Course Registration and Social Atmosphere

You must make your own decisions about the school of course, but two things to know from a parent with a current upperclassmen student. Depending on the major, getting the course and/or teacher/section you want can be very difficult. Our student has registered for classes and then had her schedule totally rearranged to “balance the classes.” This might fly at a large state school and be par for the course there but not at a top price college that prides itself on small classes. Also, the social life is very Greek/sports team jock. That’s fine if that’s what you want, but if you are not Greek the parties are not open to outsiders and there isn’t a whole lot else to do. Of course, that’s true at other schools, too, but the % of Greek they publish is a tad misleading. They do get a fairly high % (relatively not absolute) of kids who transfer out, deciding, “it’s not for me.” Just food for thought as people make decisions. The town is also iffy, a fairly typical post-industrial small city. Some good, some bad.

Wow, I didn’t see the “Growing Pains” thread from the fall. TheaterBuff is spot on and accurate. Don’t pay too much attention to the responders who already graduated, it’s changed since their day and not for the better. There’s a good chance incoming students will have trouble getting the classes they want. TheaterBuff’s comment about “bad professors” is also accurate. There are some. To be fair, true everywhere.

Hi I’m a current student I’ve had at Lafayette and I just wanted to say I’ve never had a problem with getting the classes I wanted, and even when I was waitlisted for a class the professor was very accommodating about letting me in. Sure, I know plenty of people who have had to take classes at times they didn’t prefer, but I’ve never heard of people not getting into classes they needed at all. Just my two cents, I know it might not be representative of everyone!