In terms of its academics, Lafayette College is lauded for a number of things: its strong liberal arts program, stellar engineering department, and small student-to-teacher ratio, to name a few. Engineering is one of the College’s top five majors, along with English, psychology, and social sciences. Most humanities classes do not exceed 15 or 20 students, with engineering/science classes running 25 to 30 students. Introductory courses (general biology/chemistry/psychology) typically have the largest class sizes, which dramatically dwindle as students take more and more specialized courses. Grading is a product of many factors—professors’ policies, assignments, attendance, and participation in class being some of them. Most professors are not lenient graders; they are fair, and sometimes a little on the strict side. However, some professors do give students the opportunity to dispute grades (within reason). In that vein, the workload for each given class can vary—from a hundred pages of reading a day to 40 math problems, due at 10 a.m. every Wednesday. One thing to make note of: slacking off is not an option.
Curriculum depends largely on the individual student’s degree. Bachelor of Science degrees are generally more structured, with certain courses that need to be taken at certain points of the academic year. Engineering majors, for example, have a set agenda for the four years of their college career. Liberal arts majors, on the other hand, have more wiggle room in terms of what classes they want to take. Most Bachelor of Arts majors require nine to 11 courses in a given specialty. It is not unusual to find liberal arts students who are double majors; English and theater, political science (called "government & law") and economics, art history and classical civilizations—these are just some of the combinations with which Lafayette College’s double majors have graduated.