<p>As someone headed to Mac next year, I’m more than a little biased - Macalester is a great school, and though it is best renown for its programs in the social sciences, it also has a relatively strong reputation in the hard sciences as well. Also, Macalester really does a good job of using the Twin Cities to its students’ advantage. When we visited, profs from all departments talked about field trips, field studies, and internships their students were completing. Macalester not only puts you in a bigger city but also helps you make good use of that location. That being said, something you might want to consider that you mentioned about Grinnell but not about Mac is that it also has a very liberal student population. I visited twice and didn’t see anything alarmingly left, but it is something Mac gets a bit of flack for. </p>