<p>Okay so i am a native Minnesota Girl and i am trying to pick between the MIAC schools.
My favorites are:
University of St. Thomas
Concordia College
College of Saint Benedicts
And, Gustavus</p>
<p>Opinions?
Reputations of schools in your opinion?
any thoughts?</p>
<p>Gustavus and St. Benedicts have the best reps nationally. You should also check out Luther College just over the Iowa-Minnesota border. It is a phenomenal school with incredibly happy students. I think it is equal or better in quality to Gustavus.</p>
<p>Sup fellow Minnesotan. (:</p>
<p>Have you visited these schools? In my opinion, Gustavus has a super nice campus, but it’s far from the Cities and sort of in the middle of nowhere. You should consider location when choosing. :P</p>
<p>I have toured each one and i like them all for different reasons…my dad went to concordia which is a major reason why i like it so thats kinda important to me…and i really like the location and school spirit of st. thomas…how is st. thomas’s biology department? i come from a small town so i would like to be in a city, or at least really close to one…</p>
<p>University of St. Thomas is the only one anyone has heard of outside of Minnesota.</p>
<p>I have also heard concordia is like a cult kind of, with the rings and stuff. i like that it is close nit and the alumni network is strong. is this tight bond and pride for the school about the same at all of these places?</p>
<p>Gustavus is by far the best on your list from an academic standpoint. If rankings mean anything to you, you will find Gustavus on dozens of national rankings. I don’t recall ever seeing St. Thomas being ranked in any category – ever. But fit may matter to you more and that’s fine too.</p>
<p>St. Thomas has a strong science department. Btw hello fellow Minnesotan!
You should apply to the U too :)!</p>
<p>What is a Gustavus? Never even heard of it.</p>
<p>xD It’s in St. Peter, Minnesota. It’s pretty small and probably unknown outside of the Midwest.</p>
<p>I can see myself at each of these places and i want to go pre med or probably pre dentistry. is it going to make that much of a difference picking between these school? i did love gustavus but i would like to be closer to a city and, part of me loves the “sporty-ness” of st. thomas, and then again my dad went to concordia ( he said he would pay for everything if i went there)…tough decisions…</p>
<p>Unknown doesn’t equate with not good. USWNR ranks it 79th in national liberal arts schools; St. Thomas 115th. Washington Monthly shows Gustavus at 56th best; St. Thomas 107th. Also here the mean LSTAT scores for top schools – GAC is in good company, St. Thomas nowhere to be found.</p>
<p>University of Phoenix 143
Bellevue University 145
FIT 145
Valdosta State University 145
Southern Illinois University 146
Suffolk University 146
Florida Atlantic University 147
Hawaii Pacific University 147
Wayne State University 147
Winthrop University 147
California State Fullerton 148
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey 148
Towson University 148
Baruch 149
The Citadel 149
City University of New York 149
Kennesaw State 149
University of Houston 149
Marist College 149
Seton Hall 149
University of Nebraska - Omaha 149
UNLV 149
University of New Mexico 149
University of North Carolina Wilmington 149
Sonoma State 150
Texas Tech University 150
University of Hawaii 150
University of Mississippi 150
University of Saskatchewan 150
University of South Carolina 150
University of South Dakota 150
University of Wiconsin - Green Bay 150
University of Wyoming 150
Wright State 150
Franklin & Marshall 151
Marquette 151
Northern Arizona 151
Ohio University 151
Portland State 151
St. Norbert College 151
Syracuse University 151
University of Cincinnati 151
Agnes Scott College 152
Arizona State 152
Concordia University 152
Grand Valley State University 152
Michigan State 152
Penn State 152
Purdue University 152
Saint John’s University 152
Saint Louis University 152
Southern Utah University 152
University of Alabama- Tuscaloosa 152
University of California- Irvine 152
University of Connecticut 152
University of Denver 152
University of Miami 152
University of Oklahoma 152
Oklahoma State
University of Tennessee 152
University of Vermont 152
Baylor 153
Fordham 153
Indiana Bloomington 153
Syracuse University 153
Texas Christian University (TCU) 153
Touro 153
University of Maryland - Baltimore County 153
Ursinus College 153
Virginia Tech 153
American 154
Arizona 154
Ithaca College 154
Ohio State 154
University of California- Santa Cruz 154
University of Florida 154
University of Iowa 154
University of Mary Washington 154
University of Nebraska - Lincoln 154
University of Oregon 154
Utah State University 154
Centre College 155
Colorado University- Boulder 155
Dickinson College 155
Gustavus Adolphus College (is this college real?) 155
Rensselaer Polytech Institute 155
Texas A&M 155
The College of New Jersey 155
University of California- Davis 155
University of California- Santa Barbara 155
University of Georgia 155
University of Illinois 155
University of Minnesota 155
University of Washington 155
Boston University 156
Calvin College 156
DePauw University 156
Holy Cross 156
Lafayette College 156
Lawrence University 156
Rutgers College 156
Rhodes College 156
University of California- San Diego 156
University of Wisconsin- Madison 156
Texas 156
Calvin College 157
George Washington 157
Tulane 157
University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill 157
University of Southern California 157
Wake Forest 157
West Point 157
Boston College 158
Brandeis 158
Georgia Tech 158
Queen’s University (Canada) 158
Saint John’s College 158
University of California- Los Angeles 158
University of Dallas 158
University of Michigan 158
University of Rochester 158
University of Virginia 158
Washington University in Saint Louis 158
Brigham Young University 159
Byrn Mawr College 159
Carnegie Mellon 159
Colby College 159
Colgate 159
Colorado College 159
Emory 159
John Hopkins 159
McGill 159
New York University 159
University of California- Berkeley 159
Vanderbilt 159
Tufts 160
William and Mary 160
Cornell 161
Georgetown 161
Haverford College 161
Northwestern 161
Notre Dame 161
Reed College 161
Washington and Lee 161
Wesleyan University 161
Wheaton College (Illinois) 161
Carleton College 162
Claremont McKenna 162
Hamilton College 162
Rice 162
University of Chicago 162
Brown 163
Columbia 163
Dartmouth 163
Duke 163
MIT 163
University of Pennsylvania 163
Stanford 164
Williams 164
Pomona College 165
Princeton 165
Swarthmore 165
Yale 165
Harvard 166
exegesis is offline</p>
<p>Texas A&M is good company? lol.</p>
<p>Gustavus Adolphus is a pretty good liberal arts college. Traditionally it’s the Swedish Lutheran LAC in Minnesota, arch-rival of St. Olaf which of course is traditionally the Norwegian Lutheran LAC. Bad blood between the Swedes and the Norskes, you know. Though these days both colleges are open to all comers.</p>
<p>Gustavus’ U.S. News ranking places it with the likes of Lewis & Clark, College of Wooster, Allegheny, Muhlenberg, and University of Puget Sound—good liberal arts colleges that get a lot more play on CC.</p>
<p>I think the sleeper in this group is St. Ben’s. St. Ben’s is the female half of St. John’s University (all male)/College of St. Benedict (all female), which were once separate schools but now run a unified undergraduate program. US News ranks St John’s and St. Ben’s separately–St. Bens’ at #90, a couple of notches below Gustavus, and St. John’s at #71, a rung above Gustavus, but of course students at St. Ben’s take the very same classes from the very same professors in the very same classrooms sitting side-by-side with students from St. John’s, which says something about the goofiness of these rankings; I guess we’re supposed to believe that the male students at St. John’s/St. Ben’s get an education that’s 19 places in the rankings better than the female students at the same institution. Anyway, I’ve had some contact with St. John’s/St. Ben’s. Gorgeous campus, great campus atmosphere, very sound liberal arts education.</p>
<p>If I were making a decision from the group of schools named, I’d have Gustavus and St. Ben’s neck-and-neck for #1, St. Thomas a distant third, and Concordia pulling up the rear. I would also put Luther in the running for #1 or #2.</p>
<p>Bclintock,</p>
<p>You can’t really lump St. Thomas in with these unknown liberal arts colleges, as it is a national university.</p>
<p>^ “unknown liberal arts colleges”. Unknown to who? The OP is looking for a college in Minnesota and probably does not care if it is only well known regionally. I know of Gustavas but I am not familiar with St. Thomas. There are a lot of great LAC’s that are not known outside their region.</p>
<p>Look at “informative’s” posting history. His evaluation of the relative merits of colleges he “never heard of” is idiosyncratic, to put it mildly. He probably thinks that the thread is talking about the St. Thomas in New York or something.</p>
<p>thats interesting tho… i didnt know gustavus was so much better acedemically than the other MIAC schools…somthing to think about definitely…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>LOL. Of course I can. St. Thomas, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is one of a number of small, private Minnesota colleges that draw their students primarily from the state of Minnesota and immediately surrounding states. Others include Hamline (St. Paul), Concordia (Moorhead), Bethel (St. Paul), Augsburg (Minneapolis), Gustavus Adophus (St. Peter), St. Olaf (Northfield), and Saint John’s/St. Ben’s (Collegeville). Unsurprisingly, these schools compete against each other in an intercollegiate sports conference known as the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) whose only other member, Carleton (in Northfield), is something of an outlier in that it draws its student body primarily from outside Minnesota, though St. Olaf also has something of a national following. Some of the sports rivalries are fierce: crosstown rivals Carleton and St. Olaf can’t stand each other, and the football rivalry between St. Thomas and St. John’s—the “Tommies” v. the “Johnnies”–is as fierce as they come, both having won multiple Division III football national championships over the course of a rivalry that dates back to 1901 and regularly sets national Division III football attendance records.</p>
<p>St. Thomas, with 6,270 undergrads, is a little bigger than the other MIAC schools, but not by that much; Saint John’s/St. Ben’s is a combined 4,118. And St. Thomas certainly doesn’t *feel *bigger, because it’s primarily a commuter school; only 27% of Tommies live on-campus, which means there are fewer students in residence at the college than at Saint John’s/St. Ben’s (83% on-campus), St. Olaf (3,156 students, 92% on-campus), or Gustavus (2,424 students, 97% on-campus). But even being a commuter school doesn’t make it an outlier in this group—Hamline and Bethel, both in Saint Paul, are also primarily commuter schools.</p>
<p>St. Thomas even promotes itself as “a private, Catholic liberal arts university,” trying to brand itself as a LAC (though in fact, about half its undergrads are business majors). It’s more of a “university” than the others only because it has more graduate programs, including MBA, M.Div., and Masters of Education programs, as well as a law school. Apart from that, it’s basically just an urban Catholic LAC with a largish undergrad business program in a commuter-dominated environment. Nothing special, in my book. For an undergraduate liberal arts education, I’d take Gustavus or Saint John’s/St. Ben’s any day.</p>
<p>if your dad was serious about paying for you to go to concordia, then that’d be pretty hard to pass up…</p>