Located in rural Hamden, Connecticut, Quinnipiac University is adjacent to the beautiful Sleeping Giant State Park. The 7,000 undergraduates at this medium-sized comprehensive university live on two campuses: freshmen live on the Mount Carmel campus, and upperclassmen live a half mile up the hill on the York Hill campus, where there’s a beautiful new student center and residence halls.
While the majority of Quinnipiac University students are from the Northeast, the university has some compelling academic strengths for out of state students to consider. Classes are small and there are no teaching assistants. The health sciences are very strong at Quinnipiac, as are media/film/TV production in the College of Communications, which hosts a semester in LA option. Business and athletic training are also solid programs. You may have also heard about Quinnipiac through their Quinnipiac University Poll; it’s one of the main political opinion polls upon which major national media rely for national and state level elections.
Quinnipiac’s law school medical school and graduate schools of nursing and health sciences are all located on the North Haven campus, just a few miles away. The physician assistant program is incredibly competitive; they receive over 700 applications each year for 25 spots. Quinnipiac also offers many accelerated programs, in which students can earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in four years, as well as a 3+3 law program, which shaves a year off the typical timeline.
About a quarter of students join Greek organizations here, though the fraternities and sororities do not have official houses. Sports are HUGE here – Quinnipiac fields 21 Division 1 athletic teams. As we walked through campus we saw posters in residence hall windows that said #BEATYALE (The hockey rivalry with Yale, about 15 minutes down the street in New Haven, is quite strong!). One of my tour guides said that he had not been a hockey fan before arriving at Quinnipiac, but now he’s not just a fan – he plays the mascot at games!
Quinnipiac University has very generous merit-based financial aid; about a quarter of students who have NO financial need receive scholarships. Quinnipiac is also test-optional, and will award merit aid based on grades and class rank for students who do not want to submit test scores.
Quinnipiac is one of those schools that has everything you want in your college experience! Beautiful New England campus, strong academic classes taught by faculty, emphasis on community service and experiential learning, and school spirit! You can scroll through my photos from my visit in 2014, and you can learn more on Quinnipiac’s YouTube channel.