<p>Sorry, Northfield is not the Twin Cities. I’ve been there. It’s a 45 minutes drive. If the OP had said Macalester, I would have made very different comments.</p>
<p>I don’t think the students at St. Olaf would describe it as religious. Religion courses are not dogmatic. I found it interesting that the religion department talks about an understanding of the Christian “tradition” not “faith.” I don’t think religion or spirituality-- or the absence of one or both-- is made an issue there. Though I think someone who wanted to make an issue of another person’s beliefs would not fit well.</p>
<p>On airports-- to me this is relevant only as it relates to how easy it is to get home. Having an airport doesn’t necessarily mean travel is easy (Ithaca comes to mind).<br>
To the extent speakers matter, it is more meaningful to look at the events calendars than it is evaluate how easy it is for a hypothetical speaker to get to campus. I suspect Brown comes out ahead on the speaker count, but the reason (travel, funding, connections, higher profile forum) doesn’t matter much.</p>
<p>I’d be pretty sure that St. Olaf comes out ahead on the visiting musicians front.</p>
<p>No, U2 and Bob Dylan have played at Brown</p>
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<p>And you really think a speaker is going to turn down an invitation at Carleton or St. Olaf because it’s a 45 minute drive from the airport? I don’t think so. Columbia is 20 minutes by cab from LaGuardia when there’s no traffic. With traffic it can easily be 45, which means you need to count on 45. It can take that long to get from SFO to Berkeley or Dulles to DC. I just don’t think this is an issue.</p>
<p>Many speakers, like most most Americans, have never heard of St. Olaf</p>
<p>Yes, I do. Columbia does not need to import all of its speakers. There are plenty of them in NYC. And after they’ve finished speaking at Columbia they can head back whence they came or go to the Public Library or the many museums, restaurants, etc…</p>
<p>But I give up. You’ve succeeded in arguing that Northfield, population 17,000+ in 2000, is the center of the universe and that business recruiters, academics and politicians are all falling over themselves to visit.</p>
<p>Again, this is not a comparison among colleges that needs to be speculated about, because anyone who is truly interested could look it up. See what the college’s events webpage says about the last year’s speakers, or write to the admission office and ask which speakers appeared at which events. Another college in Minnesota, Gustavus Adolphus, is less convenient to the airport than St. Olaf but manages to get some Nobel laureates to its Nobel Conference each year. But Gus doesn’t usually succeed in winning over students who are also admitted to St. Olaf. Brown probably has reasonable information about which speakers have visited campus recently. </p>
<p>On-campus employment recruiting is another comparison of colleges that is worth attention in today’s economy.</p>
<p>Does St. Olaf still have its famous fight song?</p>
<p>This thread keeps getting funnier.</p>
<p>marite</p>
<p>I know you aren’t arrogant or Ivy-crazy, but I will say I’ve been astounded to see the performers, speakers etc., who pass through Grinnell, IA. Can’t speak to Northfield MN, but my son’s little corner of Iowa is rocking.</p>
<p>Yes, it is funny.<br>
The OP will make her own choice, and it may well be Brown. But I continue to state that people would not be so condescending if St. Olaf weren’t a)in the Midwest and b)perceived as conservative and religious (and it is not as much of either as people seem to think).</p>
<p>Endicott: Apparently they do!!</p>
<p>ST. OLAF FACULTY HYMN</p>
<p>Sung in three-quarter time, as a waltz.</p>
<p>We teach at St. Olaf,
We don’t dance or chew snuff,
Our students are Halvor and Gudrun and Thor;
They study like furious,
Their minds are so curious;</p>
<p>We sure are a bunch of Norwegians galore.
Gulbrandson, Narveson, Huggenvik, Ellingson,
Amundson, Klaragard, Halvorson, Roe.
Fredrickson, Rasmussen, Tollefsrud, Peterson,
Skogerboe, Faillettaz, Jorgenson, Boe.</p>
<p>We teach at St. Olaf,
It’s built on a big bluff,
The wind blows so hard that it causes distress.
But colleagues are glorious
And students uproarious
There’s no place on earth that we’d rather profess.</p>
<p>Christensen, Sheveland, Gustafson, Maakestad,
Lokensgaard, Skurdalsvold, Wrigglesworth, Ross.
Rovelstad, Jacobson, Lutterman, Otterness,
Erickson, Gunderson, Iverson, Foss.
Thormodsgard, Bieberdorf, Overby, Gimmestad,
Kittelsby, Ytterboe, Hinderlie, Njus.
Ditmanson, Odegaard, Hilleboe, Anderson,
Anderson, Anderson, Anderson, Muus!</p>
<p>“UM! YAH! YAH!”</p>
<p>Adopted from the old St. Olaf Faculty Hymn.</p>
<p>Not only is this version fun to sing, you can
dance to it, too.</p>
<p>We come from St. Olaf,
We sure are the real stuff.
Our team is the cream of the colleges great.
We fight fast and furious,
Our team is injurious.
Tonight Carleton College will sure meet its fate.</p>
<p>Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah! Yah!</p>
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<p>LOL. I didn’t say anything like that. Not at all. I said I had no idea whether St. Olaf actually gets a lot of good speakers and such; never said a thing about recruiters. But I did say, and I stand by it, that if they don’t, it’s not going to be because of transportation issues. Due to its proximity to one of the nation’s most convenient major airline hubs with frequent non-stop service to every major market in the country, Northfield, MN is easier to get to than probably 90+% of colleges and universities in the country, including a lot of big name schools on the East Coast. Believe me, academics I know in places like New Haven and Ithaca complain all the time about transportation as one of the biggest drawbacks of their current situations, and they’re truly envious when I describe how easy it is to get to the East Coast, the West Coast, or anyplace in between from the Twin Cities area (and in that I include Northfield which has really quite convenient access to MSP). They may not envy us much else, but they do envy us that. A dear friend and former colleague of mine who recently relocated to Berkeley says he was surprised to find that what he missed most about Minnesota was the convenience of air travel from here to all points in the country, basically no major market more than a half day’s journey away. From the Bay Area, everything seems far away, except perhaps LA.</p>
<p>Condescending? Not in the least.
Again, I would not make comments about speakers, etc… if the OP had not mentioned IR. My S could not care less that the Dalai Lama is speaking at Harvard this week. But someone interested in IR might well want to attend his talk.</p>
<p>As for conservative, it’s purely a matter of choice. I have no idea what the student’s views are on this matter.</p>
<p>bc: I did not compare 90+% of colleges with St Olaf. I compared Brown with St Olaf.</p>
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<p>No way. Even Brown, which has only one or (maybe) two topologists on the faculty at any given time, has a lot more knot theory than St Olaf, including some seminars that would be potentially accessible to undergrads. The St Olaf web page lists only one faculty member with an interest in topology, so if they are a world center of knot theory they don’t seem to be telling anyone about it. With that said, Brown is not particularly amazing in this subject, or math generally, though they do have several world-class researchers. </p>
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</p>
<p>That information is long out of date, and the job market has changed a lot over time. It’s interesting to know how top researchers conducted their careers, but as a model to emulate it can be very difficult. The grad school attrition rates are huge and the track to elite positions narrows very, very fast. It is incredibly competitive to become a professor at the good state schools, and tenure at the top 5-10 departments overall comes either through great success on important research topics, or a math-prodigy career track that starts early and continues unimpeded.</p>
<p>I know only one kid at St. Olaf, several at Brown. The St. Olaf student is nicer, kinder, more relaxed, prettier, and a better singer than any of the Brown students. She is a wonderful person. But she is not, and never has been or cared to be, a great student. The kids I know at Brown are all top-student types, a little tightly wound, a little competitve, very sharp, very ambitious. Some are nicer than others, and none is awful, but for all of them you would praise their intelligence first and get around to other qualities later.</p>
<p>Anyway, these are really, really different kids, and I suspect really, really different college experiences, in ways that go far beyond how distant they are from an airport or a train station, or from the ocean.</p>
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<p>Let’s not argue about theory when it is so easy to look at the facts.</p>
<p>Here are the scheduled lectures and speakers at St. Olaf for the next two weeks according to their website:
[Calendar</a> Search Results](<a href=“http://www.stolaf.edu/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=SearchResults&keywords=&startmonth=4&startday=29&startyear=2009&endmonth=5&endday=6&endyear=2009&campus=&audienceID=&categoryID=5&Submit=Submit]Calendar”>http://www.stolaf.edu/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=SearchResults&keywords=&startmonth=4&startday=29&startyear=2009&endmonth=5&endday=6&endyear=2009&campus=&audienceID=&categoryID=5&Submit=Submit)</p>
<p>Here are the scheduled lectures and speakers at Brown for the same time period according their website:
[WebEvent:</a> Two Weeks starting on April 26, 2009](<a href=“http://calendar.brown.edu/cgi-bin/publish/webevent.cgi?cmd=list2week&de=1&tf=0&sib=1&sb=0&sa=0&ws=0&stz=Default&sort=e,m,t&cat=&swe=1&cf=list&set=1&token=guest:e8b71c4&cal=cal11&m=04&d=29&y=2009]WebEvent:”>http://calendar.brown.edu/cgi-bin/publish/webevent.cgi?cmd=list2week&de=1&tf=0&sib=1&sb=0&sa=0&ws=0&stz=Default&sort=e,m,t&cat=&swe=1&cf=list&set=1&token=guest:e8b71c4&cal=cal11&m=04&d=29&y=2009) </p>
<p>Four scheduled events for St. Olaf vs. fifteen for Brown. Looks to me like Brown wins.</p>
<p>Endicott - so those are the lyrics! Across town they had a different version of which I can only remember bits and wouldn’t want to post some of them…</p>
<p>We come from St. Olaf, we wear fancy sweaters
We live on a hill to be closer to Him
We DON’T smoke, we DON’T drink
(At least that’s what they think)</p>
<hr>
<p>My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin
I’m big and I’m dumb and I can’t spell my name
I don’t know the rest of the words to this verse,
So let’s cut to the chorus and *** ya ya ya!</p>