Check the Guidebooks

St. Olaf College is again included in the latest edition of the best-selling Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College, a guidebook written by New York Times education editor Loren Pope and revised by Hilary Masell Oswald that promises an in-depth look at 40 colleges that “prepare you for life and all the things life comprises.”

The revised edition praises the college’s popular study-abroad programs, renowned Music Department, and robust science and math programs. The authors also note St. Olaf’s strong ranking among baccalaureate colleges in the number of graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees and impressive medical school acceptance rate.

Pope and Oswald discuss St. Olaf’s unique and rigorous curriculum, highlighting its four Conversations programs. The authors call the Conversations “a hallmark of a St. Olaf education — and a shining beacon of what liberal learning ought to be,” and note that the programs “give an added layer of life to an already vivacious campus.”

The book is equally enthusiastic about St. Olaf students themselves, saying that “they’re self-assured but not pretentious or cocky. They’d probably cringe at the word ‘wholesome,’ but it’s apt: Students display a genuineness that teeters on the edge of wholesomeness.”