collegemom3717:
Did you visit Carleton?
Go where you feel that you - not anybody else, just you - will soar. Both schools will have more opportunities than you will be able to take advantage of in 4 years. Both schools will have some ah-mazing profs- and some duds. Both schools will give you everything you need to get into a great grad school.
And both schools will require a lot of hard work to get there. If you are coming from a typical public school, you have been in with a lot of student of mixed ability and a wide range of goals. At any of the colleges that you are talking about you will have to work hard to stand out, because you are in the big kid’s pool now: there will be few slackers- and a fair few astonishingly clever students.
But here’s the thing: each of these schools is confident that you can do it. And, you will have a lot of control over what you do: *you choose your major- because it is a subject that you find interesting. Not every course will be a thrill- but most of your college classes should be engaging. At all of the schools that you are considering there are classes that will be outside your major that you should take just because they are taught by amazing profs and are super interesting. And when you are interested in what you are doing working hard doesn’t feel ‘hard’.
Anecdotal example: Collegekid2 was a dutiful but not massively engaged HS student- got good grades, though not as good as she would have gotten if she had put her back into it. Hit college, started taking classes that were engaging and challenging and found herself working twice as hard as she ever had in HS- and loving it.
Long story short: don’t let fear of X or Y college being ‘harder’ to get a good GPA overweight your decision. Most people do best when they are happy and challenged.
tl;dr- there are no bad choices here. Trust yourself.
*check out the graduation requirements at each of the schools you are pondering- how many required “gen eds” are there, and how broad are your options in fulfilling them?
Smith has an “open curriculum”. There are no gen ed requirements other than one “writing-intensive” course taken the first year (which can be a first-year seminar or many English classes). This made it very attractive to my child who is now a Smithie. I do not know about Carleton, but it is definitely something to consider.
Perhaps you can also consider travel issues? How far are these colleges from home and how hard/easy is it to get door-to-door? Given current restrictions with flights/trains, this could be a issue that makes a big difference in the short-term, at least.