Carleton and Macalester: How similar?

bclintonk
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:38:04 +0000

^ Well actually U Minnesota is so big and sprawling that it’s not exactly surrounded by anything, but both the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses are abutted more by residential neighborhoods than anything else; it’s just that the U is so big it dwarfs them.

Anyway, my point was that Mac’s location is very different from Carleton’s. Both are safe and pretty, yes, and both are in largely residential areas of their respective communities but Mac is close to the geographical center of the urban core of a metropolitan region of some 3 million people, while Carleton is in a small town of about 19,000 located near but by most measures just outside that metropolitan region. That’s a huge difference. I’m not saying one is better, but to equate them would be a huge mistake: Mac is “urban” and Carleton is “small town Midwest.” The experience each gives will be quite different as a consequence. Some will prefer one, some the other.