Macalester College Top Questions

Very intelligent people who want to learn for the sake of learning.

My classmates seem to be perfectly content to be students and never get a job for the rest of their lives.

Many are too eager to be involved

Very politically aware and left-leaning, very open to all races, sexual orientations, etc.) There is a little bit of different types of students staying together (ex. athletes hang out with athletes, internationals with internationals), but there are many exceptions.

Macalester is very liberal and so the community respects all views and ways of life. There is a high international population which is really nice. Most people are very humble and every one is treated equal regardless.

The Macalester student body is not very athletic and sports are not very popular. Frisby on the lawn maybe on exception but very little in the way of intermurial sports. The hispster look is very popular and there is rarely a baseball cap in sight. As far as social groups there is some mixing between international students, domestic students of color and white domestic students but it does happen. Most students come from well educated and wealthy families.

Tons of hippies who don't know what they're talking about. The school presents itself as multicultural but the majority of students are not (and by majority i mean like 70{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c}) Most of the kids come from Minnesota, middle class and up, and white.

The student body is broadly segmented into three parts - internationals, domestics of color, and everyone else. Obviously there are crossovers and subdivisions, but that's the general experience of pretty much everyone on campus. It's hard to integrate certain parts of the population with other - jocks, for example, tend to stay away from events about multiculturalism, while internationals tend not to care about domestic political events, etc. The LGBT community is significant and vocal, but there are of course bigots here like there are everywhere else - they're just socially less acceptable. Additionally, the LGBT community tends to be white-dominated, which can be hard at times for queers of color (though they do have their own group in addition to the Queer Union). People here are extremely laid back about dress. Extremely. A freshmen complained to me that she always felt dressed up because she put thought into her choice of dress for the day. It's true - if you wear nice jeans and a top and think to accessorize - you're dressed up. It's never been so easy. If that's hard for you, hopefully you find some fashion-conscious people; I promise there are plenty - they just tend to stick together. Most of Mac is from white suburbia, as with any college; but a huge number are not from this country at all. 70{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the student body is on financial aid, which can be uncomfortable for some, but less so for other, depending on your economic background. While most here claim to be liberal - most are just politically apathetic. Sure, we want Obama in office, but not many will go out and do something about it other than get to the rally. Few attend the anti-war protests. I don't think you can judge Mac too harshly on this, though - percentage-wise, I'm pretty sure we're in line with other campuses nation-wide - most of the youth today really is just politically lazy.

Very ethnically diverse. On the other hand, people of the same ethnicities tend to hang out with each other.

Mostly white, suburban. International students are mostly on financial aid, normal backgrounds. Higher academic standing than the non-international students. There is a mild segregation between the internationals & non-internationals. Many are not as politically aware as advertised, and individually are not too politically active. Predominantly left, sometimes blindly so.