At a Glance
Lehigh admits 29% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Debt at Graduation
43.6%
receive need-based grant aid
$39,765
average debt at graduation
Lehigh graduates carry an average of $39,765 in debt.
Merit Aid
592
students received merit aid
$23,688
average merit award
Getting In
Lehigh admits 29% of applicants.
Lehigh University's Early Decision applicants are admitted at nearly 2x the rate of Regular Decision applicants — 47.4% vs 26.8%. Note: ED is binding — you commit to attending if admitted.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 33% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 10% of the class submitted
60% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Lehigh University considers your essay Important — a strong essay can differentiate an otherwise average application. Demonstrated interest is Important — showing genuine engagement with this school may help your application.
Student Life
41.7% of Lehigh classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Lehigh, 41.7% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
11:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
72.4%
Live on campus
60.29%
Men in fraternities
17.83%
Women in sororities
24.74%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Lehigh's student body is 59.9% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Lehigh graduates 75.7% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
Lehigh graduates 75.7% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Lehigh
75.7%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $80,856
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
85.2%
Overall 6-yr rate
83.3%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
94.3%
94.3% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Bethlehem.
Lehigh's campus climbs the north slope of South Mountain above Bethlehem, a former steel town of about 75,000 people in the Lehigh Valley. The old Bethlehem Steel plant at the foot of the hill is now SteelStacks, an arts and festival campus built in the shadow of the original blast furnaces, and it hosts Musikfest each August — one of the largest free music festivals in the country. The historic Southside strip nearby has the college-town restaurants and shops; downtown Bethlehem across the river adds a preserved 18th-century Moravian district. It's a smaller, post-industrial city rather than a campus-only college town, with Philadelphia and New York both reachable for a weekend.
Notable Alumni
Lee Iacocca
Led development of the Ford Mustang before becoming Chrysler's CEO and steering its late-1970s turnaround, after earning a B.S. in industrial engineering here.
Class of 1945
Roger Penske
Founded Penske Corporation and built one of the most successful teams in IndyCar and NASCAR history, after a business degree in industrial management here.
Class of 1959
Martin Baron
Led The Washington Post's and The Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning newsrooms (the Globe's Spotlight investigation was later dramatized in the film of the same name), after a B.A. in journalism here.
Class of 1976
Andrew Knoll
Harvard paleontologist and NASA Mars-mission scientist known for research on Earth's earliest life, after a B.A. here.
Class of 1973
Jesse W. Reno
Invented and patented the first working escalator, after an engineering degree here.
Class of 1883
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Mid-size city
Bethlehem, PA
Best For
Traditions
The Rivalry
Lehigh and Lafayette have played football against each other since 1884, making it the most-played rivalry in major college football. Rivalry Week brings the Turkey Trot at Packer Chapel, spray-painted bedsheets across campus, and the marching band's unannounced classroom-interrupting "Eco-Flame" performances.
Musikfest at SteelStacks
A ten-day, largely free music festival held each August on the site of the old Bethlehem Steel plant, drawing over a million visitors to the city Lehigh calls home.
Founder's Day
An annual campus-wide commemoration of Asa Packer's 1865 founding of the university.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Bethlehem
Philadelphia, PA
About 1 hour 15 minutesMuseums, sports and a major city, close enough for a day trip.
New York City, NY
About 2 hoursDirect bus service runs from the Lehigh Valley into Manhattan.
Pocono Mountains, PA
About 45 minutesSkiing, hiking and lake towns in the ridge country north of campus.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE)
15 minutes from campus
For international flights: Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) — about 1 hour 15 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Philadelphia Eagles NFLAbout 1 hour 15 minutes away
- Philadelphia 76ers NBAAbout 1 hour 15 minutes away
- Philadelphia Phillies MLBAbout 1 hour 15 minutes away
- Philadelphia Flyers NHLAbout 1 hour 15 minutes away
Career Proximity
Lehigh's own College of Business and Rossin College of Engineering feed a genuinely pre-professional student body, and the Lehigh Valley itself hosts Fortune 500 headquarters — Air Products and Chemicals and PPL Corporation are both based minutes from campus, alongside B. Braun Medical's U.S. device manufacturing operations. What extends the reach further is distance: Philadelphia and New York City are both close enough for a regular commute, which is why Lehigh, an "upper nontarget" school on Wall Street, still places graduates at firms like J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs through an active alumni network and its student-run Dreyfus Portfolio investment fund.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Air Products and Chemicals
- PPL Corporation
- B. Braun Medical
- J.P. Morgan Chase
- Citigroup
Philadelphia — about 1 hour 15 minutes by road; New York City is about 2 hours
Who Thrives Here
Lehigh sits on the north slope of South Mountain above Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a former steel town whose blast furnaces now anchor SteelStacks, an arts and festival campus a short walk from the Southside dining strip; Philadelphia is about an hour and a quarter south and New York City roughly two hours east. The academic identity is pre-professional and technical — the College of Business and the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering are the two biggest draws, and business, engineering and computer science together make up about 60% of bachelor's degrees awarded. Greek life is a real part of campus life without dominating it: 17.8% of men join a fraternity and 24.7% of women join a sorority, and 60.3% of undergraduates live in university housing. The Lehigh–Lafayette football game, the most-played rivalry in major college football (first played in 1884), still structures the fall calendar, with Rivalry Week traditions like the Turkey Trot and the marching band's Eco-Flame stunts. Financially the school is generous on paper — 97% of demonstrated need met and an average aid package of $63,778 for first-year students — but that sits alongside a $70,590 sticker price and $39,765 of average debt for those who borrow, both toward the higher end of the catalog. The trade-off worth naming: the four-year graduation rate (75.7%) trails the six-year rate (85.2%) by close to ten points, and Pell recipients graduate within six years at 83.3%, a shade below the 85.2% rate for the class as a whole.