St Lawrence University

St Lawrence University is a long-standing liberal arts college on New York’s border with Canada. It is 75 miles from Ottawa, the nation’s capital, and 120 miles from Montréal, a cultural melting point which is the largest city in Canada’s French-speaking province of Québec.

Established by members of the Universalist Church, St Lawrence is a non-denominational institution whose courses retain a liberal arts influence. The most popular courses at the university include English, economics, psychology and biology. 

The oldest coeducational university in the state, its first woman graduated in 1863. St Lawrence’s 94 buildings, 16 of which are halls of residence, span 1,000 acres across the state. Virtually all students live on its highly pedestrianized campus. Being home to the State University of New York at Canton as well as St Lawrence, nearly half of the small village of Canton’s residents are between the ages of 18 and 24.

St Lawrence has run international study programmes since 1964, and over half of its students partake in study overseas or in one of five available placements within the US. Its student population predominantly consists of undergraduates, but there are a number of postgraduate courses, some of which are education-based.

Alumni include actor legendary Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas, the student government president during his time at the university, Viggo Mortensen, perhaps best-known for playing Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, and Owen D. Young, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1932.