<p>Check out Goucher.</p>
<p>I thought the same thing about Swarthmore. Great school, but if you’re a liberal, who is there to argue with? That’s another vote for Chicago, which is more balanced.</p>
<p>If you’re female, then consider Barnard College as a match school. The urban location and affiliation with Columbia set it apart from many other LACs. Columbia has strong IR and NYC brings many advantages. This probably is the least selective pathway into an Ivy League classroom experience.</p>
<p>I cast another vote for Chicago, too. Language instruction seems to be quite good at Chicago, but bear in mind that no college can guarantee you will graduate fully proficient in the mechanics of language use. That usually requires an extensive immersion experience (preferably in-country). Chicago offers Arabic (and other languages) in the context of interdisciplinary Languages & Civilization studies. Very few other institutions can offer the same breadth and depth of faculty and other academic resources in Near Eastern studies.
[Undergraduate</a> NELC](<a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/academics/majorsminors/neareastern.shtml]Undergraduate”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/academics/majorsminors/neareastern.shtml)
[Current</a> Faculty | Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations](<a href=“http://nelc.uchicago.edu/faculty]Current”>Faculty & Lecturers | Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)</p>
<p>I recommend Michigan State.</p>
<p>
Thanks! I just looked it up and I love the location- a little smaller then what I might look for, but a safety can’t have everything so it seems like a good option :)</p>
<p>
That’s a good point; Swarthmore is my dream school in every other way, but I am concerned about the lack of political diversity…</p>
<p>
Nice suggestion 
I’ve been thinking about Barnard recently but it’s my friend’s dream school and I really don’t want to create an awkward situation…</p>
<p>
Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s like 6x as big as I’d like to go, so I think I’m going to try to stick with smaller schools even for my safeties, unless they’re in a perfect location like UMaryland</p>
<p>There are a lot of students at DePaul who are not Catholic.</p>
<p>If you are interested in studying Arabic I would be concerned about going to a school that is very small. To have an Arabic department that is meaning the school will most likely need to bigger and have a graduate school.</p>
<p>If you are interested in Arabic you may want to try a search for “Arabic” with the user name Alexandre. He is a moderator on the Michigan board. He lives in the UAE and is more familiar with Arabic studies than most of the posters you will find on CC.</p>
<p>These were his recommendations from a prior thread:</p>
<p>"The top departments for Arabic are:</p>
<p>Columbia University
Georgetown University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
New York University
Princeton University
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>All of those universities have excellent Middle and Near Eastern studies programs. "</p>
<p>^A nice list, but the OP is looking for safety and match schools.</p>
<p>
yeah, thanks for the list res ipsa, but i think i have enough reaches, i just need to find more safeties that have decent programs- thanks for the reference to the moderator though, i’ll definitely ask him :)</p>
<p>Check out the Arabic Language Flagship programs, especially Maryland:
[The</a> Language Flagship - Arabic](<a href=“http://www.thelanguageflagship.org/arabic]The”>http://www.thelanguageflagship.org/arabic)</p>