<p>My NYC daughter is trying to choose between Oberlin and Macalester. She doesn't know what she wants to study, but may be leaning toward psychology, math, or early childhood education (I know neither college has an early childhood ed dept). Any thoughts on distinguishing these two great schools?</p>
<p>Boy it seems my daughter applied to the same colleges these people are agonizing about. Probably not a coincidence.</p>
<p>She preferred Oberlin because, for one thing, upon close investigation Macalester didn't have advanced courses in a particular area she was interested in. Too bad because Macalester gave her a lot of money. I recall looking at their catalog and thinking they had relatively a lot of adjunct professors. For what that 's worth.</p>
<p>My daughter liked Macalester's urban location, a lot. We had a family friend who went there and loved it. </p>
<p>Generally the trade-off for urban schools is less cohesive on-campus life. My daughter did an overnight at Oberlin and loved the campus life and experience she had there. So that pretty much did it for her. Plus the lack of courses in that particular area.</p>
<p>I think Oberlin is bigger; greater course selection, etc.
Minnesota is cold.
More people live off-campus at Macalester; they don't have enough housing for everyone if I recall.</p>
<p>I would bet your NYC daughter would find more NYC Obies than (whatever Macalester people are). Oberlin draws a fairly large contingent from there, and its NYC alumni chapter has stuff going on. There's something in Brooklyn in April I think. Plus a lot of Obies seem to wind up there afterwards.</p>
<p>It's an 8 hour drive to Oberlin from NY. Don't know about St. Paul.</p>
<p>Math is a very good department at Oberlin, from what I can tell. But not easy.</p>
<p>I seem to recall Oberlin has recently started a Master's in Education program, or something like that. You might check, if interested, on that or what it might mean in terms of resources for your daughter.
I know they have ex-co courses, winter-term programs, etc, that involve teaching or tutoring at local elementary schools.</p>
<p>My daughter recollects that Mac students can take courses at U Minnesota.</p>
<p>If this is correct, and that's actually easy to do and they are really close by, and lots of people do it- well that, plus the urban location would be a material contrast to Oberlin, where perhaps to a larger extent what you'll get is what Oberlin itself offers on its own.</p>
<p>My daughter hasn't taken any pyschology classes at Oberlin, so I haven't heard anything about that department.</p>