Macalester College

My husband's college. He did his undergrad in math and economics in 1992. A gorgeous college in an stunning neighborhood. He walked around just before the sunset as he was sharing with me all his priceless memories.

Best college ever, in my opinion! The way the staff thrives to know students beyond their academic performance is legendary! They don't just say it, they apply it. I am fortunate my daughter is a student at Macalester College. 💃

Excellent turf field. Very clean.

I went here for MITY, Expand Your Mind 2022! The campus is truly beautiful, friendly staff, great facilities, tasty food. Great college. -August Gregerson, Session B

We were there for volleyball game. Very nice facility .. Parking was the only bad thing.

I can't even articulate how wonderful my 4 years at this college were

Beautiful campus - especially in the fall! I love being able to go on runs by the Mississippi River and go to concerts in the Twin Cities. The people are also some of the most dedicated and engaged individuals I've ever met. My first year floormates remain some of my closest friends to this day. I also still keep in touch with professors. They are so accessible and really want to see you succeed! During my time at Mac, I had multiple professors invite me to their homes and take time to get to know me outside of the classroom. The faculty to student ratio is one of the main things that makes Mac special.

Great turf soccer ⚽️ field

Not quite as large as University of St Thomas, but the Summit Avenue location is lined with large and beautiful homes. The atmosphere is friendly and like you're in a nice part of town.

At their road crossings Look out for hippies on bikes And naked people (This institution speaks for itself. A bunch of crazy smart and crazy students packed together in the middle of the twin cities makes for a fun and interesting package. Referring to Ian's posting about the "bookish shy Macalester students": You, my friend, have not met the typical Macalester student. Andrew certainly put it much more appropriately: "Drink Blood, Smoke Crack, Worship Satan, Go Mac!" Rock on, Macalester!)

I had a great experience here and I stand by the exceptional education I received here. You can tell how great this school is by the way in which the football team conducts itself respectfully and responsibly while winning conference championships. I also got a lucrative job after college.

Macalester has been a great place for our child. The small class sizes mean they have a great relationship with their professors and St. Paul is a vibrant place to go to school.

Drink Blood, Smoke Crack, Worship Satan, Go Mac! What a place, and happens to be the Hottest liberal arts college in America according to Newsweek (and me).

This review of Macalester College is inspired by my recent trip back home for my 10 year college reunion. I started going to Macalester in junior high. My best friend's dad was a theatre prof and we hung out on campus all the time. Then in high school I used the library to do research, ditched school to hang out in the old and now gone student union, and did 1 or 2 summers of the TCITY program. When it came time to apply for colleges I didn't even seriously apply to other schools. Thank god I was accepted and they gave me scholarships to boot. My time at Macalester was stressful and wonderful. I studied hard and partied hard. I met lots of cool people, some of whom I am still friends with (and others that are now finding me on Facebook). I learned a ton, and unlearned alot of what I'd been taught in high school. I had close relationships with many of my professors and never felt like just a number. I had one class with 5 people in it. I was challenged every day and still know I was privileged to have gone there. 10 years later there are some changes. The campus is quite different, since Macalester apparently can't stop remodeling and tearing down old buildings and building new ones. But at least alot of the new ones are green (and LEED certified!) and I think all the historic buildings from the original campus are still there. Standing in the middle of campus, it is still easy to forget you are near one of the busiest intersections in town. It really is a lovely and usually tranquil campus. There aren't as many punks as when I was in junior high but the student body is still fairly liberal and left leaning. Conservatives are the minority here and tend to write whiny letters to the editor about how they feel oppressed. The student body is also fairly diverse since Mac actively recruits foreign students. This is Minnesota so it's still mostly white people, but hey, some of them have cool accents. GLBT friendly. I can't comment on sports since I never played a sport and maybe went to 1 or 2 games in 4 years. The football team royally sucked while I was there, and this isn't a sports school by any means, but there are lots of teams (including rugby) and a shiny new gym. No frats or sororities, BTW. I also never studied abroad (which I regret), but Mac def encourages students to spend a semester or so out of the country. Mac also encourages students to be politically and socially active, during their stay and after they graduate. As a student I thought the cafeteria had decent food and a wide variety of choices. Some of the older dorms have really cool and unique setups. I don't think I've been in the new dorms. The location can't be beat, being right in the middle of Grand Ave. I was glad to see Dunn Bros and Breadsmith still in business. If Jack Weatherford is still a prof, you should take his classes since he wrote some of my fav nerdy books. Kofi Annan is probably Mac's most famous alum; that's about the best I can do for name dropping. When I was a student The Hungry Mind was an awesome bookstore and cafe, and also sold us our textbooks. The Hungry Mind got bought out by another store (Ruminator?), and may or may not currently still be where students get their books, but I hope so cause it's across the street from campus. Macalester put on a good reunion, with fancy food and a martini tent. There was actually a whole weekend's worth of activities, but I just did the "dinner and drinks" night. Alot of alumni still live in the Twin Cities, so I'd say Mac both attracts people from the area and gets people to fall in love with the area. Macalester is a small, private liberal arts school and consistently receives top rankings. It is a great school but not for you if you don't want to work hard or if you feel the need to be surrounded by Republicans. Also not a good pick if you can't deal with harsh winters. 20 below ain't no joke, and I can count the number of times schools closed in St Paul from 3rd grade through college.

My experience is now decades old but I had a great fucking time at Mac. They have me loads of financial aid (a necessity), offered a great place to learn, and a fascinating array of classmates to interact with. Like most places you get out what you put in and some features had to be hunted down (like the career office, oh ye bemoaning earlier reviewer). I am a better person for having gone there and regret only not making more of it while I had the chance. I-Fries, I will confess, are probably not as good as I remember... but the rest was awesome.

Why do I love this place? Because nowhere else (outside Scotland) can an undefeated girls soccer team be bolstered to a needed late-season victory by the presence of a bagpiper in the stands. Why do I hate it? Because nowhere else would the school administration feed into the demands of participants of a peace camp who happen to be flunking. And I'm sorry, but bathrooms designated for men and women are not heteronormative spaces, as one student argued. But at least those debates can be held. I am bewildered by some of the other comments. Bookish shy people? My guess is they were too high to worry about impressing anyone while writing their theses on Marx and postmodernism in their heads. Mac students generally love their drugs. They also want to change the world. Seriousness is a necessary part of mindfulness. P.S. I'm in love with their Anthro department.

Macalester is a very fine liberal arts college. Of that there can be no doubt. What is in question is the tastefulness of their students and campus. It is a boring campus full of bookish shy people. It is great to get an education, but you should let yourself go a little and not be so damned serious all the time. Lighten up, people.

Not worth the money. At all. I graduated a few years ago from their much-flaunted IS major. It cost me an arm and a leg (didn't get an ounce of financial assistance from them) and I'll be paying it back until I'm in my 60s. The trouble with Mac is that they don't focus on getting their students jobs, but rather focus on getting their students into grad school. There was no career prep, no skill-building classes, nothing practical. The really do their students a disservice by not trying to provide more diversity in the curriculum. The bubble is too small and professors who seem like a big deal at Mac are really just rather unaccomplished, under-published academics in the wider world. It's a terrible value for the amount of money you'll pay, especially considering that your degree will be worth nothing and you'll need to go on to grad school.

What others have said about this place being a grad school factory is very true. When I was 18, I went in thinking that a New Ivy education would be impressive to employers and prepare me for a satisfying career. Although I had some good courses and some good professors, I found myself clueless about how to find a job once I graduated and I found that the Macalester name-drop was a lot less impressive than you expect it to be. My adviser disappeared after one year and dropped me, leaving me with no adviser come registration time sophomore year and then I just found myself stuck without that whole "adviser who has known you from your first-year course" thing that was supposed to be so great at Mac. That was also a bit of a letdown. Socially speaking, I was told this place was very unique and gay friendly. Meh. Most people there are middle-class liberal-ish people but actual allies as a lesbian student were very hard to come-by. Most people had no understanding of having faced difficulties with a LGBTQ identity. Those who were queer-identified sometimes tended to judge people who weren't as queer as they were or who were "too binary." That was a huge letdown and when I spoke with the dean of students about how the school advertises as much more of a haven for LGBTQ students than it actually is, he basically threw his hands up and said "yeah well whatever." No one is willing to take responsibility for the way that the school builds itself up to be something its not in terms of queer community. They'll acknowledge that it isn't what it says it is and then just move on with their day. The dorm life is horrible, also. They don't do anything about complaints regarding noise, vomit, or bullying. The gender house in particular is a joke. It's not about gender (or at least it wasn't when I was there). It's about a few sophomores wanting to get drunk. Overall, I'd say it's okay but not quite worth $160,000+ for four years.

I went to Macalester because I was a school snob. I mean, if I had to stay in MN, I was at least going to a "good" school and there was no way I was going to the U of MN. The campus was pretty and they gave me a ton of $$ so Macalester beat out the other private, liberal arts schools in the Twin Cities. The school itself was nice, my profs were great, but the student body sucked. They were all trying to be different, but didn't seem to realize that they were conforming to the Mac culture by being different. My orientation group leader was a guy who liked to wear skirts, there was a practicing witch in my group, and I'm pretty sure I was the only girl in the orientation group who shaved her legs. Pretty much all the students are from middle-upper class families, regardless of their country of origin. A student body that consists of students from the same socioeconomic status is really not diverse. That being said, the majority of the students were very nice. There were lots of opportunities that I wouldn't have had as a freshman or sophomore at the U (Macalester owned some sort of a reserve that I got to visit often and conduct experiments on for one of my ecology classes). However, I realized this wasn't the place for me when, in my second year, I heard a student asking a prof for an extension on a paper because he was depressed. I transferred to the U of MN and was much happier. I miss the beautiful campus, the guy who played bagpipes all the time, the great shops and restaurants around Grand Ave., and FREE parking for students. Very nice school, great facilities, just not for me. I only wish they would stop sending me requests for money and reunion notices.

2 stars: one for the cake and the pasta that was good that one time. no more soggy vegetables plz