I would add Bard and Skidmore to this list
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My own view is that Reed’s culture is completely its own and is about as binary a fit/no fit as there is out there.
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Corrected.
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How could you all have forgotten St Olaf, Carleton’s Neighbor?! Gustavus Adolphus is another Minnesota college worth mentioning.
There are a few more Midwestern LAC’s that are worth mentioning, including Lawrence University and Beloit in Wisconsin, Knox in Illinois, Cornell in Iowa, Depauw University in Indiana, alongside many more colleges.
Once you leave the Midwest, LACs become very thin on the ground until you hit the West Coast.
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We didn’t forget- we are crowdsourcing as robust a list as possible.
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St. Olaf’s added, but people should feel free to supplement with their own comments.
St. Olaf, Gustavus, Lawrence, Beloit and Depauw are fine schools. I know kids from Seattle who attended two of those and some of the others listed.
If we are trying to write a list of “National” liberal arts colleges, a concept that seems to go unchecked when discussing universities, we are losing the plot. IMO anyway.
IMO, the midwestern national LACs are Carleton, Mac, Kenyon, Oberlin and Grinnell. Maybe Dennison.
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Sidebar: Interesting comment since the former (2017-2026) W&L President, Will Dudley, recently took the position of CMC President in July. 
Maybe he has “a type.” 
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I was typing out a response along the line of “the OP’s list was about LACs with students from across America, while some of the schools on your list are regionally attended LACs.”
Then I went back and reviewed Knox (IL) which made a very good impression on me during S20’s search+application time. Only 34% in-state. 28% out-of-state. A whopping 38% international students. That’s doggone impressive geographical diversity considering Knox’s 71% acceptance rate.
Great call by you!
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I think most of the Jesuit colleges belong here. My kid went to Santa Clara University which is considered a university. But with the smallish campus, and student enrollment, it most definitely feels like a LAC plunked in the middle of a metro area.
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I know!
belong on a list of liberal arts colleges?
Yes, for the reasons I listed. And some don’t…
In your view what makes a college national? If based on some number, where would you draw the line?
Not rhetorical, genuinely curious how different people think about this.
I think it is a good question!
Grinnell is usually around 10% students from Iowa, give or take. I just looked it up, and St Olaf reported being 43% from Minnesota. To be fair, Minnesota has a larger supply of potential LAC-type students than Iowa, so I then looked up Carleton, and it was 17% from Minnesota.
So I am comfortable saying Grinnell and Carleton are national, but what about St Olaf? Again, interesting question. I think calling it local would be wrong, with a majority not even coming from the state. Regional? Adding other Midwest states apparently gets you to 61%, so at least more plausible, but still, that doesn’t feel quite right to me. Particularly since of the remaining 38%, 12% are actually International. And indeed, plenty of “national” public universities are not even 38% out of state, let alone out of region.
So maybe we need a name for this sort of “hybrid” LAC? Meaning they have a healthy split between more local kids and more national/international kids, enough that a kid looking out of state or indeed out of region or indeed from outside the US entirely could reasonably consider them, and be confident there would be plenty other non-local students.
ETA: By the way, if AI is to be believed, apparently at Colby, approximately 60-65% of the students come from New York or New England, that being the NESCAC region.
If you are curious, about 10.4% of the US population lives in New York and New England combined, versus about 20.4% in the Midwest.
OK, so if St Olaf has about the same percentage from a region twice the size, is it actually less “national” than a NESCAC like Colby?
I think it is an interesting question for sure.
ETA2: Again per AI, apparently Colby might only have like 9% from Maine specifically, but then Minnesota has over four times the population of Maine. So the “overrepresentation” of Minnesota at St Olaf is not necessarily much more than the overrepresentation of Maine at Colby, once you control for relative state population. Or, in other words, Maine being a lower percentage of Colby’s regional population is at least in part about New England being divided up into more smaller states than the Midwest.
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I would be the first to admit that I did not give this question a lot of thought when I began this thread; even the term “National” is a completely USNews-centric concept. So, to that extent, I completely cop to contributing to an endless feedback loop. Furthermore, I have kind of a visceral reaction whenever anyone suggests that a certain place has “the feel” of a liberal arts college, but when I look up its “Degrees Awarded” I have to go all the way to the bottom of the page before I see a single degree awarded for Math or Physics, English, any kind of Language, History, Art or Music. That type of college needs a thread of iits own.
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Lawrence University, located in Appleton, Wisconsin – a stone’s throw from Green Bay – ironically uses the Viking as its mascot, betraying its state’s sporting sensibilities. It features particular strengths in music and the sciences.
Beloit College, placed between Madison and Chicago on the border between America’s Dairyland and FIBland, is known for curricular innovation and access to bovines.
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Ripon College, which educated Harrison Ford, Spencer Tracy, and Al Jarreau, is home to about 700 students and boasts a student:faculty ratio of 10:1.
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I actually like the new 2025 Carnegie Classifications for identifying classic LACs. That category would be Award Level Focus: Baccalaureate, Special Focus: Arts & Sciences.
This would now NOT include Harvey Mudd, say, which is also Baccalaureate, but Special Focus: Technology, Engineering, and Sciences. Note “sciences” appear in both categories, and I think this reflects a kind of reality, like Physics kids can pretty freely look at both lists. But the Classics and Engineering kids, not so much, understanding there are some exceptions. Like Lafayette gets the Special Focus Arts & Sciences tag, despite 20% in Engineering. But there really are just a small list of such exceptions among otherwise classic LACs.
Santa Clara is then Mixed Undergraduate/Graduate-Doctorate Medium (Medium is a size term), which seems about right to me. Again there is some wiggle room, though. Wesleyan still gets the Baccalaureate tag, because it has a degree mix of 91.4% Bachelor’s, 7.4% Master’s, 1.2% Doctorates. That contrasts with Santa Clara at 55.0% Bachelor’s, 35.6% Master’s, 9.4% Doctorates.
All that said, I agree Liberal Arts and Sciences kids often cross shop such institutions with LACs, but the different award focus is what puts the C in LAC, versus A&S at a university.
Which is exactly how I would put it–you can do Arts & Sciences at an LAC. You can do it at a medium-sized university like Santa Clara. Or you can do it at a large university like Michigan. But each of these has its own pros and cons.
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