Carleton College

According to the school, Carleton College is a small, private liberal arts college in historic Northfield, Minnesota, 40 miles south of Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Known for its academic excellence and welcoming campus, Carleton offers 37 majors and 16 concentrations in the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, with recent additions in Environmental Studies, Cinema, and Media Studies. Carleton is committed to providing a true liberal arts education, with a curriculum that challenges students to learn broadly and think deeply. Carleton’s student body is notoriously difficult to categorize, but one word to describe it might be curious. Carls are an intellectually insatiable group that approach learning with enthusiasm and with a uniquely Carleton brand of playfulness. Broad-ranging interests are common and friendships cross all traditional boundaries. Students and alumni say there’s just something different about Carleton. Maybe it’s the size (fewer than 2,000 students). Or maybe it’s the round-the-clock proximity of so many creative minds (90 percent of students live on campus). Whatever the reason, Carleton is a place where students are more likely to cooperate than compete, and where working hard doesn’t mean forgetting how to play.\r\n\r\nThe College supports more than 100 different student organizations, as well as 20 varsity sports, 10 for men and 10 for women, with a club and intramural sports scene that sees nearly 90 percent of the student body partake with a wide spectrum of ability level. Carleton’s faculty members are highly respected scholars, researchers, and practitioners in their fields. Every course at Carleton is taught by a professor in classes small enough to offer individual attention. Carleton students come from 49 states and 30 other countries. Multicultural students account for about 20 percent of Carleton’s students. More than half of all students receive need-based financial aid. Carleton leads all undergraduate colleges in the number of its students awarded prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowships for graduate study. The College enrolls more National Merit Scholars than any other small liberal arts college, and has had 18 Rhodes Scholars. Community service is an integral part of the Carleton experience, with more than 600 students involved in the campus volunteer organization, Acting in the Community Together (ACT). More than 70 percent of the student population participates in off-campus studies, at locations around the United States and in countries on every continent except Antarctica.\r\n\r\nCarleton regularly brings national and international guests to campus as visiting faculty, artists-in-residence, and for weekly convocations, which are free and open to the public. Speakers have included astronaut Sally Ride; head of news and politics at YouTube and former Carleton student Steve Grove; New York Times personal health columnist and best-selling author Jane Brody; Freakonomics author Steven Levitt; White House speechwriter John McConnell; best-selling author and activist Sister Helen Prejean; and Carleton alumnus Barrie Osborne, Oscar award winning producer. Carleton features an 880-acre Cowling Arboretum (the Arb) that provides a network of walking, running, and cross-country skiing trails. The Arb was named among the top 10 places to run in the country by Runner’s World magazine. Carleton also has one of the largest undergraduate libraries in the country, as well as two new residence halls, completed in 2009, and built with LEED Gold standards. Carleton graduates can be found in nearly every professional field.

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