<p>I'm a senior this year, and at the moment Macalester is one of the schools I'm most interested in going to. It seems hard to find out how different departments are, so if anyone has opinions on any of the following, that would be great:
-linguistics (Fiske guide says its bad...but it's hard to find a lib. arts school with liguistics, so...)
-classics
-political science
-philosophy
-foreign lang. in general---any particularly bad or good? (I don't know what lang. I will be taking, but I will take one)
-sociology</p>
<p>Also, do people go off campus a lot? Specifically, are there places with live music in walking distance...local rock/folk bands and such...? Is there a studenty neighborhood off campus? or do people go downtown?</p>
<p>If a student who's from a diverse urban area, like me, reads this, I'd be curious what they think about St. Paul... is it a diverse city? Does it have a lot of different types of neighborhoods? </p>
<p>Well, if anyone actually reads this, I'd love your input. Now, I should probably stop looking forward to college and get on with high school... :-/</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I'm a first-year and have only actually been here a month so I definitely don't know everything.</p>
<p>All of those departments are pretty good here. The foreign languages we have are all high quality, but we don't have all of them. We do have French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian for sure (plus more that I'd have to look up). I do know that we don't have an Italian department, though. You can always take classes at another college in the area, but if you want to major in Italian that might be a problem.</p>
<p>People go off campus a fair amount (usually when they have somewhere specific they want to go). There aren't really any music venues within walking distance, but there are a LOT of good music venues (for pretty much any genre) in the Twin Cities. It's fairly easy to get places by bus, if annoying at times. There are some good stores and restaurants within walking distance.</p>
<p>I grew up in a suburb of the Twin Cities and only drove in occasionally so I don't really know about the diversity of the neighborhoods, but I get the sense that there is something for everyone. If not in St. Paul, in Minneapolis.</p>
<p>The political science department is awesome.</p>
<p>As far as diversity it most likely depends on where you are from. Many of us from major cities don't think that St. Paul is a real city. Minneapolis is more lively and much more what I am used to (Chicago), I partially chose Mac because it was small but in a metro area. I now wish I would have gone to DePaul, Northwestern or U of M. It is really kind of boring at Mac.</p>