Saint Anselm College (SAC)

Founded in 1889, Saint Anselm College is a Benedictine, Catholic, liberal arts college located in Manchester, N.H. The third oldest Catholic college in New England, Saint Anselm enrolls roughly 2,000 students and prepares students for life beyond college. Saint Anselm encourages its students to ask big questions and think critically, creatively, and ethically. Graduates are CEOs, doctors, engineers, teachers, marketers, and researchers. They are humanitarians, healers, and philanthropists. They graduate Saint Anselm with the drive to achieve, empowered to make the world a better place.

Saint Anselm is home to roughly 2,000 graduate and undergraduate students, representing over 25 states and multiple countries.

Saint Anselm offers over 80 student-led clubs, organizations, and committees, 23 NCAA varsity athletic programs, a variety of community engagement opportunities, and more. Annual traditions like the college's Relay for Life and Gingerbread House Competition are popular among the student body.

People at Saint Anselm are “easy to get to know,” with “a large student athlete population and campus ministry/service population,” and everyone tries to “embrace the community as much as we can, and cherish all of the time that we have here.” As one student says, “The people who go to Saint Anselm College genuinely love the school and want to be at ‘the Hilltop’ [the affectionate name for the school campus] as much as possible.” While “ethnic and racial diversity is not entirely large” here, this group of “warm-hearted welcoming individuals” say that “no matter your background, you’ll find your niche here.” To better understand the vibe, know that students commonly say things like “That was [or wasn’t] very Anselmian of you,” as they expect their peers to be “kind, respectful, and compassionate.”

The average Saint Anselm enrollee is constantly on the move, “going from meeting to meeting, class to class, club to club.” Still, “while everyone is busy, no one is overwhelmed,” and students can slow down to enjoy the simple pleasures of “spending time with friends at the dining hall and taking long walks throughout campus.” During the day, it tends to be all business: “you will often see people working on their laptops in common areas, the student center, library, even at the dining hall.” However, after the books are closed, “people love to spend time outside, whether it’s sledding, playing KanJam, cornhole, [or] hiking.” Almost all students live on campus for their four years, and “the campus events clubs try to have events or food trucks as much as possible to make an average day just a little more special.”

The college is heavily vested in its students’ future careers, and employment readiness is incorporated into the curriculum from day one. Credit-bearing internships, study abroad, and faculty-student research opportunities abound, and the Career Development Center also offers personal guidance and professional development workshops. Additionally, the Meelia Center for Community Engagement helps connect students with agencies throughout the Greater Manchester area, in order to gain service experience. For the Class of 2019, 99 percent were employed, in graduate school, or engaged in service within six months of graduation. Saint Anselm graduates who visited Payscale.com reported an early career salary of $56,400 annually.