Thank you for this information but I wasn’t thinking of applying to the IBE program. I agree that IBE might tie me down because of the heavy STEM.
(The below might not apply – I’m a little confused now. You want ISE/biz double major, yes?)
Ah, sorry. I think though that if you say “I want ISE and biz double major,” they might refer you to IBE precisely because IBE doesn’t require the load of a double major, but allows you to get both biz and ISE in there.
Universities have an interest in not setting students up for failure, and I’m guessing they’ll be pretty iffy about this unless you move at around 1.75x the speed of your average Lehigh student and generally sail through life like butter. Yeah, talk with the advisors, but my gut says that if the average Lehigh student came in saying they wanted a double major, I’d say “you’re going to get caught between the eng workload time commitment and the biz insistence that it’s a serious major, and by junior year you’re going to have a job negotiating both majors’ off-campus requirements…maybe plan to stay five years.” There’s a musical-montage scene in Real Genius where Rick Moranis loses his shizz in a pre-exams study commons room and cracks; this is a real thing that happens in eng at Lehigh, as is the bit where someone else just takes advantage of the empty seat at the table and they all shift a little and then it’s like Moranis never existed.
Yeah. If you don’t mind reporting back on what they say, I’d be interested to hear.
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I would lean toward Lehigh given F&M is more a traditional LAC as opposed to Lehigh or Northeastern which both have a full-fledged business curriculum and place many students into business careers also saying Lehigh over Northeastern given you express a concern over the large city experience. Lehigh offers a more traditional college experience vs. NE which has the co-op 5-year model and is in the heart of Boston. While you may need to take out ~$7k a year of loans at Lehigh, still think this may be worthwhile as the placement and starting salary may be higher from Lehigh than F&M and at NE you may be on the 5-year program given coops which could result in a higher all-in price.
I know it’s a small sample, but in my 35 years on the street, I’ve worked with a number of Lehigh/Northeastern grads. Can’t think of one from F&M and I would have remembered given my Central PA roots.
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Just to correct a few things, you don’t have to graduate in 5 years at NU. That is if you want to do 3 co-ops. You can graduate in 4 years with 2 co-ops. You do not pay tuition while on co-op and many students are able to pay their housing costs from the money they earn on co-op so no real extra cost.
NU offers student housing in different locations, including NYC, Chicago, DC, San Francisco and Mountainview, CA. You can do your co-ops anywhere, including internationally.
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Think others said this in a roundabout way but just to be explicit, Northeastern does not cost more no matter if you do a 4 year or 5 year plan, both of which include co-op’s 
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Northeastern does not cost more for the 5-year co-op program. In fact, it can make cost easier to manage since it’s spread out over 5 years instead of 4. Northeastern also recently added a plan to complete college with co-ops in 4 years.
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While it’s become more popular and emphasized recently, this has always existed actually! In 2015 they began to more heavily market that all majors could be completed in 4 years with 2 co-op’s, likely in response to some people being against a 5 year plan altogether. Many still elect for the 5 year / 3 co-op plan. From what I can tell, it’s about 50/50 on campus now but starting to shift towards more 4 year elects interestingly.
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Even if tuition costs are equivalent for 4yr vs. 5 year, if doing the 5 year plan, OP would forgo the average starting salary out of the business school of ~$68k for the fifth year they are in school net of the incremental salary from the additional co-op experience. Not saying this is a bad thing and I think NE’s model is really great for those interested in the co-op model, but something for OP to keep in mind as he/she was viewing Lehigh as ~$7k per year more expensive but its not a true apples-to-apples comparison.
I think you should reread here, as there’s no school that’s 7K per year more expensive than another. In fact, we have no idea the cost of Northeastern beyond that it’s unaffordable pending an appeal, so this whole thing is kind of irrelevant to OP. We only know that F&M will not require loans, and Lehigh requires about 28K in loans total. It sounds like Northeastern is unlikely to become affordable, and OP sounds like they will do great at Lehigh!
You’re writing off the 18 months of co-op pay from that as a footnote, but that’s going to actually more or less cancel out. Even at a modest $20 an hour, that actually equals that 65K, near on the dot. So the working year isn’t lost, it’s dispersed between school. The structure is different but there’s zero difference in the end financially.
When people talk affordability of college, for some the spreading out of costs over 5 years and dispersed with income can even make things more affordable. And with 7K being loans for Lehigh, you’d then also need to factor in interest and how that affects savings rates. With 65K of income, you’re highly unlikely to pay those off in one year working in most any city. So if this was a theoretical no loans Northeastern, you’re coming out with maybe 15-20K in net savings out of Northeastern in 5 years let’s say versus still being left with loans coming out of Lehigh in 4 and a year of work with reasonable savings and medium-sized city COL. For all that, it ironically works out to what’s probably a 28K a year difference, or 7K * 4 
Beyond that though, the way retirement savings work, the year of “lost income” model really doesn’t make sense for a white-collar worker using a more or less nest egg savings approach. People make a big deal out of the 4th vs 5th year without getting into the nuances of what that means at the macro level. Why in the world are people so eager to rush into working for the rest of their lives until they retire? For the vast majority, it will have no effect. Maybe one less year of full time work to hit 30 under 30 
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Yes, but the co-op experience might enhance his ability to get the job he wants, or might get him a better job than he would have gotten otherwise. Regardless, Northeastern has a 4-year plan if your point is of concern to him, so he can do it whichever way he prefers.
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I found out the Lehigh and northeastern are about a $5k difference that I would need to take out in loans or my family would need to finance somehow. Does anyone have any insight on whether or not this difference in cost would be worth it, based on what you are saying about the paid co-op experience.
NEU co-ops are normally paid but pay varies from one to another. This is a good question to pose directly to NEU. Contact an Admissions Officer and ask them to put you in touch with the Co-op office.
That’s a good idea to contact the school to give you the best salary info for the co-ops for your major. In the Parents FB group they say that computer science, engineering and business co-ops pay more than the others. You might want to also discuss your AP credits if you have scores of 4 or 5. NU also offers online Challenge Exams in different subjects in July which could give you credits. If you do end up choosing NU keep an eye on your emails. My son took a free one credit course over the winter break by being one of the first kids to sign up for it.
RAs get free room and board and you could do that as a sophomore. I believe the summer orientation leaders get paid $3,000.
To clarify here, Northeastern is 5K more expensive, costing essentially 20K more in loans on top of an existing 28K of loans?
Co-op pay can help but shouldn’t be relied upon beyond covering living expenses (even if the high end can make up the 20K difference in net savings). Both are quality options, so I would probably lean Lehigh here unless you feel like Northeastern would be a much better fit here.
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Over the course of a lifetime, $5K (a year, right?) will disappear into insignificance, especially next to the costs of both these places. You sound like you’re bound for areas where there’s money. So I wouldn’t base it on that if you strongly prefer one over the other. If not, then I probably wouldn’t pick up the extra loans. I would keep in mind though that you’re going to spend more money in Boston than you will in South Bethlehem – you’ll probably do a lot more off-campus at NEU, it’s an expensive town with plenty to do, and it’s a transit hub.
Co-ops are usually paid pretty decently regardless of what school you’re doing them from. Are people here aware of co-ops that aren’t paid?
I’m generally iffy on the “salary for majors” data, btw – in my experience the data are too general or partial to be of much use – but questions about “you’ve seen engineers/financiers/entrepreneurs/etc. – do they seem to be well off?” and then asking questions about what jobs are likely to be automated or for other reasons go away anytime soon, or whether there’s some long-running glut (sure, well-employed lawyers and biologists make nice livings, but there are a lot of each that aren’t so well-employed), those can lead you to “money in this direction, not in this direction”. So long as you’re heading towards arenas that don’t appear to be going away anytime soon and where people usually do well, I wouldn’t worry much about the extra loans for a place if it’s really where you want to go.
Certainly not unpaid for business.
The difference here between the options is that for a business major, neither of the other school offers co-ops as far as I’m aware, or if so it’s rare for people to do them. So then you’re looking at internship income, which then also is predicated on getting them, which is less guaranteed than co-op. Even getting two internships, the total work time is 6 months or so versus 12-18 months for co-op. At the exact same salary, that’s double-triple the net savings.
Again, it’s not a good idea to rely on co-op net savings just in case, but there is certainly a tangible difference.
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