Carleton is excellent choice.
Yes, Macalester students can take courses a neighboring colleges - St. Catherine’s, St Thomas, Hamline (I think at least these) all within a mile. Mac is strong in science./math I was stunned to see they graduate as many chemistry students as my alma mater, BU, did when I graduated.
@Consolation - While I would also caution students and parents from making sweeping generalizations what type of school and/or environment a kid is seeking based on a single visit to a single school, I think that broad descriptions urban vs. rural vs. suburban (if that matters to a kid) can be useful. I agree that choosing a school has to be based on criteria meaningful to the kid, and those criteria can run the gamut from size of school (LAC vs. small research vs. large public); campus vibe (sporty, Greek); location (region of country, urban/rural, weather, topography); programming (core vs. open curriculum, strength in major), and, of course, $$, among other things.
D realized that she did not want rural after visiting Grinnell; she is okay with urban if and only if she a) likes the city and b) if has a defined campus, so Wash U and U.Chicago were fine, Columbia was out (hates NYC), Yale felt too urban and she hated New Haven, USC was fine for location, but too big and too sporty. Once she realized what her criteria were, she was able to cull the list (e.g., if Grinnell was too rural, so would have been Kenyon; if Yale felt too urban, Harvard would have felt more urban still and it lacked the programs that other schools had; if USC felt too sporty, likely Duke would have as well).
While every school may indeed have its own flavor, you can’t visit them all and need to cull your list somehow.
And, as always, YMMV.
@LoveTheBard , certainly every kid is different, as is every school. The problem I have is with the advice that some people give that visiting randomly selected schools–usually just because they are somewhat nearby–that are urban, suburban, or rural will give you a firm foundation for selection.
I just don’t believe it.
And I don’t think that anyone should EVER waste time visiting a school that is absolutely out of the question, just because it represents a “type.” An urban school or a LAC that your kid has zero chance of getting into, for example. I think that every school visited should be a genuine possibility.
I would point out that, for example, Yale does indeed have a “defined campus” and your D’s reactions to various campuses IMHO proves my point! 
Visiting campuses is definitely what you need to do next. It’s good to hear that your S has already shown some flexibility upon learning more about some schools from this thread – that shows that he’s open to changing his mind. He may decide that some of his current criteria aren’t as important as he thought they were.
I’m finding the discussion about what constitutes “urban” to be very interesting. I went to University of Chicago and although I agree that it’s quite full of trees, it’s still in the middle of a huge city. There might not be a lot of cars driving down your street (depending on where you live), but you can always hear the background noise of traffic. At night it’s never completely dark, and the streetlights shine in your window. The buildings are not tall but they are packed close together, and the streets are pretty narrow. A campus in a rural or suburban area is likely to be more spread out, quieter, less traffic, etc. If that’s what your son wants, he won’t want any school that’s in a big city.
But there are definitely trees! Big tall well-grown trees with massive leafy canopies. I lived in several different third-floor apartments throughout Hyde Park during my time there, and oftentimes the view out the window was of the leafy canopy of a street tree – often you could barely see the street below because there was a tree in the way. When I moved to San Francisco for law school, I felt like that city was kind of naked without all those trees. It was disconcerting.
(By the way I went and checked out the dorm situation on the U of C website, and they certainly have been busy building dorms in the last couple of decades! When I was there it was pretty common for students to leave the dorms after the first two years – there were tons of cheap 3- and 4-bedroom apartments available, very affordable if you leased something with some friends. I don’t think I knew anyone who was a 3rd or 4th year there who was still living in a dorm. Now it looks like they guarantee housing all 4 years – does that mean students don’t typically move into apartments anymore? Are the rents too expensive now? Have those rather slummy apartment buildings all been renovated into luxury condos?)
All posters opening about “leafy streets” and “low-height buildings” are ignoring fact that UoChicago borders two high-crime low-income neighborhoods at its south and west boundaries, and that students vulnerable to mugging and street robberies, probably more so than at Columbia. Chicago is experiencing a crime spike, and it’s misleading to say UoC is in a bucolic location.
“Opining”, not “opening”, that spell-check on iPhone errs again.
As is the case with many things, what constitutes “urban” is in the eye of the beholder and can based on a number of criteria, including how self-contained the campus is (i.e., how much “city life” penetrates it), building height, amount of foliage, access to public transportation, the school’s connection with the surrounding city, the size of the city, etc.
Whether or not a school has an “urban feel” is probably affected by how urban an environment one grew up in. Nobody would argue that NYU and Columbia are urban schools and that Grinnell and Kenyon are rural, whereas a school like Rice or Wash. U. – or Yale, for that matter – might feel suburban to some and urban to others, depending upon where they grew up.
@Consolation - I would actually go as far as to say that – especially in applying to schools that are real reaches – it’s not worth visiting unless you get in. In general, however, I think it’s good to have an idea about some criteria that are important to an individual student before applying (large public vs. LACs; Greek life, sports, whatever criteria they use in defining urban vs. suburban vs. rural.)
If I were revamping the entire process, I would move the calendar back by several months – I’d make EA/ED (actually, I’d get rid of ED altogether, but that’s a different discussion) due October 15th, RD by December 1, acceptances known by Feb. 15th, and kids would still commit have until May 1st to commit. This would allow a longer time for students to visit schools after decisions become available, they would have time to compare and appeal FA and merit offers, etc.
It would make it more affordable for students to travel since airfares are cheaper the further out you buy your tickets, and kids wouldn’t have to miss as much school to visit schools, as they could do so during spring breaks, etc. They’d also have more time to reflect on their choices, and there wouldn’t be such a mad – and oftentimes costly – frenzy at the end to decide.
I do think that it’s a good to have a general idea about size of school, programs offered, and location before applying, though.
Where would a person grow up such that Yale would feel suburban? The campus is one block from the Federal Courthouse, half a mile from a major Amtrak/Metro North transit hub, and is surrounded on four sides by the actual city of New Haven???
There are many suburbs in CT- New Canaan, Darien, Fairfield. New Haven is not one of them!
NYC kids probably think Yale is suburban.
Ha. Maybe a little.
Three quarters of L.A. would be suburban to a NYC kid.
Heh, I view Harvard’s campus as very suburban,especially at the more remote parts away from Harvard SQ and Allston/Brighton as someone who grew up in Manhattan.
Indeed it is. Therefore it is a good thing that no one said it! 
Yes, having grown up in NYC, New Haven can indeed be considered a suburb (although perhaps not entirely suburban in nature). If a commuter train takes you there, it’s a suburb 
To D, who grew up in SoCal, Yale felt very urban. And taking a wrong turn and ending up at the County Courthouse was not exactly a high point of her visit.
I really hate fake news posts like this one. While homicides in Chicago did spike in 2015 and 2016, and 2017 isn’t looking any better, overall crime rates in Chicago have been declining for decades and have continued to decline. That includes violent crime, which is down about 50% from where it was in 2000 (although there may have been a slight uptick in 2016 because of the number of homicides). See http://crime.chicagotribune.com/.
The homicide rate increase has had no impact on the University of Chicago or its neighborhood, but that’s a slightly different discussion.
… which is not to say that the “extended neighborhood/region” can’t have any bearing on homicides that may be [at least vaguely] relevant.
IIRC, when I lived in Chicago, there was an incident in the news where parents visiting their daughter at U Chicago got lost, father wound up getting killed “near Comiskey Park”. Which was often the euphemism for Robert Taylor Homes, a notoriously high-crime housing project.
Of course nowadays Robert Taylor Homes and Comiskey Park are both gone. And we now have GPS.
But even is small cities there are often places where one should best not get ones self lost.
What is interesting to note about crime is that it has generally been going down since the early 1990s, but perception of crime is almost always that it is increasing.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/186308/americans-say-crime-rising.aspx
Hi @agatha1939 - Since you asked about college consortiums: Here is the info on the Associates Colleges of the Twin Cities.
https://www.macalester.edu/registrar/schedules/actc/
Good luck on the continuing search!
Coming from Chicago, I thought it was suburban.