McDaniel College is a small liberal arts college founded in 1867 as Western Maryland College. It's on a beautiful campus with 1600 undergraduates and 1400 graduate students in Westminster, half an hour from Baltimore and an hour from Washington, DC. It was named one of "America's Best Colleges" this year by the Wall Street Journal and is also one of the "Colleges That Change Lives," a must-read book by Loren Pope.

I had long recognized McDaniel as a great place for a student with learning differences, but I was surprised to learn that only about 25% of students here need or receive learning support. For those who do, their Student Accessibility and Support Services (SASS) is an excellent program.

Here are some really cool things about McDaniel: All students are assigned a success coach freshman year. They have a campus in Budapest, and students have the option of studying abroad there during January term with tuition covered by the college and a stipend for airfare. They offer American Sign Language as a major, and all the faculty in that department are fully deaf. There's also a Deaf Education minor and a Deaf Studies master's degree, and McDaniel students obtain internships at the Maryland School for the Deaf, 45 minutes away. They're in their second year of a new undergraduate program in nursing, which is their only direct entry program. It's a small cohort of 25, and for prospective applicants, they're looking for A's and B's in STEM classes, rigor in those classes, and a 3.5 or higher GPA. Nursing applicants must come to campus for an interview and are informed of the admissions decision on the spot. Students must decide and deposit quickly, as seats are filled on a first come, first served basis. Clinicals are done at Carroll Hospital, 5 minutes away.

A couple of other nuggets: as part of the Division 3 Centennial athletic conference, McDaniel just added a women's wrestling team! About a third of all students here are athletes. Merit scholarships range up to $35K per year, and any student whose parent has been a teacher, pre-K through community college, for the last consecutive 4 years qualifies for the maximum $35K scholarship. I love that!

So here's my favorite thing about McDaniel: the president's office is behind glass doors in the student center. How great is that??