The immaturity of high school with the excesses of college

Introduction
If you are seriously considering Lafayette, there are a few things to consider. The first is that if you consider yourself to be of relatively high intellect, you may find yourself to be a small minority at this school: Lafayette students tend to be conformist, intellectually-supple, middle-class (with upper-class pretensions), and easy to please with alcohol. They did not come to Easton for the "city's" culture, nor did they come for the reasonably well-stocked library. Some came to learn, but most came to play and relive the social dynamics from which they benefitted so much in high school.

The faculty is okay. Some members are more impressive than others, though in general, the idea that they are so wonderfully approachable is not something unique to Lafayette and should not be the basis of your decision to go there. Indeed, I transferred to an enormous research university in the Midwest after three semesters at Lafayette and I am finding my professors to be just as approachable as Lafayette professors claimed to be, my graduate student instructors more brilliant than many of Lafayette's professors, and my classes much more challenging. On the other hand, I am a liberal arts student, and the situation is probably quite different for those involved in the Sciences. I find Lafayette's intellectual environment to be somewhat lacking, its campus a bit too "nurturing" (and, for that matter, MUCH uglier than its students have been told by by the admissions office), and its student body, therefore, unadventurous and immature. If you want to relive high school, only with alcohol and probably more homogeneity both intellectually and socially, then come to Lafayette, where preppies and muscle-fatty jocks are worshipped.

Campus Life and Social Life
There is essentially one scene at Lafayette: drinking. If you think drinking is stupid, or if you think you will get bored of it after it becomes apparent that you are merely attending the same party every weekend, stocked with the same two-dimensional people engaged in the same hijinx for four years, then I would suggest looking elsewhere, preferably outside the Lehigh Valley. Alternatives to drinking include playing Magic: The Gathering or Mario Kart or some other unfulfilling nonsense with the same 20 people every weekend (which, as you might imagine, provides ENDLESS opportunities for personal growth) or allow your social skills to atrophy by sitting in your room alone every weekend. Not only does the Lehigh Valley lack much in the way of cultural attractions (though the Williams Center DOES occasionally attract some good performers from New York), but also offers very little to offer for anyone who wants to do things other than drinking over the weekend. If you want to go to a Jazz club, you can take the bus into New York, which entails a hike down the steep hill, a wait at a bus station in which you're lucky if you're not solicited for money by a potentially violent drug addict, a 90 minute (assuming no traffic) bus ride into Manhattan, and the hope that you aren't assaulted a second time in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. But that isn't necessary if drinking cheap beer and getting soused is your idea of a good time. Just don't count on getting easy sex afterwards. While alcohol is looked upon as a means to the ends of getting laid, it is by no means surefire, and most people at Lafayette drink for the sake of getting drunk. With some notable though isolated exceptions, people at Lafayette are conformist, vapid dolts. The college is trying to change this, but don't count on them succeeding any time soon. Advertisement
Academics
My suspicion is that Lafayette is stronger in the Sciences than in Liberal Arts. If you don't want to be treated as a number and want a B.S., Lafayette might be a good place for you, since Science departments tend to be much more impersonal at larger schools. On the other hand, I am not a Sceince major, and my exposure to Lafayette's Science departments has been somewhat limited save for two General Chemisty courses. On the side of Liberal Arts, I find the History Department to be weak overall, with two notable exceptions, one of whom I've experienced first hand and another who is somewhat unpopular due to his rigor (therefore, he is probably a good professor by the standards of any serious student): Paul Barclay is good and quite funny if a bit intimidating with his temper (and I am not easily intimidated), and Josh Sanborn is a product of the University of Chicago, and expects you to work as an undergraduate there. Both of these men are very good scholars. I find the folks in the Chemistry department to be quite competent and approachable, but the Biology and Physics Departments are even more well-respected among the minority of more serious students at Lafayette. Helena Silverstein from the Government and Law department is highly intelligent and a good teacher, and she is a leading scholar on parental consent laws for abortion if that's your thing (which I doubt). She assigns a good bit of reading and is good at discerning if you've done it. Many other folks are good if easy, which is pretty much how most professors are at Lafayette, so if you want a B.A. without being particularly challenged or well-educated, come here. Most of the students these professors deal with are only semi-literate, and being a good writer is quite an asset and can easily mask a poor command of the material, so effectively there is very little work if you are intelligent but lazy. If you are an extremely motivated student, you may find the workload to be much higher than one who only half-heartedly does the material, though if you are such a student, you are better off going somewhere more rigorous anyway.

Student Body
Although Lafayette is losely affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, the largest religious group on campus is Catholic. Most of the student body hails from Northern New Jersey (no, they don't want to go too far from home, nor do they want to grow up), and they are generally middle-class, though they often pretend to be of upper-middle class backgrounds. "Preppie" is the style of choice here, the student body is very conformist, though that is starting to change. I outlined the student body earlier, though the school is very "bourgeois" in the French sense. Some pretty smart kids dwell here, but they are hard to find, and many of them question their choice of school or were bribed to attend with generous scholarship packages. If you have the choice, don't come here if you don't think you fit the stereotype I just described. While you are unlikely to be miserable if you don't, you are very likely to be disappointed upon arriving. Of course, students at Lafayette might disagree with much of what I have to say in this article, though I find them to overrate the school's academics and few have any conception of what any other school is like.

In Closing...
The administration is trying to clean the place up, but I would be surprised if they are successful. The jock-greek-vacuous preppie nexus is too powerful and the administration is not confident enough to do what really is needed. Go to a much larger school and spread your wings. If you aren't ready to leave the nest, come to Lafayette. You might like it here, as it combines the immaturity of high school with the fetishized novelty of alcohol. The school is decent academically, though it has nothing approaching the "national reputation for academic excellence" to which the college hilariously lays claim. Of the 20 or so people to whom I have mentioned Lafayette in the Midwest, only two people had even heard of it, and both were Easterners. Lafaytette might be the right school for some people, but many will walk away from it feeling unfulfilled, frustratingly undereducated, or simply naive about how most people think.