macalester

[Anonymous]

I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

Spill the beans! What's your top 20?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

OP here--this is awesome! Would love to see the whole list! These are great inputs into a ranking!

[Anonymous]

Hi OP,

14:16 here, the people I know graduated in the mid-2000s, around 18 years ago. So not really recent… All have done great professionally. My
own family member went to an Ivy League grad program but actually says that the alumni network at Macalester was the most helpful in terms of job prospects.

Best of luck to your senior!

[Anonymous]

OP, my kid also got in EA with merit. He really liked the school but now seems a little less excited about it because people around here don’t know it. I hope that will be a temporary phase and that he will remember why he liked it in the first place.

[Anonymous]

My nephew currently attends Macalester and dies like it a good deal. The thing is the winters can be brutal there. He can’t wait to leave the cold weather there and so keep that in mind as well.

[Anonymous]

My kid's babysitter goes to Macalester and loves it. Buy a warm, warm coat and boots! This is where you might actually need a Canada goose coat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

OP here--this is awesome! Would love to see the whole list! These are great inputs into a ranking!

1) Pomona
2) Scripps
3) Pitzer
4) Mt. Holyoke
5) Bryn Mawr
6) Williams
7) Wellesley
8) Carleton
9) Vanderbilt
10) Vassar
11) U Richmond
12) Occidental
13) Macalester
14) Northwestern
15) Smith
16) Claremont McKenna
17) Barnard
18) Emory
19) Yale
20) Penn
21) Brown
22) Stanford
23) Trinity U (Texas)
24) Reed
25) Rice
26) Colorado College
27) Haverford
28) Washington U in St. Louis
29) Amherst
30) Princeton
31) Northwestern
32) Tufts
33) Boston U
34) Swarthmore
35) NYU
36) William and Mary
37) U Miami
38) Duke
39) Wesleyan
40) UC Santa Barbara
41) Bowdoin
42) Cornell
43) Santa Clara U
44) Harvey Mudd
45) Middlebury
46) USC
47) Hamilton
48) Carnegie Mellon
49) Dartmouth
50) MIT

Obviously, the criteria I used favored small schools (smaller classes and happier students). Others who seemed to fare well were those in warmer climates (more diverse and happier students), and women's colleges (smaller classes, happier students and more diverse).

FYI, some colleges were not considered because they don't make their data public. Notably, this includes Columbia and U Chicago.

Interesting, too, is that Harvard doesn't make the cut. According to Princeton Review, their students are not very happy with the quality of the professors or the overall university. I have a feeling this is at least partly due to higher expectations their students enter college with than their peers at other schools. "I worked my butt off to get into the school everyone talks about, and it sounds like lots of my friends have it at least as good as I do?"

It's fascinating to me that the first three are all part of a 5-college consortium in one location (the other two are numbers 16 and 43). I guess small classes, a diverse student body and faculty, and a warm climate close to mountains, the beach and a major city make for a great combination.

Also notable is that the spread in overall scores on my scale was 6 points between #1 and #50, while it's more like 18 points if you were to combine the two lists on USNWR. The criteria and weights they make use the colleges seem artificially farther apart in quality than they really are.

Take a look at the criteria and weights USNWR uses and I think you'll agree they're they're not what you'd choose if creating your own ranking from scratch. There's loads of data out there and this is a big decision. It's worth taking the time to make your own list, which will not unlikely be pretty different from mine, especially if you insist on a higher median SAT score. I just don't think there's all that much difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th.

Good luck to all!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sense is that it is a great school that refuses to game the rankings the way other schools do (e.g., by trying as hard as possible to drum up applications so the acceptance rate will decrease)...as a result, it is "stuck" in the 20s when it could be in the teens, which would give it a lot more appeal to high achieving kids around here.

But maybe that's for the best...the kids who end up there are super smart but not necessarily the "gunners" and perhaps that is what keeps the vibe so awesome.

Acceptance rate isn't a USNWR ranking algorithm input (neither is yield). Rankings may generally be stupid (I think they are) and USNWR in particular may use a suboptimal algorithm (I think it does), but it's harder to game than DCUM generally assumes.

+1. "Drumming up applications" isn't factored into rankings, at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

OP here--this is awesome! Would love to see the whole list! These are great inputs into a ranking!

1) Pomona
2) Scripps
3) Pitzer
4) Mt. Holyoke
5) Bryn Mawr
6) Williams
7) Wellesley
8) Carleton
9) Vanderbilt
10) Vassar
11) U Richmond
12) Occidental
13) Macalester
14) Northwestern
15) Smith
16) Claremont McKenna
17) Barnard
18) Emory
19) Yale
20) Penn
21) Brown
22) Stanford
23) Trinity U (Texas)
24) Reed
25) Rice
26) Colorado College
27) Haverford
28) Washington U in St. Louis
29) Amherst
30) Princeton
31) Northwestern
32) Tufts
33) Boston U
34) Swarthmore
35) NYU
36) William and Mary
37) U Miami
38) Duke
39) Wesleyan
40) UC Santa Barbara
41) Bowdoin
42) Cornell
43) Santa Clara U
44) Harvey Mudd
45) Middlebury
46) USC
47) Hamilton
48) Carnegie Mellon
49) Dartmouth
50) MIT

Obviously, the criteria I used favored small schools (smaller classes and happier students). Others who seemed to fare well were those in warmer climates (more diverse and happier students), and women's colleges (smaller classes, happier students and more diverse).

FYI, some colleges were not considered because they don't make their data public. Notably, this includes Columbia and U Chicago.

Interesting, too, is that Harvard doesn't make the cut. According to Princeton Review, their students are not very happy with the quality of the professors or the overall university. I have a feeling this is at least partly due to higher expectations their students enter college with than their peers at other schools. "I worked my butt off to get into the school everyone talks about, and it sounds like lots of my friends have it at least as good as I do?"

It's fascinating to me that the first three are all part of a 5-college consortium in one location (the other two are numbers 16 and 43). I guess small classes, a diverse student body and faculty, and a warm climate close to mountains, the beach and a major city make for a great combination.

Also notable is that the spread in overall scores on my scale was 6 points between #1 and #50, while it's more like 18 points if you were to combine the two lists on USNWR. The criteria and weights they make use the colleges seem artificially farther apart in quality than they really are.

Take a look at the criteria and weights USNWR uses and I think you'll agree they're they're not what you'd choose if creating your own ranking from scratch. There's loads of data out there and this is a big decision. It's worth taking the time to make your own list, which will not unlikely be pretty different from mine, especially if you insist on a higher median SAT score. I just don't think there's all that much difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th.

Good luck to all!

OP here- this is awesome- thanks so much. You should publish this!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

OP here--this is awesome! Would love to see the whole list! These are great inputs into a ranking!

1) Pomona
2) Scripps
3) Pitzer
4) Mt. Holyoke
5) Bryn Mawr
6) Williams
7) Wellesley
8) Carleton
9) Vanderbilt
10) Vassar
11) U Richmond
12) Occidental
13) Macalester
14) Northwestern
15) Smith
16) Claremont McKenna
17) Barnard
18) Emory
19) Yale
20) Penn
21) Brown
22) Stanford
23) Trinity U (Texas)
24) Reed
25) Rice
26) Colorado College
27) Haverford
28) Washington U in St. Louis
29) Amherst
30) Princeton
31) Northwestern
32) Tufts
33) Boston U
34) Swarthmore
35) NYU
36) William and Mary
37) U Miami
38) Duke
39) Wesleyan
40) UC Santa Barbara
41) Bowdoin
42) Cornell
43) Santa Clara U
44) Harvey Mudd
45) Middlebury
46) USC
47) Hamilton
48) Carnegie Mellon
49) Dartmouth
50) MIT

Obviously, the criteria I used favored small schools (smaller classes and happier students). Others who seemed to fare well were those in warmer climates (more diverse and happier students), and women's colleges (smaller classes, happier students and more diverse).

FYI, some colleges were not considered because they don't make their data public. Notably, this includes Columbia and U Chicago.

Interesting, too, is that Harvard doesn't make the cut. According to Princeton Review, their students are not very happy with the quality of the professors or the overall university. I have a feeling this is at least partly due to higher expectations their students enter college with than their peers at other schools. "I worked my butt off to get into the school everyone talks about, and it sounds like lots of my friends have it at least as good as I do?"

It's fascinating to me that the first three are all part of a 5-college consortium in one location (the other two are numbers 16 and 43). I guess small classes, a diverse student body and faculty, and a warm climate close to mountains, the beach and a major city make for a great combination.

Also notable is that the spread in overall scores on my scale was 6 points between #1 and #50, while it's more like 18 points if you were to combine the two lists on USNWR. The criteria and weights they make use the colleges seem artificially farther apart in quality than they really are.

Take a look at the criteria and weights USNWR uses and I think you'll agree they're they're not what you'd choose if creating your own ranking from scratch. There's loads of data out there and this is a big decision. It's worth taking the time to make your own list, which will not unlikely be pretty different from mine, especially if you insist on a higher median SAT score. I just don't think there's all that much difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th.

Good luck to all!

OP here- this is awesome- thanks so much. You should publish this!

+1000
This is a great list...but the creator of it is on to something. Everyone should be able to weight things differently because people have different priorities. Someone should make an interactive ranking that allows you to select that 10 factors that you most care about--and lets you assign weights to each. THAT would actually be meaningful (not a fan of USNews, if you can't tell...)

[Anonymous]

I went to Macalester and have a few friends in DC who went there. From our alumni groups etc it seems like there is a good cohort of alums here. Everyone I know are smart, kind, and many have phenomenal jobs, great families, etc. I loved being at a small school in a city and did several incredible internships for credit I would not have had the opportunity to do at other similar schools. I graduated with real stuff on my resume and I think that’s so important, maybe even more so now. I was my high school valedictorian and could have gone anywhere - and I often felt like most of my classmates were smarter than me!

[Anonymous]

PP again. I’d just add that I’m in daily contact with my Mac friends both near and far. We got a solid education (I think at most of these schools you can get a good education and it’s more about the students and other stuff). For me the size was perfect - big but not too big and with the benefits of a city and a diverse and international student body. I’d recommend Mac in a heartbeat!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

OP here--this is awesome! Would love to see the whole list! These are great inputs into a ranking!

1) Pomona
2) Scripps
3) Pitzer
4) Mt. Holyoke
5) Bryn Mawr
6) Williams
7) Wellesley
8) Carleton
9) Vanderbilt
10) Vassar
11) U Richmond
12) Occidental
13) Macalester
14) Northwestern
15) Smith
16) Claremont McKenna
17) Barnard
18) Emory
19) Yale
20) Penn
21) Brown
22) Stanford
23) Trinity U (Texas)
24) Reed
25) Rice
26) Colorado College
27) Haverford
28) Washington U in St. Louis
29) Amherst
30) Princeton
31) Northwestern
32) Tufts
33) Boston U
34) Swarthmore
35) NYU
36) William and Mary
37) U Miami
38) Duke
39) Wesleyan
40) UC Santa Barbara
41) Bowdoin
42) Cornell
43) Santa Clara U
44) Harvey Mudd
45) Middlebury
46) USC
47) Hamilton
48) Carnegie Mellon
49) Dartmouth
50) MIT

Obviously, the criteria I used favored small schools (smaller classes and happier students). Others who seemed to fare well were those in warmer climates (more diverse and happier students), and women's colleges (smaller classes, happier students and more diverse).

FYI, some colleges were not considered because they don't make their data public. Notably, this includes Columbia and U Chicago.

Interesting, too, is that Harvard doesn't make the cut. According to Princeton Review, their students are not very happy with the quality of the professors or the overall university. I have a feeling this is at least partly due to higher expectations their students enter college with than their peers at other schools. "I worked my butt off to get into the school everyone talks about, and it sounds like lots of my friends have it at least as good as I do?"

It's fascinating to me that the first three are all part of a 5-college consortium in one location (the other two are numbers 16 and 43). I guess small classes, a diverse student body and faculty, and a warm climate close to mountains, the beach and a major city make for a great combination.

Also notable is that the spread in overall scores on my scale was 6 points between #1 and #50, while it's more like 18 points if you were to combine the two lists on USNWR. The criteria and weights they make use the colleges seem artificially farther apart in quality than they really are.

Take a look at the criteria and weights USNWR uses and I think you'll agree they're they're not what you'd choose if creating your own ranking from scratch. There's loads of data out there and this is a big decision. It's worth taking the time to make your own list, which will not unlikely be pretty different from mine, especially if you insist on a higher median SAT score. I just don't think there's all that much difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th.

Good luck to all!

OP here- this is awesome- thanks so much. You should publish this!

I'm glad you found it interesting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my own ranking of colleges using criteria that make more sense to me than those that USNWR uses: class sizes, total number of classes offered, happiness of students with their faculty and the school in general, and the diversity of the student body and the faculty. I included all schools on the National Universities list and the National Liberal Arts list that have a median SAT score in the 95th percentile (1360) or above.
Macalester came in 13th place on this list (Carleton is #8), and the only National University that's ahead of it is Vanderbilt at #9 (Northwestern is #14). If you look at Princeton Review, which is where I got the happiness numbers, students at Macalester are very happy.
Also, anecdotally, I had a student of mine who was close to the top of her class and won our school's award for best all-around student who went to Macalester and loved it. The cold is an issue, but other than that it sounds pretty awesome.

OP here--this is awesome! Would love to see the whole list! These are great inputs into a ranking!

1) Pomona
2) Scripps
3) Pitzer
4) Mt. Holyoke
5) Bryn Mawr
6) Williams
7) Wellesley
8) Carleton
9) Vanderbilt
10) Vassar
11) U Richmond
12) Occidental
13) Macalester
14) Northwestern
15) Smith
16) Claremont McKenna
17) Barnard
18) Emory
19) Yale
20) Penn
21) Brown
22) Stanford
23) Trinity U (Texas)
24) Reed
25) Rice
26) Colorado College
27) Haverford
28) Washington U in St. Louis
29) Amherst
30) Princeton
31) Northwestern
32) Tufts
33) Boston U
34) Swarthmore
35) NYU
36) William and Mary
37) U Miami
38) Duke
39) Wesleyan
40) UC Santa Barbara
41) Bowdoin
42) Cornell
43) Santa Clara U
44) Harvey Mudd
45) Middlebury
46) USC
47) Hamilton
48) Carnegie Mellon
49) Dartmouth
50) MIT

Obviously, the criteria I used favored small schools (smaller classes and happier students). Others who seemed to fare well were those in warmer climates (more diverse and happier students), and women's colleges (smaller classes, happier students and more diverse).

FYI, some colleges were not considered because they don't make their data public. Notably, this includes Columbia and U Chicago.

Interesting, too, is that Harvard doesn't make the cut. According to Princeton Review, their students are not very happy with the quality of the professors or the overall university. I have a feeling this is at least partly due to higher expectations their students enter college with than their peers at other schools. "I worked my butt off to get into the school everyone talks about, and it sounds like lots of my friends have it at least as good as I do?"

It's fascinating to me that the first three are all part of a 5-college consortium in one location (the other two are numbers 16 and 43). I guess small classes, a diverse student body and faculty, and a warm climate close to mountains, the beach and a major city make for a great combination.

Also notable is that the spread in overall scores on my scale was 6 points between #1 and #50, while it's more like 18 points if you were to combine the two lists on USNWR. The criteria and weights they make use the colleges seem artificially farther apart in quality than they really are.

Take a look at the criteria and weights USNWR uses and I think you'll agree they're they're not what you'd choose if creating your own ranking from scratch. There's loads of data out there and this is a big decision. It's worth taking the time to make your own list, which will not unlikely be pretty different from mine, especially if you insist on a higher median SAT score. I just don't think there's all that much difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th.

Good luck to all!

OP here- this is awesome- thanks so much. You should publish this!

+1000
This is a great list...but the creator of it is on to something. Everyone should be able to weight things differently because people have different priorities. Someone should make an interactive ranking that allows you to select that 10 factors that you most care about--and lets you assign weights to each. THAT would actually be meaningful (not a fan of USNews, if you can't tell...)

I'm actually working on an opinion piece (hopefully for the NYT) that suggests USNWR should dump their rankings and do what you suggest. They already have the infrastructure in place, so it would be pretty easy for them to do. More useful to the public, and they could also charge more for a much improved product.