney and Wabash.

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Furman

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I’ll add Wofford too.

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Lake Forest College

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Per Niche - based on how students rate themselves, Susquehana

Hillsdale is the ultimate but is technically Christian

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Fair warning–for a secular, academically-strong LAC to skew relatively conservative does not mean it will count as conservative by the standards of broader society. Like, I agree Richmond or Washington and Lee will attract more than the usual share of conservatives for an LAC, but there will also still be a good number of very liberal people, and mostly there will be people in the moderate to mildly liberal range.

And one issue with SLACs like that is if you are looking for large communities of very conservative people, well, even a substantial fraction of a smaller college overall is still going to be a modest-sized community.

To see this, you can look at the Politics on Campus section at Niche. One obvious problem with that section is the response volume for a given college is really low–in this case only 14 for Washington and Lee, 7 for Richmond. However, combined that is 21. Bucknell is another one I would put in that category, and that is another 9, so 30. Davidson too–another 7. And so on.

And once you look at enough colleges like that, I think you will see what I mean about what the distribution really looks like.

All of which may be fine, I just thought it was worth being clear about realistic expectations for what these colleges will look like politically.

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Right. These schools may have a higher representation of conservative students, but I’m not sure how conservative the overall campuses are. Some schools aren’t particularly socially active, though, so maybe that’s what the OP is looking for.

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Yeah, if you are looking for secular, academically-well-regarded colleges where sociopolitical activism is maybe not that important to most students (at least outside of things like actual elections) . . . that is very doable, I think. There will still be some activism, but you can find colleges where at least most of the students are really just focused on classes and careers and maybe having some fun.

And that is actually arguably “conservative” in the sort of old-school small-c sense of conservatism, adjusted for the social norms of contemporary society. I mean, if you value going to an established institute of higher learning, from a certain perspective that is an inherently small-c conservative act.

But, conservatism means different things to different people, and again it is worth noting that is really the way in which most secular LACs are going to be more conservative–by having fewer students relatively focused on sociopolitical activism, and more relatively focused on classes and career.

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To expand your options, you may want to consider colleges in the context of your intended major. For example, the cohort in an economics program at a NESCAC such as, say, Trinity may be sufficiently conservative for you.

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Hobart William Smith. Just under 2,000 students. Even split of conservative, liberal, and apolitical.

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We are looking for more apolitical schools. FIRE has a viewpoint ratio on their rankings that seem to have a larger number of students polled than Niche. You have to search each school though, it’s not super easy to navigate.