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[omccarthy]

My perspective is as an alum ('73), onetime Sherman resident (74-76) and onetime alumni board member (97-08) still involved in campus doings.

Religious? Not when I was there. How religious can a Prebyterian-affiliated college be that just chose a Jew as its first woman president? The College cut its formal ties to the Presbyterian Church (then the Southern branch) in the late 1960s and established instead a covenant relationship with the church. That essentially removed the governance of the school from the church.

For its faults, Sherman is at least a remaining vestige of small city in its own right. Plano was subsumed by Dallas decades ago and, practically, so too McKinney. If you like Spielbergesque cut-alike suburban development, Plano or McKinney would work. For the most part, Sheman west of the 75 freeway has beautiful homes and trees. This is by no means a small town, but it's obviously not a large city, either. That's down the road 65 miles (correction to a previous post: one hour without traffic). I live in Austin now, but I would much rather live in Sherman if the choice were Sherman or Dallas.

If by desolate, you're picturing the Sherman area as Anarene, Texas (The Last Picture Show) it's not. This is the Blackland Prairie, rolling (but not hilly) and treed (but not forested). I grew up on the High Plains of Texas, so I know desolate.

The sciences at AC are among the best in the nation, shown by a ranking I saw recently that it's considered behind Case Western for premier pre-medical training in the nation. Certainly in Texas, if you want to go to medical school, AC is where you should go for undergraduate coursework.