Make sure to drive thru the town. Lots of people who visit campus enter through corn fields, tour campus, leave through corn fields and think there’s nothing there. It is a decent sized town with plenty of things walking distance to campus.
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Yes, Union fits the description! But Schenectady isn’t St. Paul! Still, worth a look. It’s a lovely campus and the city is adjacent.
Trinity might also fit the bill but is not in a nicer part of Hartford.
Colby’s campus is set away from Waterville although it has facilities, including a dorm, in Waterville and frequent shuttle service between the two. I don’t think it’s what she’s looking for.
I suspect Bryn Mawr would be far closer to the target. It’s in a main line town and has easy access to Philadelphia.
Macalester may still end up at the top of her list with that criteria!
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It occurred to me Kalamazoo College might be worth considering.
The campus itself is only 60 acres in a nice historic neighborhood, West Main Hill. As the name implies, is up a bit on a hill and actually separated from the central business district of Kalamazoo the city by a highway, but it is extremely close.
Kalamazoo the city is really a fantastic larger college town. It is also the home of Western Michigan University, which is not the sort of university we discuss around here much, but actually has some really good performing arts programs, a top aviation school, and other stuff that help make it a more interesting area for local college students.
Then the city has a population of about 75,000, the whole metropolitan area about 260,000, which is enough to make it feel more like a small city than a town. There is a thriving music and arts scene, bar and restaurant scene (it is the home of Bell’s brewery for those who know beers), is a sort of life sciences cluster . . . .
Of course Kalamazoo is not the Twin Cities, but it is almost dead halfway between Detroit and Chicago (a little over 2 hours drive from each, and there is also Amtrak service both ways) so kids do a lot of weekend trips and such.
Anyway, might be worth checking out.
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OP, my child will be starting at Macalester this fall and we’ve visited the campus many times now, so I understand what your DC likes so much about it. My DC, similarly, wanted a smaller school in a bigger city with walkable restaurants and shops. (If a shuttle ride was necessary to get to stores and restaurants, that would’ve been a hard no.) Campuses that we visited that did not appeal to DC, mostly due to the very quiet business districts nearby: Brandeis, Mt. Holyoke, Gettysburg. DC did like Dickinson quite a bit (and it’s an easier admit than Macalester), and possibly Bryn Mawr. And I really liked Franklin & Marshall in Lancaster, PA, which is worth looking at for you. It’s got an attractive and compact campus, nice residential neighborhood with shops and restaurants adjacent to campus, and Lancaster is a fun small city that’s very nearby. I believe they have recently started to offer some merit aid, which they previously did not do.
But I’m surprised it took until so late in this thread for someone a few posts ago to recommend Reed College in Portland. I’m a Reed alum myself, and each time I’ve visited Macalester, I can’t get over how much the one campus reminds me of the other. Both are compact (Reed has more acreage, but much of it is the wild “Canyon” with a creek and forest, not where students spend much of their time), with attractive academic and administrative buildings, dorms close to the campus center, and both are bordered by neighborhoods that have cute and tidy bungalows on one side of campus, and stately, large, gorgeous homes on the other side. The business district near Reed is “up the hill” (two blocks from campus) with a great assortment of restaurants, grocery stores, etc. And downtown Portland is an easy bus ride or bike ride away. Reed’s got a smaller student body than Mac and it’s very intellectually intense, but that was a good thing for me as an undergrad. It has an excellent track record with its grads going on to earn PhDs. Reed does not have varsity sports, if that matters to your child (it did to mine, which is the only reason they didn’t apply). I don’t think it’s quite as generous with financial aid as Mac, but I’m not sure. I believe it’s a somewhat easier admit.
Also, another possible “safety” for your student might be the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA. We visited it early on as a possible safety for my DC who liked it much more than they thought they would. It’s a Virginia state school with a nice looking campus (lots of red brick, not too large) and is easily walkable to a few commercial areas-- down a hill to the cute historic downtown of Fredericksburg, with a river and lots of restaurants and shops, and on the other side of campus, to a more modern strip-mall type area with an abundance of businesses. It’s much less expensive than private SLACs and has out of state merit available that brings the cost down even more: Out-of-State Residential Merit Scholarship - Admissions
Good luck!
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Thank you! Union is a solid target (if I’m reading everything correctly) – versus Macalester which is a reach. So a less ‘thrilling’ urban area may need to be a necessary tradeoff for a better chance at admission! 
And the academics match what she is looking for spot on–so that’s a solid win. I personally worry about the heavy Greek impact --but I’m not the one going to college so I’ll leave that up for her to decide.
Bryn Mawr would likely be a reach as well -but it looks like it would be a good option.
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Kalamazoo goes on and off the list! Some folks say the area isn’t safe which is my main concern. But I think the K-Plan is good and they do a lot of study abroad. It’s a solid college academically and would provide her with a good ‘likely’.
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And great merit.
Agnes Scott in Decatur, outside Atlanta and walking to a MARTA. But the state’s not work
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Thank you! I feel like it’s hard to describe what I meant -but I’m really glad you understood it!
Dickinson is going on the top of our visit list. More of a target than reach --and it seems to have a similar vibe based on numerous reports here. Plus academically - it looks like it checks all her boxes.
We’ve discussed Reed --but she wants more balance with academics and social. (NOT a party girl but not as academically intense as Reed.) It’s a great suggestion though – I would have been really happy at Reed!
Fwiw, my kid really liked both Union and Dickinson. Somewhat different vibes, but both have SO much going for them and really seem to care about their students.
Another thought, sort of different vibe, is Guilford. Might check some of the boxes. Greensboro isn’t an isolated town.
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So my understanding (I have a relative who attended WMU so am tangentially familiar) is that the area around the colleges has quite low serious/violent crime victimization rates, but there is a moderate lingering non-violent theft issue (like people breaking into parked cars sort of thing).
Interestingly, this was pretty much the exact same impression I got of Macalester-Groveland back when my S24 was looking at Macalester and I did a little research.
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Very.
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We’ve visited (or I’m otherwise familiar with) a lot of schools mentioned here, and some others that might fit the bill but haven’t come up. Here’s how I would categorize them (leaving selectivity and financial aid aside entirely):
Well-integrated into a sizable town, city, or lively suburban neighborhood (in come cases with accessible transportation to the downtown of a larger metro area); some campuses are larger than others but they all have an identifiable “campus” feel: Brown, Macalester, Reed, Bates, Bowdoin, Claremont Consortium, Haverford/Bryn Mawr (more outlying, but with easy transportation to Philly), Smith, Wellesley, Dickinson, Kalamazoo, William and Mary, Sarah Lawrence, Wesleyan, Vassar. Also worth a look: University of Denver, Lewis and Clark, Occidental.
Compact campus and well-integrated into a very small town or village, often without easy transportation to someplace larger: Middlebury, Williams, Carleton, St. Olaf, Mount Holyoke (there is a shuttle to the consortium colleges, but Mount Holyoke is the geographic outlier among them). Perhaps Oberlin falls into this category? Not sure.
Just far away enough that it would require a shuttle/car to get into town – not especially easy, though students do make the trek (these are generally rural, though Saratoga Springs is a little bigger and more connected): Conn College, Hamilton, Skidmore, Colby, Colgate.
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Thank you!!
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UChicago seems to be this way from my short visit to the campus. It may actually be my least favorite part about the school. I happen to like a very campus-y feel. Then again, I’m not the one going to college so not really my choice. LOL
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If you are already looking in MA, Wheaton College might be worth a look, a very contained campus in a very small town, but with reasonable public transit to Boston or Providence. Campus feel was important to my own kid, and Wheaton has been used in several tv/movie productions BECAUSE of it’s Very College Feel. (MHC and Wheaton were founded by Mary Lyons but Wheaton went co-ed in the 80s and is a more accessible college for more kids, bu if they have stats they get great merit and even the average kids get good deals, too.) Mine has a friend going to MHC and the vibes seem very similar in their stories, just that MHC is more selective/elite.
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