Macalester College Top Questions

All of my professors know my name. This is because the classes are small, and also because I sit in the front of all my classes and go to office hours all the time. You get to know your professors naturally pretty soon after you realize that they are on your side, not like high school teachers, and they are interested in what they are teaching you. Classes are really different depending on department, and you will figure out what's what soon enough. I have had a few inspiring professors already, and it's just been a year. I look forward to my classes.

For the most part, professors are very invested in their students academic lives. The class sizes are great. Even with demanding academic shedules, students are strongly encouraged to volunteer, have jobs, and participate in other activities. Things can get pretty hectic. Students often have intellectual discussions outside of class. Even though everyone at Mac is fairly intelligent, there is not a lot of academic competition. Everyone wants to see everyone else succeed. Academic help is not hard to find.

Academics at Macalester are highlighted by our fabulous professors and our 10:1 student/faculty ratio. The average class size is 18, so professors know the names of their students because their top priority is teaching the students despite their pursuing their own academic interests. Professors often invite students over to their houses for discussions or out for drinks. Our top majors are political science, biology, and economics, but we are known for our International Studies department. Macalester students take academics seriously, but we know that it is the experiences that we have in college that shape who we are. As a result, there is not really any competition between students because we are more laid back. Macalester offers a broad liberal arts education and has no required classes. We have general distribution requirements, but we can tailor those to our own interests.

All my professors know my name and we're on a first name basis for the most part. I don't know a professor who keeps their door closed or strictly abides by their office hours. For the most part, if it's between 9 and 4 you can find them and talk to them without an appointment. Usually class conversations happen directly after class ended on an unusually controversial topic but there have been several drunken evenings when topics from class arise and I've learned information from classes I've never taken due to these unusual circumstances. We're a liberal arts campus so we have a lot of general requirements. Part of coming to Macalester is getting a general education. It's assumed for the most part that most students will go on to graduate school so buckling down to a specific set of core classes is not as necessary as some schools.

Classes are really small, and thats one of the things I really love about Macalester. I think my largest class I've had has been about 35 people. The smallest has been 5. I am always challenged with the amount of work that I have, but I never feel too overwhelmed (except around finals time). On the average weekday, I'll have about 3 hours of classes, and about 4 hours of work to do outside of class. On the weekends, most people do all of their work on Sunday, leaving Saturday as a day of relaxation (or research for some of us). Some of the academic requirements seem silly, but I think they are important for getting a well rounded liberal arts education. it forces you to take classes that you might not take otherwise.

Quite small classes, professors are very approachable, classes can be really demanding and difficult but in most cases there is comprihension from the professors. Many students do research with their professors. The communication with them is quite informal. There is always an emphasis towards finding and applying for a job. A good preparation for that.

I am extremely proud of the level of education I am receiving at Macalester; it is constantly rated among the top liberal arts schools in the country, and it definitely lives up to its reputation. All of my classes are intellectually stimulating and usually inspire wonderful conversation, inside and outside the classroom setting. Teachers are extremely intelligent (almost intimidatingly so), but are always willing to talk to you one-on-one and are not there to talk down to their students; they realize that we have something to say and want to know what that is. Most of the students were in the top 10{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of their graduating class in high school - a lot of them valedictorians (Macalester was noted in one of those other college-rating booklets as the place where the students who got rejected from Harvard due to "not enough room" go - I should know, I'm one of 'em). They're not particularly competitive, but they are fiercely intelligent; of course, there are always those kids who make it in based on the fact that their families can tote the hefty $43,000 a year price tag without any financial aid, but I won't go into that....

Most classes tend to be discussion based, though some of the more popular have to be lecture oriented simply for convenience. Professors tend to have high expectations of their students, not merely limited to completing assignments. Students are encouraged to actively participate and lead discussions, offer insights, and occasionally provide ideas for further study. Most students are not too competitive, though they tend to take coursework very seriously. We tend to be more supportive of each other than I have seen at other schools.

Professors are usually wonderful. They know your name, they sometimes actually care about YOU, personally, especially if you make the effort to form a friendship with them. I was told never to expect a college professor to care about me or look out for me, but I wouldn't say that that is the case at Macalester. Students are not generally very competitive. This is very important to me, as I came from a nationally competitive, somewhat maniacally competitive high school. The academic atmosphere is relaxed, but not so relaxed that people fail classes. It is very rare, to my knowledge, for anyone to fail a class. Then again, there is relatively little academic gossip, so I wouldn't necessarily have a very good idea. And i like that. It lets me focus on learning for learning's sake-- for my own sake. That's one of the very important things I've learned to appreciate at Mac. Education at Macalester is not geared towards getting a job. If it is geared towards getting a job, it's usually with an NGO/non-profit (save Economics and a few other majors). Thus, there is sometimes a little panic at the end of senior year. However, the Career Development Center, located among many other extremely helpful administrative organizations in the Kagin Building, is there for you when you need some guidance or trajectory. On the whole, I haven't learned too many facts or figures, I am no better at Mathematics, and I can't really quantify anything, but I feel I am much much closer to understanding the world, how it works, and what my role is in it after 3 years at Macalester. Macalester's rigor is qualitative, in most cases, rather than quantitative.

Academics are very challenging. This is a school for students that want to learn more about not just their major, but the rest of the world. You get a taste of all the deparments with the graduation requirments. Macalester boasts one of the top Economics departments in the country. Besides that, all of the other departments are top of the line. Macalester offers majors from Chemistry to Art to Women's and Gender Studies.