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At the end of the day, choosing a college is less like choosing a product
than it is like building a relationship.
We know that you have many choices right now
and are thinking through the question of what college would be the right one for you.
Many factors go into the decision about what college you might want to attend,
and we know that among the most important for you will be price, but also value:
how much it costs you to attend,
but also what you will get out of attending a particular college.
Certainly, one of our goals is to prepare every student for the workplace.
But ultimately our goal is to train you not just for your first job
but for your last job.
You probably don't know what that job will be yet,
but what you can be sure of is that you will need a certain set of skills.
You'll need to be able to think critically,
you'll need to be able to work effectively in teams.
You'll need to have leadership skills,
you'll need to be able to speak articulately.
You'll need to be able to write.
All of those things are embedded in the kind of education we provide at a liberal arts college.
So we're not just training you for the year after you graduate,
we're training you for the rest of your life.
As terrific as our faculty are, I think that in many ways the most important part of your learning at any college
is the learning that takes place through the interactions with other students.
The fact that at Macalester you will be living and learning with students from all over the country
and all over the world,
that those students are highly motivated and passionate,
they are cooperative more than they are competitive,
they are smart and they are energetic,
all of that will shape what you learn and what you become
at least as fully as anything you get from our terrific faculty members.
We do everything we can to make Macalester affordable and accessible
to an economically diverse group of students.
But it's important to remember that you have the opportunity to make this choice only once,
and as much as we think about the price that we provide at Macalester,
we think at least as much about the value,
about the chances that you will graduate on time,
about the set of skills and values with which you will leave the college,
about the other students and the faculty members that you'll have an opportunity to interact with,
and ultimately about the way that the four years you spend at this institution will shape your lives.
So regardless of what college you choose
- it may be Macalester, it may be some other institution -
make sure that you think about the way that institution will affect you,
shape you,
enrich you for the rest of your life.
You need to look a little bit beyond the immediate moment
and try to think about how you will become a different
and better,
and ultimately more productive person through the experience you have at an institution.
We think we give you great opportunities for that at Macalester
but for you, at any institution you choose, that should be a very, very high priority.