University of St. Thomas: Where Students Go to Thrive

My mission is simple: I visit colleges across the country and give families my honest, unfiltered, boots-on-the-ground take. Not the brochure version. Not the tour guide script. What it actually feels like to be on that campus, talk to those students, and walk those halls. This is visit number three in my 50 Colleges series, and St. Thomas is one I want every family to hear about.

I drove across the river to St. Paul on a bright Minnesota morning and I want to be honest with you: I did not expect to be as impressed as I was. St. Thomas carries a reputation in some circles as the safe, local option. What I found was something more interesting than that label suggests. This is a school where students genuinely enjoy being. They are engaged, committed to their degrees, and happy in a way that does not feel performed. That matters more than people realize when choosing a college.

Let me give you my honest assessment.

The Catholic identity at St. Thomas does not announce itself in any heavy-handed way. It lives in the architecture. The Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, completed in 1919, was designed by Emmanuel Masqueray, the same architect behind the Cathedral of St. Paul. The seminary buildings on the south campus are the early work of Cass Gilbert, who went on to design the Minnesota State Capitol. You walk through this campus and you feel the weight of that intention — beauty as a form of devotion — without anyone delivering a sermon about it. For families who want a values-grounded education that does not feel preachy or prescriptive, that distinction matters enormously.

The campus sits in the Summit Hill neighborhood of St. Paul, which is one of the most architecturally beautiful stretches of street in the entire Midwest. Summit Avenue's Victorian mansions run right alongside the university, and there is a quiet confidence to the physical environment that I noticed immediately. This is not a campus designed to impress you during a visit and then disappear. The buildings are built to last. The green spaces are generous. Students were outside, moving between classes, eating lunch on the Anderson Student Center steps. It felt alive.

The Anderson Student Center deserves its own paragraph. It is one of the better student centers I have visited anywhere. Multiple floors, a bowling alley, dining options that go well beyond the average dining hall, and an energy that felt genuinely student-driven rather than administratively curated. I lingered there longer than I planned.

“The students I spoke with were not recruiting me. They were just telling me they liked it here. That is the kind of candor I always listen for on a campus visit.”

If your student has any interest in business, finance, entrepreneurship, or management, they need to know about the Opus College of Business. It is consistently ranked among the top business programs in the Midwest, and its alumni network within the Twin Cities business community is exceptional. I mean that in a practical, jobs-get-filled way: companies in Minneapolis and St. Paul actively recruit from Tommie business programs because they have decades of experience with the quality of graduates coming out.

But here is what I want families outside the business track to hear: St. Thomas has a genuine liberal arts core. Every student, regardless of major, engages with philosophy, theology, ethics, and writing. For families raising curious, values-driven kids who are not yet sure what they want to study, that foundation matters. I have counseled students who chose a business-forward school thinking they were locked in and found that flexibility within the curriculum far exceeded their expectations. St. Thomas tends to produce graduates who can think and communicate, not just execute.

The engineering and computer science programs are growing and worth watching, particularly given the university's recent investment in STEM facilities. Health sciences, education, and pre-law pipelines are also strong, and with the St. Thomas School of Law on campus, students interested in that path have a clear and supported route.

Some families frame the St. Paul location as a question mark. I see it differently. The Grand Avenue corridor, which is steps from campus, is one of the most charming urban commercial strips in the country. Independent restaurants, bookstores, coffee shops, boutiques. Students told me they walk to Grand Avenue constantly. It does not feel like a college town tacked onto a city. It feels like a genuine neighborhood where students happen to live, and where they actually put down roots.

And Minneapolis is twenty minutes away. The light rail connects the two cities. Students who want the larger urban experience have it. Students who want the quieter, more walkable neighborhood feel have that too. For families worried about their student getting swallowed by a big anonymous city, St. Paul's particular energy is genuinely worth considering.

St. Thomas made the jump from Division III to Division I in 2021, and the shift has been noticeable in ways both athletic and cultural. Football competes in the Pioneer Football League, basketball and most other sports in the Summit League, and hockey is on its way to the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. There is a new electricity around game days, a sharper school identity, and a recruitment pipeline that is bringing in student athletes who are choosing St. Thomas over schools they might have previously looked past. For families with student athletes, this is a meaningful development.

For non-athlete students, the D1 move has added a layer of school spirit that smaller Division III institutions sometimes struggle to build. That matters for four-year quality of life more than people admit.

A student who is community-minded and wants to be genuinely connected to their campus, not just passing through it. A student interested in business, law, health sciences, or education who wants rigorous preparation without the impersonal scale of a large research university. A student athlete navigating the new D1 landscape who wants real playing time alongside a strong academic reputation. A student whose family is weighing debt load carefully and wants to maximize merit aid at a school with strong regional employer relationships. And honestly, any student who has visited a large state school and thought: I want something more human than this.