<p>My son is very interested in all aspects of history, especially American war history. He has designs on being a college history professor some day, and we're at the beginning phases of trying to find the right fit for him. He has ADHD -- great standardized test scores, so-so classroom grades -- so we're thinking a small liberal arts college might be the best fit for him.</p>
<p>We're looking for colleges that have a particularly strong history program, and also have good support systems for kids with learning differences. At this point, we're confining our search to the Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas) and maybe a bit beyond.</p>
<p>This is unsolicited information, but I feel I must share that the job market for professors of history is HORRIBLE. 50% don’t even finish the PhD, which takes on average 7 or 8 years to finish, and even of those who do finish most will never find a tenure-track job in history. It’s been like this for decades, but especially with the erosion of tenure and the rise of contingent labor in many fields (adjuncts, grad students teaching full classes, lecturers) it’s gotten worse. This is especially true in US history as that is one of the most popular subfields.</p>
<p>With that said: in Minnesota you will want to consider Carleton, Macalester, and St. Olaf. For safeties, the branch campuses of the University of MN are pretty small - Morris only has 1800 students, and Crookston about 2500. There’s also a small college called the College of St. Scholastica; there’s history PhD student in my cohort here at Columbia who earned her BA there.</p>
<p>In Wisconsin there’s Beloit College and Lawrence University (called a university, but really a small LAC - about 1500 students in tiny Appleton). Also look at Ripon College. Marquette University is a bit bigger - about 11,000 students - but you may want to check it out anyway.</p>
<p>In Iowa, there’s Grinnell College, Coe College and Drake University (about 5400 students at the latter). There’s also Cornell College.</p>
<p>South Dakota has Augustana College; North Dakota has Jamestown College.</p>
<p>I know this is a little farther afield, but there’s also Colorado College in Colorado, and a number of good LACs in Indiana - DePauw, Earlham, Franklin, Goshen, and Wabash Colleges, as well as Butler University (4000 undergrads) and Valparaiso University (2900 undergrads).</p>
<p>I checked from the library a book called “Choosing the RIGHT College” and it wasn’t about fit it was RIGHT leaning. However, it provided a lot of info on varied colleges and while the authors bias is for the schools that are conservative politically you can use the info however you want. He favors a more traditional education with broad distribution requirements which includes a lot of History. I looked at it some time ago but you might find it interesting from the perspective of strong History departments.</p>