School profile by CIT Consultant, Anne Weber

We always ask students to look beyond the splashy headlines about rankings. So when I arrived on the beautiful campus of Agnes Scott College, I was both skeptical and intrigued by the banners touting “#1 most innovative for seven years in a row.” How could this little women’s college in Decatur, Georgia reinvent undergraduate education? I’ll tell you in a word: SUMMIT, Agnes Scott’s holistic curriculum. The pillars of SUMMIT include a commitment to: Leadership Development, Global Learning, Professional Success, a personalized Board of Advisors for each student, and Digital Literacy. This is as ambitious a vision as I’ve seen anywhere, and it’s made possible by the commitment of staff and educators to the 900 women on campus.

In many ways, this campus offers the best of many worlds. The idyllic campus, complete with beautiful facilities and even its own observatory, is steps from the shops and restaurants of Decatur, yet also just minutes from Atlanta and connected via the MARTA train system.

In addition to robust programs in Public Health, Psychology, and German, Agnes Scott also offers majors in unexpected programs like astrophysics and Foundations of AI, as well as innovating to provide a 3+2 Engineering partnership with Georgia Tech and a dual nursing degree program from neighboring Emory.

When speaking to students on campus, two things that attracted them to Agnes Scott were the accessibility to professors and diversity within the student body. To attract both socioeconomic and intellectual diversity, Agnes Scott meets 84% of demonstrated need and also guarantees $23k in merit per year.