At Allegheny College, when we talk about unusual combinations, we mean it as a tremendous compliment—a compliment that recognizes the complexity possible in each one of us. At Allegheny, we not only recognize human complexity, we model it, we embrace it. Look around, you'll see a college president who is as comfortable doing environmental research as he is leading a Homecoming parade astride a Harley; you'll see an award-winning poet garnering accolades for his culinary skill, a future physician pole-vaulting on an international stage. Unusual combinations, yes, but at Allegheny they are everyday examples of people pushing themselves in multiple directions.
Too often in our society, we tend to look at oppositional forces as if they'll cancel each other out; at Allegheny, we recognize that it's just this sort of synergy that's at the heart of living out loud. Maybe you're a pre-med with a talent for drawing, a swimmer who's into conservation, a business major who plays the flute. We find that Alleghenians are the kind of students who don't like to be put in a box - labeled "pre-med" or "dancer" or "economics major" or "athlete"—particularly if those labels are going to limit what they can do in other areas.
We'll ask you to pick a major…and a minor, and we're one of the few schools that insist on both. We'll take you from a freshman seminar all the way through a senior project that employers and graduate schools agree often reflects graduate-level work. If this sounds challenging, that's because it is, but our faculty pride themselves on enabling students to meet challenges of their own creation. And we're convinced that you'll be your own ultimate reward. It's a lofty aspiration, yes, but what could be more worthy of our pursuit than the vast potential of a life fully lived? We know that combinations that appear unusual from the outside may be entirely natural to the people who embody them. Paring, parsing, dance, dissecting…unusual to some to be sure, but for us, it makes a perfect combination: It's all you, it's all Allegheny.
