Accepted to Mac as a transfer — what’s the big deal about SLACs?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Macalester College
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Hi,

My daughter was accepted to Mac as a junior transfer. I have lots of questions about the school, especially given that we don’t know anyone who has sent their kid to Mac.

1). DD will be coming in as a junior transfer. We are worried that she will struggle making friends coming into a small, tight-knit LAC as a junior. Anyone have any experience with this? I feel like at these sorts of schools, students are not really open to making new friends as upperclassmen.

2). DD currently goes to an Ivy. She wants to transfer to Mac in part because she wants a more laid-back, less competitive environment. But we are not so sure about this.

For one, DD wants to get into a PhD program in Clinical Psych. Those programs are notoriously difficult to gain acceptance to (<1% acceptance rate), so she needs all the undergrad prestige she can get. No PhD program would be willing to accept her if they see on her transcript that she transferred from a T10 Ivy to Mac.

The most important factor for PhD admissions is research experience. DD has found this difficult to obtain at her current school (big focus on grad students over undergrads), so she thinks that transferring to Mac would be better for her in order to gain research experience (which she currently has none of). But we think this is a poorly thought out decision.

DD talked to the chair of the Psych department, and she said that many Mac students do research at the University of Minnesota. This IMO defeats the entire purpose of going to a SLAC; clearly, there’s a lack of substantial research for undergrads going on. I don’t think she’ll be able to do research with a professor at Mac or get published/give a poster presentation given that Mac students just do research at UMN.

So wouldn’t DD just be better off staying at her current school or going to UMN or any big public flagship? I don’t get the big hoopla about SLACs on this site when it comes to PhD admissions if bigger state schools or Ivies offer better research opportunities.

3). We are quite happy that she has received substantial merit aid from Mac, but we are worried that the school won’t be good prep for grad school. What we read online indicates that the quality and rigor of the classes is not very high (many students saying that classes in the social sciences are very easy), so we are worried that grad schools won’t consider her application as rigorous as someone coming from, say, her current Ivy. Undergrad prestige matters for grad school, full stop.

We think she would be unhappy at Mac as well, because even though the school is much more laid back and less competitive than her current school, it seems too homogenous. Can anyone speak to the diversity of Mac’s student body? It says online that 37% of all American undergrads are students of color, which seems really low to us.

Thanks!

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Sounds like you want your D to stay where she is. Nobody here knows your D or can predict what is best for her.

Why does SHE want to leave?
Is Mac affordable?

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I’m no expert, but that seems like a pretty extreme statement. Do you have any back up for this? Lots of kids go to PhD programs from colleges that aren’t ivies.

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Yes, Mac is affordable.

DD wants to leave because her current school is “too much of a pressure cooker” and she wants to go to a more collaborative, laid-back environment focused on undergrads. I think this is a poor decision though.

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Yes, lots of kids go to PhD programs from non-Ivy colleges. But I’m willing to bet that there are very few (if any) kids who ended up in PhD programs who originally went to an Ivy and then transferred to a not-very selective SLAC.

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I think the range of selectivity across all clinical psychology PhD programs is something like 1-25%, as opposed to the total acceptance rate across clinical psychology programs nationwide being only 1%.

It’s fine that prestige matters to you, and I’m sure the most prestigious PhD programs are at or near that 1% but it sounds like prestige matters less to your kid. Clinical psychology is a service field. Your kid’s current mental health is, in my opinion, as important a factor as anything else.

In short, I’m not sure a transfer means she’s torpedo-ing her chance of attaining her end goal. I do agree that the Ivies “do well” in placement, but a Mac student with U Minn research experience is maybe better off than an Ivy kid who has not much to show for out-of-classroom field-related development. And a happy kid is a better situation than a struggling one.

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I wouldn’t worry about your daughter not fitting in as a junior transfer. My daughter, who is a junior at a different LAC, is studying abroad this semester through a Macalester program, where most students are from Mac, and they have been incredibly friendly and accepting. She’s made some really close friends there. I realize it’s different from being on campus, but it does sound like a very inclusive community.

As for your academic concerns, I’m surprised you have such a low opinion of Macalester. We looked closely at this school (it ended up being over of my daughter’s top choices) and have the impression that this is a very well regarded LAC with serious, motivated students. I know a few Ivy-League educated professors who sent their kids to Mac, and I know at least one PhD student at my own institution (R1), who is a Mac graduate, and she’s very, very strong. Unless your daughter had bad grades at her Ivy (which I doubt since she’s received merit aid from Macalester), I don’t think her transfer would be an issue for future Ph.D. applications. People understand that students transfer for all kind of reasons, including fit.

I don’t have first-hand information about research opportunities at Mac, but my daughter and her friends have had wonderful research opportunities with professors at their rural, isolated LAC, so I doubt it would be a problem at Mac, given its location.

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There are so many statements in the original post that are completely erroneous, but the biggest issue is that this user is not who she purports to be. Closing.

P.S. T10 Ivy was the giveaway, along with a lot of hyperbolic statements. There are only 8 Ivy League schools.

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