<p>Is there any meaningful distinction in terms of reputation, peer assessment, overall quality of education and student enjoyment among the following LAC's if a student is looking for a good, general, liberal arts education with an eye toward going to law school:</p>
<p>Union College
Trinity College
Franklin & Marshall
Dickinson College
Lafayette College</p>
<p>On paper, they all appear to be virtually indistinguishable after looking at the US News & World Report information as well as other sources (Princeton review etc.)</p>
<p>Well, one distinction that’s certainly meaningful to students is that Union is on a trimester system. Some kids take this absolutely in stride; others have difficulty with being on a schedule that’s significantly different from most (of course not all, but most) other schools. At a fairly minor level, this affects when Union kids get to see their old friends; at a more significant level, it can and often does affect their ability to apply for and secure summer internships and employment. (I don’t mean they can’t land internships or jobs, but that they encounter timing and other challenges as far as applications, interviews, and start dates.) </p>
<p>Not necessarily a negative, but a distinction to note as students consider the school.</p>
<p>Trinity College has a preppy culture as many students attend boarding or private day schools prior to attending Trinity. Dickinson is the most liberal of your listed schools, and Dickinson is pushing an international focus. Union has the largest Jewish population of your colleges and the most professionally oriented (although only by a slight margin over the other schools). Lafayette is frat party oriented. F&M is a very good school with ambitious and hardworking students. These are just quick, off-the-cuff typicalizations that may or may not be of interest to you. Dickinson is 56% female, Trinity is 50/50 M/F, while Union, Lafayette and F&M are majority male. All are excellent LACs.</p>
<p>There are relatively few LACs with engineering programs, but three of the listed choices – Union, Trinity, and Lafayette – are among them. These schools might be better choices for a prospective intellectual property or patent lawyer. Otherwise all of the schools are probably good for pre-law. Dickinson is noted for “study abroad” participation.</p>
<p>I would try to visit as many as possible. All the schools are similar in selectivity, and have a reputation for solid academics, particularly at the across-the-board level. DD visited Dickinson, Trinity, and Lafayette, and considered Union and F&M. She reacted very differently to the campuses and student life. </p>
<p>FWIW, my D liked Dickinson, disliked Trinity (she was primed by the guidebooks to expect preppy and focused on the symptoms whenever she saw them), and found Easton enough of a turn-off that she never seriously considered Lafayette. Different students would react completely differently. </p>
<p>Union and Trinity have initiatives underway involving student life; I’d do some research on the response to Union’s Minerva Houses and some high profile events involving racial tensions last year at Trinity.</p>
<p>If you visit Lafayette, Lehigh, and Muhlenberg are very close. D loved Muhlenberg, which boasts about its superb record of law school placement and has merit money that might be a bit easier to get than the schools on the original list, since it’s slightly less competitive in admissions.</p>
<p>One update on male/female ratios. The Union class of 2011 is slight majority female for the first time in the school’s history. The slight majority of ED applicants accepted for the class of 2012 are female. Union has been moving toward a 50/50 school and has pretty much arrived there.</p>
<p>The point about trimesters is legitimate and it is frustrating to know your friends are home and you are still in school (or you are home bored when there is no one around). The flip side is that students have the luxury of focusing on only three courses at a time, as opposed to four or five. While the time period for a class is condensed. it makes it much easier to focus and keep the subject material straight.</p>
<p>I assume study abroad is pretty common at most of these schools. I know it is over 50% at Union.</p>
<p>I think that Dickinson’s distinction is less that it sends significantly more students abroad that peer institutions, but rather, that it runs more of its own programs. Instead of sending students off on programs run by others, with the inevitable loss of quality control, they have a lot of programs where there’s actually a Dickinson prof. who has developed and oversees the off-campus program on-site.</p>
<p>Union is on the trimester system, as noted above, along with Stanford, Dartmouth and Northwestern University and, possibly, some Univ. of California schools.Some schools call their system trimesters, some quarter systems, but they are on the same schedule ( at least I am certain that Stanford, Northwestern and Dartmouth College are on similiar schedules). Some require 3 courses a quarter (Dartmouth), some 4 (Northwestern) and some may require 5 in order to graduate on schedule. What is Union’s typical course load per trimester?</p>
<p>Three Sons, in reference to your 1/14 post - how did you find out about the 2012 ED stats at Union? I would be interested in the # applied, accepted, etc…</p>