<p>I went to Swarthmore, not Carleton, but they’re similar enough that what applies to one probably applies to the other. Generally, research opportunities were freely available to any student who wanted one: I was able to work for a professor all three summers.</p>
<p>At a large research university like Cornell, your chances of getting to have some involvement in something cutting-edge that gets published in Nature or Physics Review Letters are higher, but the chances that you will have truly substantive involvement are lower. At a liberal arts college like Carleton you will be doing the work that would normally be delegated to graduate students and will be working under the instruction of a professor, not a graduate student.</p>
<p>In any case, I wouldn’t let this be the deciding factor. This is four years of your life we’re talking about: pick the place where you think you’ll be happiest. Do you want to be in a small college community or a large one? In a medium-sized town like Ithaca, or snowed in in the middle of nowhere?</p>