[7] It is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Presidents' Athletic Conference and it is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

The area where Allegheny College stands was the ancestral land of the Eriechronon people until the Iroquois Confederacy forced them out.

In 1824, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Alden, expressing the hope that his University of Virginia could someday possess the richness of Allegheny's library.

[16] By the time Ida Tarbell, future journalist, arrived in 1876, nineteen women had attended Allegheny and only two had graduated.

Tarbell described Ruter Hall in her writing, "...looking out on the town in the valley, its roofs and towers half hidden by a wealth of trees, and beyond it to a circle of round-breasted hills.

[22] Under president Richard J. Cook, Allegheny was reported to have had a "stronger endowment, optimal enrollment, record retention rates, innovative new programs and many physical campus improvements.

One study suggested the Allegheny College generates approximately $93 million annually into Meadville and the local economy.

[33] Allegheny professors have joined highly visible initiatives; for example, Allegheny professor Michael Maniates, described as the "nation's leading authority on the politics of consumption," joined the board of a project about the twenty-minute film The Story of Stuff by filmmaker Annie Leonard, and generated headlines.

"[35] At present, environmental concerns are important at Allegheny, which in 2008 worked with Siemens to devise a "total energy use reduction plan" for the college.

[53] The college requires all students to take a three-seminar series which "encourages careful listening and reading, thoughtful speaking and writing, and reflective academic planning and self-exploration," to be completed in their first two years.

[6] It also offers language and area studies programs in Seville, Spain; Angers, France; Karls-Eberhard University, Germany; and Querétaro, Mexico[6] and internship programs in London, England; Paris, France; and Washington D.C.[6] Programs geared to specific majors are also available, including environmental studies at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Israel; and the Center for Sustainable Development, Costa Rica; marine biology at the Duke University Marine Lab in North Carolina; and political science at American University.

[6] Allegheny faculty members have led domestic summer-study tours to New York, Yellowstone, Austria, Costa Rica, and South Africa.

[6] Individually arranged study abroad has taken students to Argentina, Canada (Nova Scotia), China, Cuba, Greece, Italy, Mexico, and Scotland.

[38] It has an arrangement with Drexel University College of Medicine to admit two Allegheny students who meet specific criteria (grades, MCAT scores).

[38] It has an arrangement with the William E. Simon School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester to have preferred admission to selected students by the end of their junior year.

[60] Faculty sometimes focus on the local area; for example, economics professor Stephen Onyeiwu conducted a study of manufacturing in the northwestern Pennsylvania region.

[6] Faculty actively publish on a wide range of subjects from the biology of woodpeckers,[62] to structural features of ribosomal RNA,[63] to freshwater invertebrates.

[72] Washington Monthly, which rates schools based on the degree to which they "contribute to the public good" by improving social mobility, producing research, and promoting service, ranked Allegheny 42nd among 203 liberal arts colleges in 2022.

[38] An Allegheny Student Government has an active role in formulating college policy, curriculum choices, personal conduct, promoting cultural programs, and making decisions about the school's calendar.

[79] Students run a campus radio station WARC 90.3 FM and a publication called "The Allegheny Review" of undergraduate literature.

It features student editorials, poetry, non-fiction and fiction pieces, art, and photography with a highly distinctive design and attitude.

Allegheny has welcomed a variety of entertainers and guest speakers over the last several years including John Updike, Dave Matthews, Dick Cheney,[83] Bill Clinton,[84] W.D.

[86] There have been "live" art shows in which invited artists, over an eight-hour period, created 10-by-10-foot "drawings" on gallery walls while spectators watched.

[89] Men's sports are baseball,[90] basketball,[91][92] cross country, football,[93] golf, soccer,[94] swimming and diving, tennis,[95] and track & field.

[88][96][97] Women's sports are basketball,[91][92] cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer,[94] softball, swimming & diving, tennis,[95] track & field,[97] and volleyball.

Previous energy challenge have resulted in the addition of water-bottle stations to encourage use of reusable water bottles and solar panels on the biology building.

Other projects include the Carrden, a student-lead garden that grows organic produce, multiple rain gardens, a green box program for reusable takeout containers, as well as the college itself becoming the first college in Pennsylvania to achieve Carbon Net-Neutrality [101] There are multiple student groups dedicated to environmental protection including SEA (Students for Environmental Action), AC Food Rescue, and Creek connections.

[102] One tradition is that a female student is not a "real co-ed" until she's been kissed on the thirteenth plank of the Rustic bridge over the stream.