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In 1795, Union College became the first college chartered by the Board of Regents of the State of New York on 130 acres in Schenectady. Schenectady New York is a city of 60,000 founded by the Dutch in 1661. It is close to a major airport and train and bus stations. The college is just a short walk away from downtown Schenectady where there is a lot to see, to do and to eat.
Union College has 2,189 undergrads that take part in 130+ student clubs, 30 + volunteer programs, 13 Theme Houses, 11 fraternities and sororities, 26 athletic teams, 52 intramural and club sports and seven Minerva Houses. Minerva Houses are a unique combination of living, meeting, relaxing and study spaces that bring students and faculty together outside the classroom for both social and academic activities. Each house has their own governing body and is given a generous budget that is used to provide various programs for specific houses or for campus-wide gatherings.
Gaining entrance into Union College requires that you be a have a fairly strong academic background. The middle 50% of their accepted students have SAT scores in the range of 1220-1420 or ACT scores of 27-32. They make themselves affordable by meeting 100% of financial need for tuition and fees that typically total $57,324.
Union College was the first liberal arts college in the nation to offer engineering in 1845. Since that time, engineering has remained one of their most popular majors with 22% of undergraduates seeking degrees in that area. Engineering is only eclipsed by Social Sciences majors who comprise 24% of the undergraduate population. The third most popular major at Union College is Biology at 15%. Engineering may recapture the top spot for majors when the Templeton Institute for Engineering and Computer Science is in full swing. It promises to be a state of the art center for educating engineers while giving them a broad range of experiences to complement their technical skills. Few majors at Union College focus on only one aspect of academics. The nature of a liberal arts education is cross discipline study and they have remained true to that ideal. This approach to education has resulted in the creation of an Accelerated Law Program and the LIM Medical Program. Also, about 80 percent of students conduct original research through the Sophomore Research Seminar, Senior Thesis or a Capstone Project. If you’d like to explore Union College via their online virtual tour, here is the link! https://www.union.edu/admissions/virtual-tour.
