Official Lehigh Class of 2021 RD

Decision: Accepted
College of Arts and Sciences

GPA: 3.35 (Cumulative unweighted)
ACT: 32 (E 31, M 28, R 36, S 31)
Never visited
Never interviewed

Strengths? Maybe my ACT score, but I think that teacher recommendations may have played a larger role.

I was hoping someone could let me know if the College of Arts and Sciences was less competitive than the other schools at Lehigh. If I go to Lehigh, I was also wondering if I could go on an engineering track in this college or if I would need to switch to the Engineering school.

Thanks!

@Jkrupnick “I was also wondering if I could go on an engineering track in this college or if I would need to switch to the Engineering school.”

To major in engineering, you eventually need to be in the engineering school. However, you don’t need to be in the engineering school in the beginning. Freshman engineers are primarily taking English, calculus, physics, chemistry, with a few intro engineering and humanities courses thrown in. You can take those in Arts and Sciences and if you want to continue down that path, you can switch.

One really great thing about Lehigh is that they give students a lot of flexibility in changing majors.

@Jkrupnick “I was hoping someone could let me know if the College of Arts and Sciences was less competitive than the other schools at Lehigh.”

Lehigh has outstanding students in all of its schools, and they tend to be cooperative and not directly competitive. Grades may tend to be slightly lower in hard sciences and engineering, but that tends to be true at most colleges.

I’ve been waitlisted but I was wondering id Lehigh gives you a lot of financial aid…
My mom is a single mother and I have a younger brother in highschool… do you think they will give me a decent amount of money if I even get off the waitlist?

Lehigh is need aware for the waiting list. So your chances of getting admitted from the waiting list are reduced if you need a lot of aid.

accepted
college of arts and sciences- biochemistry/premed

      SAT 1480 new
     780m 720r 630w old
    780 chem  780 physic 740 math subject
     3.95 UW GPA
     rank 5/295
     legacy/ visited

friend with same stats and higher rank was waitlisted

financial aid was about 5000 less than other full meets need school, so probably won’t attend

Any other low income students get close to a full ride in grants? Getting into Lehigh was like hitting the jackpot in college admissions. This is because, unlike the majority of schools, if you make under $75k a year they will eliminate all loans from the financial aid package. My package included one $3k subsidized loan but the other 63k was funded through grant money and 2k was funded by work-study. My income is also <25k. When I decided to apply to Lehigh like many other schools I applied to, I was familiar with this policy.

Did anyone else who was waitlisted have their decision area in the portal go back to displaying “Your admissions decisions will be posted…”?

Yes. That happened to me. I had to go into my (Chrome) browser settings under Privacy to clear out the browser data (cache, cookies, etc.) in order to have the page reload properly.

@newjerseydad888 Thank you!

Anyone on the thread have any experience with admitted student day. S is travelling East next week to finalize his enrollment decision and will visit lehigh on tues, but looks like admitted student day is on Fri and Sat. He is not sure he can make it to either of those. Will he be missing a lot? also I thought I saw somewhere on one thread that the Marching band leads the kids through campus on admitted student day. Is that true?

The band (“the Marching 97”) is a longstanding Lehigh tradition, and they tend to be highly conspicuous at Lehigh events, including Candidate’s Day for admitted students. I don’t know if they actually lead the admits through campus, but they will definitely try to get any admitted kids with musical talent to join the band. They aren’t picky and so will also attempt to induce admitted kids without musical talent to join the band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzSNJnmIXMU

@chel17 Candidates Day is 4/8; Lehigh Life Days (also for admitted students) are 4/7, 4/10, 4/21 and 4/24. The Lehigh website has the details and a sample schedule. And no, the Marching 97 does not lead the students throughout the campus, but they do pop up just about anywhere and play with a lot of enthusiasm.

Do you think Lehigh can provide housing for students on admitted student days? I will be flying by myself and am not old enough to get my own hotel. I am also low income.

@kidfromoklahoma5 I would contact the admissions department if I were you. I am sure they can come up with some accommodation for you on campus. Please post what you find out. Our S will be out East that week with Dad, visiting Lehigh though on Tues. They may come back for admitted student day and if so you could stay with them at hotel, but we are not yet sure of how their end of week schedule will sort out, so not a guarantee.

@chel17 Thank you for your kindness and generosity!
I was offered a fully-funded opportunity to go to diversity weekend next week. Lehigh will be paying for my housing, plane ticket, and food. I appreciate your offer though.

@acron611 many students move to off-campus houses after freshman or sophomore year. There are also on-campus apartrments available to upperclassmen (I don’t know how easy or hard those are to get thought).

@kidfromoklahoma5 Super to hear that Lehigh has taken care of all your needs. Hope you have a really terrific weekend!

Does Lehigh take financial appeals seriously?

@cloe.salas I think they definitely do. Contact them and explain your situation. Maybe they can improve your package. Even if they can’t, you won’t have lost anything. Go for it!

I just got my reply back from a financial aid appeal. They did not increase their aid even with documentation of $11,00 lower COA after FA at another full needs meet school(F&M). disappointed. This probably with take Lehigh out of the running.