Son accepted! No mention of merit in Fin Aid letter… does it come later? Please say yes!
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DD admitted with no merit (unlike all other FA packages she received) but generous grants. Based on Niche, Lafayette has a median income 6 years post-graduation of $66,800. That’s ~20k higher than Kenyon or Grinnell. Why do you think this is? Lafayette grads get jobs in east coast cities? Types of majors? It’s impressive.
Curious wha happens to merit awards given to students who decline the offer of admission. Do they go to another student? It would stand to reason that the kids who got merit awards at Lafayette may have gotten merit awards elsewhere and some will decide to attend another college.
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I’m thinking the higher income at six years out is because Lafayette has an engineering school. Kids who are headed to grad or med school may be barely done with education at six years, but engineers have been working since graduation.
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My guess why Lafayette’s median income is that much higher would be for the following reasons:
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higher STEM focus. Including higher salaries for engineers as mentioned
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more grads working in NY or other large east coast cities with higher cost of livings and salaries
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generally a higher pre professional student body than a ‘pure’ LAC. This probably translates into a higher portion of grads in Consulting, Finance, or other corporate activities
Lafayette generally has an incredibly loyal alumni base and a high degree of students have success networking for experience, internships, and employment via the alumni community
Congratulations to all accepted! It’s a wonderful place to spend four formative years!
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You have to be invited to compete for the Marquis award. That happened a while back. My kid was not invited. I don’t know what happens if the recipients don’t commit but I doubt there is much to come later since their calculations are needs based.
The price they quoted us was offensively high imo. Only Bucknell is higher right now. Wasted time on essay’s unfortunately.
Does anyone know how many applications Lafayette received this year?
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But they give other merit besides just the Marquis Fellowships (the ones you have to be invited for).
Mine didn’t get anything. I won’t brag about stats. Not necessary. My experience is the merit scholarships only decrease the grants and the cost doesn’t change. Maybe it works better for others. This one just costs too much for us. Great college though.
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I think you are right about merit decreasing grants, but that assumes you qualified for grants. We did not, but that in no way means we can afford to commit to shelling out $85K for the next 4 years, especially considering that many schools of their peer institutions offered significant merit aid.
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Agree about the incredibly loyal alumni. I worked for a Lafayette grad who hired Lafayette grads and does fundraisers for the school.
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My D23 was also accepted (psychology). We loved the very personalized letter. She did not receive merit of any kind, so it is off the list. To be honest, as I mentioned above, the decisions came out so late (most of her schools were EA), that she had kind of lost interest in Lafayette, despite it being a great school that she was very interested in when we visited last summer.
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Did any accepted students receive a their big envelopes in the mail ? I was just curious my son never got one.
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Nope, not yet.
Still no envelope here. I reserved the Friday of
Easter weekend for a revisit, but will see what my son wants to do. We are going for an accepted student day this weekend at another favorite that may win it…
Do you know if Lafayette allows students to change their major?
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I spoke with someone in admissions yesterday who said it is easy to change majors.
When my D was at Lafayette she did not formally declare her major until (I think) second semester sophomore year. She had no issue switching from her initial major to a different one. Not sure if moving into engineering would be a different story.
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Adding: Spoke to D last night…her remembence is that she changed majors after freshman year just by emailing (she thinks) the Registrar. Over the summer she was able to adjust her schedule (drop one class and add a different one) to accommodate the new major. She also got a new advisor who was a professor in the major she switched into (she believes she was given a choice as to who her new advisor was).
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Our tour guide mentioned how she had switched majors several times and raves about the level of guidance and support she received from her advisors.
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