<p>I posted this on the "Womens Colleges" section.</p>
<p>My daughter is a junior at Mount Holyoke College majoring in Education. MHC's education department is a fairly popular major, but what is more interesting is that it seems to really provide a serious and excellent training to become a teacher. Right now, during the 3-week January break, my daughter is assistant teaching, full-time, in a local public school at the grade level that she plans to practice in professionally. During the college school year, she is required to assistant-teach each semester starting in junior year for 4-6 hours each week, maybe more. During spring senior year, the whole semester is in the school classroom. The degree is actually psychology/education, which means that there are so many required psychology courses that its considered a dual major. The psy courses are extremely relevant. As for the regular coursework, and having compared the requirements to a masters degree program at Teacher's College, the courses seems to be the same. My wife is a teacher with a masters in education and has observed that the MHC undergraduate course requirements are better and more thorough than what she received in her masters degree program. MHC's education students have a 100% pass rate on the Massachusetts state teacher's exam. My D is also majoring in something else, and will be able to complete these two majors in her 4 years. It did take some careful planning and hard work, but she's performed extremely well academically, earning two awards. MHC is not easy academically, if you want to get good grades, it's easy if you are satisfied with C's. As a women's college, MHC has, of course, an excellent women's studies program. It also has an excellent Political Science department. Check out the MHC website for much more. The students are also generally not competitive and grade hungry, as at some of the other women's colleges (S, W, BM). But MHC is definitely not located in a city, like Barnard, though there's lots to do at MHC and a free bus to Amherst and Northampton (though my D now has a car).</p>
<p>Also, MHC has a pre-K through Grade 6 school on campus.</p>
<p>For other MHC traits, see other posts somewhere here and MHC's website, like >25% foreign students, liberal minded students, great, caring profs, other great majors, academic diversity requirements, beautiful campus, great dorms, Jorge, etc.</p>