Summer College Visits Part 1 of 5

Over the past two weeks I've been to ten college campuses. This post will be part one of five to describe where my travels have taken me. Every summer I look forward to seeing more campuses in person and this year was no different. A few colleagues and I got together for two different trips - one to Pennsylvania and one to upstate New York.

The first campus we visited was Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This is a school that I am really surprised doesn't have more ElRo applicants and deposits. I can't help but wonder if part of that could be that on paper it may seem like a small religious school. But that would be a mistake. It is by no means large, but I think a student looking for a small liberal arts environment would be very happy with a place about five times as large as our high school. And though the school is Lutheran, there is one Jewish student for every Lutheran student (each make up about 30% of the student body) making it one of the highest percentage of Jewish students in the nation. Moral of the story being not to judge a school only by its cover. I was impressed with the athletic facilities for a Division III school and love the feel of the campus. There is also a strong arts community on campus, so many different types of students can find their niche. This is the kind of Admissions office that remembers the names of their applicants-- I casually mentioned that I knew two Muhlenberg grads and the Admissions officers knew both of them. The red doors come from the Lutheran roots and are meant to be welcoming. They are.

Next, we visited Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. One of the biggest assets for Moravian is the town of Bethlehem - it really had a vibrant and bustling vibe and seemed like the type of place that I would want to spend the afternoon exploring. Moravian's campus is historic in nature with a few rooms on one of their main campus buildings visited by our founding fathers. I was also interested to see that even in this economic downturn, Moravian had a ton of construction going on - always a good sign to see that a school has funds to invest in infrastructure, campus expansion and improvement. Moravian has two separate campuses that are connected via shuttle. I thought one of the best highlights of the tour was the fact that studio art students are given individual studio space - a nice bonus for art majors.

Both campuses visited on this day are EXTREMELY easy to get to from New York City -- our drive only took about 90 minutes but it felt like we were a world away. Next up -- Lehigh and Lafayette!