Washington & Jefferson College is one of the oldest four-year liberal arts schools in the country, founded in 1781. Its campus, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, is home to some 1,100 undergrads.
The estimated price of a degree at Washington & Jefferson is below the average of all the schools on our list, thanks in part to the fact that W&J gives out grants to nearly all of its students. The college offers 33 majors, the five most popular being business and commerce, accounting, economics, psychology and political science. It also offers pre-professional programs and other academic options, such as a dual-degree engineering program, where students spend their first three years at W&J followed by two at a partner engineering school like Columbia or Case Western Reserve and graduate with both a BA and a BS.
As might be expected for a college of its size, W&J has a low student-faculty ratio of 10 to 1 and says that almost 80% of classes have 20 or fewer students. During “MayTerm,” a one- to three-week term in May, students choose a signal topic to study in-depth, and the session is often used to travel domestically or abroad with faculty. W&J also has a summer research program called the Magellan Project that gives money to students so they can carry out independent research projects or internships.
