<p>Colleges don’t award merit aid to reward good students; they award it to attract the kind of student they couldn’t otherwise hope to get. The median SAT score for accepted students at Carleton is right at 700 on each of the three sections, and 3/4 of the entering class was in the top 10% of their high school class. So there really isn’t a type or caliber of student for which Carleton would feel they’d be uncompetitive without heavy merit aid.</p>