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[quote=Anonymous]It's going to be hard to find colleges that both have conservative students and conservative professors. At "upper tier" universities, the professors are almost all going to lean left, regardless of the student body. Intellectuals tend to be left-wing, and at "prestigious" universities, you'll be hard-pressed to find a professor (especially in the liberal arts) who votes Republican.

If your son doesn't mind having left-wing professors, though, upper-tier universities still have a lot wealthy, privileged and socially elite students, who tend to lean Republican. If you're looking at Ivies, Dartmouth has the most conservative student body, followed by UPenn, Cornell, and Yale. Duke and Vanderbilt are also solidly conservative.

Stanford is an anomaly here: students are all over the political spectrum, but many professors are famously conservative. Also, their huge rivalry with UC Berkeley helps drive a lot of "dirty liberal hippie" jokes.

If you're looking at less selective schools, you'll have more options. BYU is verrrry conservative, both politically and socially (no party scene, no drinking). Almost all major colleges in the South should be fine for your son, except maybe UT Austin. TCU and Baylor are both great GOP-loving private schools, and Ole Miss would be a good Republican choice among flagship state schools.

If your son isn't majoring in something like Political Science or Sociology, politics obviously won't come up as much in class, but it still might. My Physics professor openly scorned at Republicans who deny Global Warming. Any hard science majors, especially biology, will likely explore environmentalist themes in class. Your safest bets in apolitical class material are probably Engineering. Undergrad business schools also tend to be a safe haven for Republicans, even at otherwise liberal schools.

Another good way to identify conservative schools is by the prevalence of Greek life. If you don't want your son to get involved in frat life that's understandable... but where there are frat boys, there are Republicans. Generally, the bigger the Greek life scene is at a college, the more likely it is to have right wing students--just browse frat life websites like TFM and you'll see them ripe with support for the GOP. The easiest way to check how active a college's Greek scene would be through websites like CollegeProwler.

Anyway, all this is coming from a college sophomore who grew up in a very left-wing household. My mom is a very strong environmentalist and feminist, and I was raised to think critically about a lot of things from an early age. I ended up choosing a relatively conservative college (at least for me!) because I wanted to be surrounded by a diverse array of political viewpoints and engage in challenging discourse. Still, there are a lot of times I wish I was in a political comfort zone. If your son feels the same way I do, a more liberal university might not be so bad. If he dislikes debate and political talk, though, an overwhelmingly left-leaning environment could feel alienating and uncomfortable. Be sure to talk to him about what he wants from his education! Good luck :)[/quote]

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