<p>i'm looking for a college with heavy political involvement, but i'm realizing that i don't want to be surrounded by people who all think like me (i'm quite liberal), but i don't want to be at a school where i'm in a huge minority. so i was wondering, do you guys have any suggestions of schools where most people care about politics, but there's good representation of multiple viewpoints?</p>
<p>if you can think of anything (even if it doesn't meet the following) please just let me know, but here are a few other things that are important to me in a college:
-not too big (i prefer 2-6,000 but i'd go up to around 10,000)
-good IR program (would probably come along with a political campus), hopefully offers arabic
-not in MA (i want to get out of state)
-preferably gives some merit aid to strong students</p>
<p>You just described three DC schools–American U, George Washington U and Georgetown. AU was voted as having the most politically active campus in the US.</p>
<p>wow, thanks for all your quick responses! @gadad and bonanza, i’m already looking into american and love it, and gw and georgetown are great suggestions, i just personally didn’t like them when i visited but they are really great schools for politics, i wish i had liked them more… @paranoidme1: thanks for the suggestion- i haven’t heard that much about BYU, so i’ll look into it now are you sure that they’re not all conservative though? even if they’re open-minded, i don’t want to be the only liberal…</p>
<p>BYU is a fine school but it is not a liberal place by Massachusetts standards. You don’t have to belong to the LDS church but the vast majority of students do. It also has strict codes of conduct that you have to be comfortable with. I would strongly advise visiting BYU first to make sure you would be comfortable there.</p>
<p>The BYU student body is 98% LDS. I know students who are very happy there, but it would be a challenging environment for someone who did not share that faith.</p>
<p>What about Johns Hopkins? That’s in the DC area and is a peer of Georgetown in IR. Politically it is more liberal than anything else, but there are sizable populations of leftists/conservatives/libertarians.</p>
Republican vs. Democrat politics gets pretty dirty/messed up there. I’m not sure how good it is to be politically active in a place where Republicans harass Democrats and Democrats steal Republicans’ crucifixes and deface them…</p>
<p>I think large universities in geographically conservative locations would be a good starting point, since most college-age students are liberal. Maybe something like Rice?</p>
<p>How selective of a school are you looking for? How are your grades and SAT/ACT scores? Some of the schools being suggested are highly selective, and many of them don’t give merit aid at all.</p>
<p>American comes to mind to me, as it has good merit aid and seems to meet your other criteria.</p>
<p>thanks for the suggestions everyone! @al6200, I’m starting to look into Johns Hopkins, but I didn’t know if it was politically diverse or not. Thanks for the suggestion :)</p>
<p>
I’m in the top 10% of my class (probably, they don’t officially give class rank but I can pretty much tell) and I got a 2350 with an 800 on my first subject test, taking 2 more this spring, so I think I’m in a pretty good position for looking into most schools.</p>
<p>and @Kcombs and BillyMc, thanks for the suggestion of Notre Dame, I hadn’t really considered it but I’ll look into that.</p>
<p>@midwestmom: that’s a good suggestion; I’m already looking into Swarthmore and Johns Hopkins but maybe I’ll give some of the others a look as well. </p>
<p>and not to be stubborn/stereotyping, but for the Rice suggestion, no matter how cool the school itself is, I don’t think I could bring myself to live in Texas…</p>
are you sure that they’re not all conservative though? even if they’re open-minded, i don’t want to be the only liberal…</p>