This small, competitive liberal arts institution located in Texas boasts a 125-acre, O'Neil Ford-designed campus dotted with red brick buildings and oak trees. Its most distinctive feature, the 166-foot Murchison Tower, is also the site of an important school tradition: Trinity Tigers climb the tower once during student orientation and then return to climb it again at graduation before signing one of the building's bricks.

The school’s recently redesigned "Pathways" curriculum includes a first-year experience course; a focus on core skills like communication and digital literacy; and experiential learning, which can include internships, artistic projects, study abroad or mentored research.

Trinity prides itself on giving its roughly 2,800students access to faculty. Nearly all of the school's more than 260 academic staff members have doctoral or terminal degrees, and the student-faculty ratio is low at 9:1. When not in class, students can check out San Antonio, one of the nation's fastest-growing cities (and said to be home to some of the best tacos in the U.S.).