My oldest chose Colby -he was weighing these two-because he’s very outdoorsy and wanted mountains, coast etc. He had phone calls with head of outdoors clubs at both schools. Ultimately he felt Colby was more his home. Find a way gif your child to investigate that-whether by comparing a club, major etc.
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Grinnell is now back on the table after a call tonight with a Grinnell mom or recent grad.
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Carleton is not in a suburb of Minneapolis. It’s just not. It’s very cute but that’s like saying Bowdoin is in a suburb of Portland or Wesleyan is in a suburb of Boston. It’s in a tiny town surrounded by a rural area.
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It is easy to overread these things, but one of my favorite quick-and-dirty looks at academic strength is the per capita version of these PhD feeder lists:
In terms of total PhDs, Carleton is #5, behind only Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, and MIT. I note Engineering generates a disproportionate number of PhDs, so it is notable Carleton is actually #1 among colleges without engineering. Grinnell, incidentally, is #7 on that list, so also excellent.
OK, then Occidental did not make that list. That does not mean it is bad for academics, indeed the list only goes to 50, and there are all sorts of confounding factors like people simply self-selecting out of academic paths. Still, this is data in support of the claim that Carleton is in fact a very strong academic institution, one of the strongest in fact. Wesleyan is then #19, again very strong for a non-tech/engineering college.
There is a CS version too, incidentally. On that list, Carleton is #9, after Caltech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, Olin, CMU, Swarthmore, Williams, and Cooper Union. Again, very high when you take out the tech schools.
Yes, Northfield is what I would call a satellite town. It is actually an interesting case because it is partially in Dakota County, which is part of the Minneapolis Metropolitan Statistical Area, but mostly in Rice County, which is its own Micropolitan Statistical Area, although that Micropolitan Area is then part of the greater Minneapolis Combined Statistical Area. All these categories have empirical Census definitions, but the upshot is Northfield has ties to Minnesota but not as strong as areas that would be within the traditional definition of a suburb.
Practically, Northfield is about 40 minutes from MSP, 45-50 minutes from either downtown Minneapolis or downtown St Paul. So it is pretty easy to get back and forth, but you will in fact go through a rural area before getting into the suburban/urban part of the Twin Cities.
All this felt somewhat familiar to me because it reminded me of the relationship between Ann Arbor (home of the University of Michigan) and Detroit. Of course the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor are respectively much larger than Carleton/St Olaf and Northfield, but the practical relationship to the airport and other major amenities of the local metropolises struck me as very, very similar.\
Edit: Oh, I am less familiar, but from what I understand Middletown (home of Wesleyan) is also a sort of satellite town of Hartford. It is closer to downtown Hartford than Northfield/Ann Arbor to Minneapolis/Detroit, but a similar distance from the airport (which is on the other side of Hartford), and it has a sort of independence that distinguishes it from a traditional suburb.
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I will send you a pm. I have questions but don’t want to take over the Carleton thread with questions about Colby.
My S get in Grinnell and Carleton . He will do bio and premed track . We know both are good schools small liberal arts . But Carleton is better for premed students ? We have friends’s kids are in Carleton , they said the college has a better advising , support for get kids admitted to med school , especially their strong collaboration with Mayo . But Grinnell gave him merit scholarship while Carleton did not .so not sure which to choose . Any suggestion ?
Simply considered academically, both Grinnell and Carleton offer top-notch biology programs.
hii!! as i mentioned i was recently accepted to Carleton but i don’t know much about the school and its strength for public policy/government, which is what i’m interested in. i want to go into government after college (possibly law school), so I was wondering if anyone knows what carleton’s connections to DC are like (landing internships, semester in DC, etc etc)
This 10-week program should be of interest to you:
Note as well that in the site linked up-topic, Carleton appears as one of the three LACs suggested (along with Hamilton and Pomona) for the study of public policy.
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How is the strength of premed counseling , support , research , shadowing , etc since take premed and apply med school will need a lot of help ?
Carleton has a private website set up for parents of recently accepted students. There are staff and current parents on that site that can answer your question better than people here who may not be as familiar with what is currently happening on campus. If you have not received the info for that website yet, you will probably be getting it soon.
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Apologies for my choice of words. Instead of describing Northfield as a suburb, I should have stated that it is easily accessible to Minneapolis and all that urban area has to offer. It’s about a 45 minute drive whereas Bates to Portland is almost an hour and a half, and Wesleyan to Boston is almost two hours. We visited all three schools and that was something we paid attention to, not just for the purposes of getting our D to and from college, but also for her to be able to get to an urban area for cultural events, plays, concerts, etc.
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Thanks a lot ! Will have my son to check .
My D is a current second year at Grinnell. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if I can assist in any way. She loves it there!
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How to contact you ? Thanks
I’m hearing that Carleton used to be a notch above and that Grinnel has come up to on par. If the money is very significant to you I do not think you should feel badly about choosing Grinnell. (and thank Warren Buffet-I’ve hearts he’s responsible for their 2bil endowment?). I do not think the difference is stark enough to warrant a big financial sacrifice. And: If your child loves C you could go back and ask them for $.
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Bates to Portland is 45 minutes.
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So the statistics I have seen suggest Grinnell is very successful at placing students in med schools, but Carleton appears to be more successful still. You can actually see a lot of those at their pages:
https://www.grinnell.edu/about/leadership/committees/health-professions/data
The thing is, a lot of those statistics can potentially be misleading, and at a minimum you would need to control for MCAT scores. Still, gun to my head I would choose Carleton for pre-health, if money was not a concern.
But if there is a significant cost difference? It is impossible for outsiders to say how to value that, and Grinnell is still very good for pre-health. It is just that Carleton is a very tough competitor in this particular area.
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Please feel free to send me a DM.
Please note that since @Yuer1 appears to be new to the forums, it may be necessary for you to initiate private messaging.
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