Everyone here has been really helpful with feedback - and now that we are starting to visit colleges, I’m hoping to add to the information.
We visited Macalester College.
Thoughts:
Location:
Located in St Paul -but in a lovely residential community. LOTS of people were out walking (it was summer so you know the weather was nice). It felt very safe.
The downtown of St Paul is VERY CLOSE – and multiple students had done internships within the twin cities.
I felt like it was the best of suburban and urban.
It was summer when we visited but St Paul is COLD, with lots of snow (lake effect) and winter that seems to last from November to April. If you have a kid who doesn’t like the cold -please keep this in mind.
Campus:
Campus is small - 15 minutes max from one side to the other…
Pretty and nicely laid out.
No thoughts on food - as the dining hall wasn’t open for a ‘test run’ 
Dorms are very standard - small but livable. Second year accommodations likely better than freshman. (Two year on campus requirement)
Students:
Seems to be as advertised:
2000 students – collaborative and lots of interactions with professors
They all seemed to have multiple interests – and often multiple majors and minors
Study away was common
Friendly people throughout
My daughter’s own impressions:
She’d be happy here - she really liked the collaborative environment
She liked how friendly the students were – but she didn’t get to speak to a student in STEM -so that’s a follow up plan
She was concerned about the size of the student body (was it big enough or like high school all over again - I did say these students would be different than the high school population)
Cold - eh - okay - she liked the suburban/urban mix
Makes the application list -She thinks it would be a good fit -and I agree.
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Thank you. We are trying to squeeze in a trip in to MSP next year to see the LACs (Carleton, St. Olaf, and Mac) there.
From afar, Mac appears to have a good academic rep, is in a good location, and apparently gives decent merit awards to about 30% of its incoming class.
One downside that I have heard is that Mac has a bit of a cancel culture / intolerance problem. Any evidence of that? I am guessing your answer is “no” on an summer admissions tour, but you never know.
Do you have any other visits under your belt for comparison purposes?
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We visited Macalester and Carleton last month. I strongly preferred the location of Mac over Carleton. There is a cute college town just off campus and there are frequent city buses to downtown Minneapolis and downtown St Paul, both of which very close…like 5 miles. Small college town feel in the middle of a bigger city (two). Carleton was much more isolated but my daughter preferred the overall vibe of Carleton and especially its art studio spaces. About Macalester she just said it felt like a “typical” college and nothing really stood out to her. To be fair it was her first college visit so not sure how she knows what’s typical” 
I think both campuses are likely very liberal and I didn’t get a sense that one was more so than the other.
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Liberal is absolutely fine and expected. Intolerance is not.
Good to know. We want to see these schools for ourselves.
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For any parents of IB students - my daughter said Mac felt like “IB college”. For some that would be great - she didn’t love it. Also, it definitely feels very small, both the student body, and the physical space. St. Paul is awesome though, and it would be a very fun place to spend 4 years.
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I didn’t see evidence of cancel culture…but it’s definitely liberal. Our tour guide was very laid back…smart but chill. I don’t think he’d be big on excluding anyone. Haha…
We went to Kansas Public universities….KU and KState with my son (totally different kid academically)…so no other liberal arts schools yet.
It is small…we don’t have experience with IB high school….can you give a ‘vibe’?
Very studious, places a lot of importance on having experience in many cultures/countries. A little bit of a “D & D” crowd (but not quite) if you know that vibe. Small tight-knit crew, but with a bit of one-up-manship intellectually with peers.
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Thanks – I didn’t get the ‘one upmanship’ so much but the rest I can see I have a kid who wants to travel but we haven’t had the money --she excited about having international classmates at least.
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We are from Southern California and our son will be starting at Mac this fall. My son preferred to go out of state (but he did apply to the unversities in CA). We visited SLACS: St. Olaf, Carleton, Lake Forest, and Macalester last year . We liked all the schools, but our son wanted a more urban environment than what Carleton at Northfield offered. He ended up applying to Lake Forest, Macalester, and Carleton and got into all. Lake Forest offered him a huge scholarship. Mac offered him a generous scholarship and Carleton didn’t (to be fair, Carleton up front states that they do not offer merit money). He liked the “vibe” of Mac better after 2 visits (once during the summer and once during acceptance week. He got into some of the UCs, University of Southern California, Case Western, etc. Ultimately his decision came to strength of academics, small class sizes where professors call you by your first name, strength of diversity, financial cost (we are full pay), and a more urban setting.
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Thank you! Mac seems lovely…Congrstulations! I didn’t have Lake Forest on the list…,any thoughts on that campus/academcis?
Lake Forest College is a sound college. Located outside of Chicago, it is situated in an upscale suburban environment. Very safe around the campus. It has a strong reputation in setting students up to get real jobs (so they have a strong employment resource dept). There are options to study abroad and also to study in the city of Chicago. It is known to be a bit clicky with the sports students. I would say that Lake Forest with a much higher scholorship given to my son was a strong contender. But he didn’t like the cafeteria (they let you eat there when you return for the accepted Scolars Weekend visit) and that was a big deal breaker for him. St. Olaf actually has one of the highest rated cafeterias in the country, but our son didn’t apply there.
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Two weeks ago, we did tours/info sessions at Carleton and Grinnell, but also drove by Macalester the evening after Carleton. Son would not get out of the car, found Macalester too small. (But remember, that’s from driving around the perimeter of Macalester and also after hearing about the many-acres of Carleton’s arboretum earlier in the day.) By time we going home, he ranked Carleton above Grinnell and would not put Macalester on this list. This was a big victory for C and G, as before he’d only considered costal SLAC colleges.
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This thread is so helpful! We’re from Philadelphia and have only visited east coast schools and so those seem to be the ones my son can picture himself on (Haverford, Drexel, Wesleyan, Vassar, Rochester) But the three we’re applying to without visiting are WashU, Macalester and Case Western. It’s the vibe factor that is just so hard to assess without visiting. My son wants to major in neuroscience and is interested in research/academia, not pre-professional. He’s also a gay theater kid who wants opportunities to keep playing drums in and when yes, probably play D&D.
I see you chose Mac over Case. I’d love to hear more about how those two might compare/contrast vibe wise. Academically they are both super strong.
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A lot of overlap with my gay theater kid’s list. Wes, Vassar, and Mac were his top three. (Also loved UVM, if you’re looking for something in the likely category with similar vibes).
Mac was a strong contender, especially after getting a good merit award EA. He had a great alumni interview, and reviews from people we know there were really strong. (We never ended up visiting because he got into Wes ED2.)
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Every journey is different. So you have to consider that. Case Western is a strong school for STEM and research. He didn’t get a sense of a friendly collegial vibe for Case. Their information sessions were rather rigid and dry. There wasn’t much team spirit to him. Also Cleveland is not one of the cities he liked. At Mac, he is interested in majoring in Neuroscience and English and he much better liked the campus atmosphere. The area of Macalester-Groveland is a nice suburban area, but close to public transit to St. Paul downtown and Minneapolis. I’m sure that Case students are happy there, but it wasn’t the top choice for our son. I’m not sure how LGBTQ+ friendly Case is as compared to Mac (which it is). I grew up in the east coast and applied only to east coast schools back in the days. I chose Johns Hopkins over some Ivys and Vassar. If I had to go back in time, I would have gone to Vassar instead of Hopkins. But that is for another discussion.
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Just to comment on WashU - beautiful campus - I feel like it’s similar to Mac in terms of layout. Green space within a city. Nephew just graduated from there -really liked it, made a ton of friends. Obviously really strong academically. Didn’t go on official tour (because nephew showed us around -and it’s not on my daughter’s list) – but I don’t think you can go wrong with WashU.
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Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. These are the kinds of things that matter so much (friendly collegial vibe vs. cut-throat competition). I know everyone is motivated and learns differently, and my son is very clear that he thrives in a collaborative community!
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Thanks for chiming in on WashU. It really excudes that midwestern feel with nice balance of bright motivated kids who also support each other. This is going to be a reach for him so fingers crossed it’s an option!
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FWIW, we did a full-day “Meet Mac” event this past Monday (10/14/24) and I did not get the sense at all that there’s a competitive atmosphere among students. I even asked a group of students who work for an academic department about this and they told me it’s very supportive and decidedly not competitive.
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